Saturday, January 2, 2010

Beyond Taxi Driver Bashing and New Years Eve

Beyond Taxi Driver Bashing and New Years Eve



Further to Miranda's Xmas and Taxis below, we must be mindful that Sydney taxis are vacant most of the time. Only occasionally, taxis become busy and then only for a few very short periods. It is neither economical nor feasible to organise a few thousand taxis and taxi drivers for those very short periods. It is much more viable and economic to have more trains and buses to cater those infrequent rush hours.



Traditionally, taxi driver bashing by some sections of the media was a solution. Unfortunately, this type of buck passing failed to solve any problems. Therefore, we propose to share the blame together and educate the public to be more co-operative, patient and share taxis to speed up the traffic.



Christmas is held out throughout the civilized world as being the season of goodwill. Well, we think that a little good will extended to Sydney's much maligned cabbies wouldn't go astray either. Most workers in hospitality enjoy lucrative penalty rates over the silly season. Not so your toiling cabbie!



Restaurant patrons and hotel guests all accept a surcharge on their big night out yet somehow expect to get home in a cab when the fun is over at standard rates. Suffer the poor cabbie! Whilst cabbies get told to stagger their shifts a better solution would be to stagger Christmas! Only then would all those patrons get the service they desire. If, however, they are allowed to celebrate the silly season simultaneously then they MUST accept that they can't all go home at the same time with no delay.



When those patrons tell their cabbie "I hope that you are getting paid double time for doing this" and hear the response "Well that's up to you" it is no wonder that a great number of cabbies opt to avoid the madding crowd and take the night off too. What's in it for the cabbie? A tirade of abuse from patrons urged to hate cabbies by the hysterical media; a back seat full of pizza and six packs. Not to mention all the time off the road in the weeks following if some drunk has collected the taxi with their poorly piloted missiles.



Faruque Ahmed

Secretary
NSW Taxi Drivers Association

Mobile: 041 091 4118 or 0432 665 822

November 4, 2009

1 comment:

mamubhi said...

Another good post. I hope someone is listening.