While Professor Allan Fels has been busy running the taxi industry down in the media, Melbourne Lord Mayor Robert Doyle has come out with some amazing suggestions on how to solve his city’s taxi woes such as short-fare refusals and the shortage of cabs Friday and Saturday nights. “Provide incentives to drivers”, he said. What an absurd suggestion when all it takes is more and bigger penalties for noncompliance and more enforcement officers. Incentives - strewth!.

by Peer Lindholdt

Professor Allan Fels last year told the Age (19/12/11) the taxi system had many “broken features” that had built up over 30 years, including problems with catering for disabled customers, a shortage on Friday and Saturday nights, and short-fare refusals.

Comments like these are infuriating because they are blatantly untrue. None of these problems ‘have been building up’, they have always been there and will continue to be unless the causes are identified and cures found.

While we continue to listen to the Fels rhetoric and hypotheticals, Melbourne’s Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, who spent years working nights as a taxi driver in his 20s, has offered concrete proposals.

To reduce short-fare refusals he suggests a $10 minimum fare and a flat fee extra surcharge on Friday and Saturday nights to get more drivers to drive those nights.

“The key to solving the city’s taxi woes is providing incentives to drivers”, he said.

How refreshing to hear a high-ranking official actually suggest that the carrot may work better than the stick.

For decades the government regulators and the industry mafia have been of the view that the only answer to improving driver performance is ever more draconian rules and penalties.

Prof. Fels said he thought the Lord Mayor’s suggestions were very good but they needed to be fitted into a more general system of reforms.

The draft report on his Inquiry is not due out until June. Then we will have public submissions followed by revisions before the final report comes out, probably in October. Then the Government will review and revise it to suit its political agenda before it goes to Parliament sometime next year. So it will be some time before we will begin to see the impact of these general reforms.

In the meantime the industry is left wondering why Transport Minister Mulder continue to stall on a fare increase. Maybe Fels has asked him to leave it until the Taxi Services Commission is up and running. Or maybe they are testing how far they can go before one or more sectors of the industry take industrial action. It can’t be far off.