IS IT REALLY QUIET?
By the time you read this, I suspect that we will be just a
few days away from the late summer burst. In fact, I'd go so far as to
name as Wednesday September 12th as the date it will all start to
happen. Why? Well, most of the kids start to go back to school the week
before and almost 31 years of taxi driving tells me that the first week
back is still slow because, regardless of whether they are given 6
weeks or 6 months, there are always parents who take will their
children away for a fortnight the week before school opens knowing that
their return will make their little darlings late back! Never mind us
poor cab drivers scratching around for work! The first two days of the
following week will be the settling in period and then bang...!
This August also saw a tremendous number of Dial-a-Cab
drivers going away - including DaC Chairman Brian Rice - yet we always
assume that no one else goes away in this month and cannot understand
why it's so quiet.
The reason I have started with the above is to give a
demonstration of something that really irritated me on Saturday 18th
August and which was probably not a one-off. Like most drivers, I have
had no problems in August with prospective passenger wearing out my
carpet. However, I rarely do cash work anyway so driving along Chalk
Farm Road towards Hawley Crescent with my light off, my intention was
to head back to the City and book in there again.
A TX1 was cruising several cars in front of me. He stopped
at an outstretched arm and just as I was about to indicate to pull out
and overtake, he drove off empty leaving a desperate looking male
together with a woman and baby waving frantically at me. Stopping with
your light off and asking where the passenger is going is tantamount to
touting, but I stopped anyway as I'm sure most of you would when seeing
a baby.
"What's the matter," I asked, "why wouldn't
that cab take you"?
The male passenger seemed totally unshocked at the
response the previous driver had given. That was that he didn't want to
go that way because it was a Saturday evening and it would cost him
money. Would I take him, he asked quietly?
Don't laugh, but we were in Chalk Farm Road and this family and baby wanted to go to Manor House. Not the world's greatest or most profitable job. With all the extras, the fare still came to under a tenner and I headed down Green Lane and Southgate Road back to the City.
However, after they had gotten in the cab, I caught up (not deliberately) with the cab that had refused and who was waiting at the lights at Camden Road. The driver obviously knew that I had taken his rejects.
"Going home," he enquired as though butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. I shook my head as a 'no'.
"You know where they're going?" he again asked, this time sounding rather incredulous. I nodded in response. "You must be 'effing mad on a Saturday night," he called out as the lights changed and he shot off towards Euston still empty.
I won't tell you that I got a blinding job after setting down, because I didn't. But I'd like to make two points:
A/ It was quiet, yet this driver refused to take a family with a baby on a short trip in his cab because he didn't fancy the job and...
B/ The passenger wasn't even shocked!
It was the second point that disturbed me even more than the refusal. Refusals by licensed drivers are now so common that many prospective passengers only use us when a minicab isn't available. And it's no good anyone saying that they never refuse because too many are still doing it. Saturday night in the West End is the perfect example. It's only when you try to catch a cab in town that you realise and understand why some passengers are desperate enough to use a tout.
I don't pretend to know the answers because as I said, I rarely do cash work, but neither do I usually stop to ask people where they are going. Quite honestly that - or hanging up outside the Bishopsgate entrance to Liverpool street - carry no differences to touting.
ALWAYS THE BRIDESMAID?
Hopefully, Brian Rice's Chairman's column will carry an update on the court
case held at London's Royal Courts of Justice where Radio Taxis (London) -
aka Mountview - sued DaC in connection with the ownership of the Internet
domain site radiotaxis.com. The case ended in early August but the decision
will not be given until September.
Even though the case is over, it wouldn't be right for me to discuss the
case here as much as I would love to. However, let me talk about the
relationship between DaC and RTL.
They were formed several months after ODRTS. In 1955, ODRTS and
a radio circuit known as York Way invited the baby Radio Taxis (Southern) to
join them in forming a radio organisation to prevent the undercutting of
each others costs. RTS refused, but soon after a letter was produced on RTS
notepaper claiming to an ODRTS client that they (RTS), could provide a
better service. Later, it transpired that all radio jobs sent out by ODRTS
and possibly York Way, had - according to the Post Office - been monitored
by an illegal radio source and it was those clients who were contacted by
RTS. Of course, it could be that RTS accepted those names and addresses in
all innocence - couldn't it!
But that is all in the past and now part of folklore. They
later changed from RTS to RTL. More up to date to the late 1980's, and RTL
went data six months after DaC did, buying the identical system.
Then when ComCab upgraded their system, RTL went out and bought
a system off the peg that increased our waiting list of unhappy RTL drivers
considerably. Their views of the RTL system were unprintable!
Then we went onto the Internet. Some considerable time later,
they realised that they would have to follow and did so claiming that a
domain name we had purchased long before belonged to them. Only one person
knows if that is true and that is the Judge at the Law Courts.
That's the problem with always being the bridesmaid, you just
never seem able to catch up...
