According to new regulations city officials want to introduce more competition on to the taxi market in the form of available cabs, limit drivers’ licences to five years and regulate fares making the maximum equal across the board. City officials also want all taxis to be white within five years.

But cab drivers say the new regulations will mean many of them lose their jobs.

The new taxi laws come into effect today (Tues).

The Maryborough cabbie and director of B&W Taxis spends his days making sure people arrive safely at their destinations – and customers are his top priority.

Recently installed state-of-the-art navigation systems mean customers aren’t left waiting so long to get a cab.

“The good thing about this new system is that drivers are getting to the customer a lot quicker,” Mr Wheeler said.

“All of our cabs have this system now and it’s going to be rolled out across Queensland.”

The navigation system works in a similar way to cbut is connected to an on-board computer that logs details of every job.

“It practically takes us straight to the door of the person we are picking up,” Mr Wheeler said.

“It’s especially helpful for our newer drivers. It also makes it easier to track jobs.”

Advances in technology have made it safer for taxi drivers to work alone and late at night.

It has been common practice for drivers to carry radios with an alarm system that could be activated in an emergency.

In the past the alarm system was reliant on radio reception, but that is no longer the case.

The new system has an inbuilt SIM card and works using Next G technology so, even if there is no reception, drivers can raise the alarm in dangerous situations.

“I started driving taxis when I was 19 and I’m 43 now,” Mr Wheeler said.

“There’s a real social aspect to the job. I enjoy meeting lots of beaut people.

“This new technology is helping speed things up a bit.”

Under a new set of proposals from City Hall’s Transport and Communications Department, all taxi drivers would have to have medical certificates as well as at least three years’ experience driving a relevant vehicle.

The department also plans to develop a set of tests that would help taxi operators determine whether the drivers they are hiring have a sufficient command of spoken Russian and can find their way through the city.

The proposals further stipulate that only cars that comply with Euro-2 environmental standards and are equipped with a meter would be permitted to operate as taxis.

Currently the Moscow taxi market is clearly divided between a legitimate segment, represented by authorised operators, and thousands of “gypsy” cabbies.

Intra-city travellers often prefer the latter because their fares are noticeably cheaper than those charged by legitimate drivers.

A large part of the unlicensed taxi market is dominated by impoverished drivers from other former Soviet republics. For many of these gypsies, driving a taxi in the capital is a way to send money back home.

A spokesperson for the city’s Transport and Communications Department told The Moscow News that the proposals are currently being examined by the department’s experts, after which a working document along with amendments will be sent to the city government’s legal department.

The city representative was unable to give a time-frame for the proposals to come into effect.

Licensing grey area

The biggest obstacle in the way of bringing order to the city’s taxi operation, according to the Moscow government, is that under a federal law enacted in 2005, taxi operation is no longer subject to mandatory licensing.

It is not clear, moreover, how the proposed measures would work in a situation when taxi drivers don’t have to apply for licenses.

Similarly, experts are sceptical about the Moscow government’s proposed steps.

“The taxi business is currently developing very chaotically,” Sergei Kanayev, head of the Moscow office of the Russian Car Owners’ Federation, told The Moscow News.

“On the one hand, the existing situation is good for passengers because they have frequent opportunities to catch cheap rides around the city; on the other hand, actual taxi operation is totally disorganized.

“The Moscow government’s proposals are far from what needs to be done,” Kanayev went on to say. “There is a need for real rules of the game that would turn [taxi operation] into a real business.

Today it is not a business, but a free-floating market. And ideas about language tests for taxi drivers and testing for their knowledge of the city should come from not the city government, but from employers.

Taxi companies should be made interested in hiring the right people as taxi drivers,” he concluded.

Source: (   mn.ru news , by Vladimir Kozlov )

“We called around the cab companies and didn’t remember the name of the cab,” he said.

“All I remembered is it was an older gentleman with a yellow cab,” said Schojan, who took the taxi to the bank to make a withdrawal.

A few hours later, he reached the dispatcher at Liberty Cab who helped Schojan track down cab.

Driver James Hari found an envelope in his back seat stuffed with $4,000.

