Taxi ranks swell but end of queue is some way off

Here we go again. The annual ritual of queuing and flagging down, shuffling forward occasionally and more queuing is upon us. It's the Christmas cab congo and it's taking place at a rank near you.

But don't despair if you're one of the tens of thousands of people dreading another long wait this festive season to get a taxi home. There is some good news.

On Monday, Dublin's four local authorities will vote on a radical plan to issue 820 taxi licences over the next three years, in addition to 400 already released this year. The initiative will increase the taxi population of the capital by 62 per cent to 3,194 cabs.

The local authorities are also due to recommend that hackney cabs should be able to have external identification and use twoway radios as well as bus lanes, putting them on a more equal footing with taxis.

But the bad news is that while Monday's package - drawn up by the Local Authority Taxi Committee last month - marks a breakthrough in negotiations with the taxi unions, its full effects won't be felt for some time yet.

"There will be some improvement this year as almost all of the 400 new licences have been issued. But hopefully by next Christmas we will be seeing a real improvement and shorter queues," says Olivia Mitchell, Fine Gael's spokeswoman on Dublin traffic.

"The idea is that the plan would be reviewed after three years to see what impact it has had. Hopefully, by that stage we will be well under way to having a competent public transport system in the capital because if we don't have public transport we will just be putting more cars onto the streets, making the traffic situation worse."

The plan follows a lengthy process of consultation with interested parties starting with the Dublin Taxi Forum, set up a year ago by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern. Representatives of the National Taxi Drivers' Union and the Irish Taxi Drivers' Federation, three Government departments as well as the Garda and the business and consumer sectors helped draw up the report, which formed the basis of the Local Authority Taxi Committee's plan.

Tommy Gorman of the NTDU describes it as "a Good Friday agreement" for the taxi industry. While he says some interested parties may lose out, particularly taxi plate owners who use "cosies", or part-time drivers paying rent for the use of plates, "it's the best thing that happened to our business because all the parties were willing to consult us and appreciate that we made important concessions".

But as with the Belfast Agreement there are fringe elements opposed to the deal.

The Irish Taxi Licence Owners' Association says the proposal to issue the new licences at £15,000 each would devalue the market value of taxi plates, estimated to change hands for up to £80,000.

Thomas Darcy, chief executive of the body, says it would force drivers to work longer hours, which is disgraceful at a time when maximum working time legislation is being introduced.

"We are the fall guys in this. People are looking at the queues and blaming us when, in fact, we are a secondary service and they should be looking at the public transport system."

The association has called for a mass meeting of taxi drivers in the Phoenix Park tomorrow and Mr Darcy says it will decide what strategy to adopt afterwards. Coincidentally, the National Hackney Drivers' Association was due to hold a protest march yesterday in the capital but called it off at the last minute having received a favourable response from the Department of the Environment to inquiries about new provisions governing the operation of hackneys.

In a letter to the association, the Department, whose approval is necessary for any change in hackney regulations, said it had no difficulty "in principal" to the proposal to allow hackneys to use external signage.

Mr Darcy says this amounts to rewarding the hackney business for past indiscretions.

But others believe the local authority taxi plan does not go far enough.

A competition Authority report this week called for the liberalisation of the market and an end to the transfer of taxi plates, comparing drivers who pay rent to "urban sharecroppers", forced to work up to 70 hours a week while earning the minimum industrial wage.

It cited the example of one individual believed to control 45 taxi plates in Dublin, estimating that 3.7 per cent of plate owners held 9.8 per cent of the plates.

Another report this week from the Policy Institute at Trinity College, Dublin recommended a doubling in the number of plates and the deregulation of the industry after three years.

But Ms Mitchell says the local authority plan effectively amounts to "de facto deregulation". She says it should help to bring about a situation where taxi plates are "valueless and non-tradable".