“So I went back and returned it,” said Hari, who recently retired from Ford in Lake View.

He’s been driving a cab for just three months.

“I didn’t hesitate,” he said. “I always try to do the right thing.”

Hari and the dispatcher were both rewarded for their honesty.

“I handed him $100 and I told him to give $100 to Tracy at dispatch,” said Schojan, who said he gave Hari a huge hug when the cab driver returned the cash.

Source: wkbw.com

We contacted the major taxi companies but had no luck finding which cab she used.

The next morning my wife got a Facebook message from the driver’s wife asking if the bag was hers.

The driver’s wife found an old receipt in the bag with my wife’s name and took the time to try to locate her.

My wife proved she knew the contents and the cab driver then delivered the bag to me at the hotel where I was staying. Our thanks to the driver and his wife for doing the right thing. You made my daughter’s day. Thanks again to Cab 5184 – Yellow Cab Company.

– Dan Zelman, Twinsburg, Ohio

The affable 58-year-old is back behind the wheel of his trusty taxi after conquering the physical and emotional demons of a horrific late-night robbery and assault.

Les was bashed by the passengers he was driving from Taree to Wingham at midnight on April 23. He was punched repeatedly in the head and a knife was used to sever tendons and nerves in his hand. His vehicle was stolen and later found abandoned in bushland near Cedar Party.

It was an incident that shocked the Wingham community, and threatened to end Les’ days as a taxi driver.

But according to Les, there was never any question of throwing in the towel.

“Getting back behind the wheel, it was a decision I had to make,” he said. “I was not going to let (the assault) stop me from doing what I love to do. I had to prove it to myself. ”

Les is a builder by trade, but has been driving with Wingham Taxis since December last year. Prior to that, he spent two and a half years travelling to Newcastle on weekends to drive for his brother’s taxi company. He loves what he does.

“It’s the variety of people you get to meet and talk with,” Les said. “The conversations you have with your passengers are amazing. You can talk about anything. Politics, life . . . you meet some interesting characters.”

The April 23 assault is currently in the hands of Taree detectives. No-one has been charged with the crime yet.

The Chronicle understands that Les picked up several passengers from a Woola Road address in Taree at 12am on April 23. The passengers then asked to be driven to Wingham.

The passengers told Les to pull over in front of the Wingham Pool. Les was punched in the head a number of times. One of the offenders held a knife to his throat. Les attempted to push the knife away. The blade severed tendons in his hand. Les stumbled out of the vehicle.

The perpetrators fled the scene in the stolen taxi.

An online poll of 1,900 travellers by hotels.com gave the capital’s taxis a score of just 10% – joint-bottom alongside Frankfurt.

Respondents were asked to score the taxi service in cities they had visited according to their value for money, cleanliness, safety and availability.

Drivers were marked for their driving ability, knowledge of the area and friendliness.

Paris taxi drivers were considered to be the rudest in the world, alongside those in Manhattan. However they scored slightly better on driving ability, with the bottom place in that category going to Rome instead.

Paris taxi drivers’ body CSAT said a small number of “unlikeable” drivers were tarnishing the image of the profession as a whole.

CSAT president Christian Delomel told Le Parisien that a new entry exam was being formulated to root out “certain candidates who do not belong in the profession”.

The group is also recommending a compulsory English test for new drivers.

London came top in the hotels.com for the third year running, with a total score of 59%. London cabbies were voted the friendliest and most knowledgeable but did not score as well for value for money.

Walid Ziada, 36, accepted a plea deal from the city that requires him to pay a $600 fine and not drive a cab for four days. He also has to take an anger management class.

Ziada said he took the deal because “I don’t want to risk losing my license.”

The incident took place in January 2009. Jeffrey Bierbrodt, 39, said he came out of a bar in Lake View and began taking pictures of his friends and the street.

Ziada claims he told Bierbrodt to stop taking pictures of him, which led to Bierbrodt hitting Ziada in the face with a camera.

Bierbrodt claims that Ziada got out of his cab and came after him, and Bierbrodt was acting in self defense.

Ziada said another man with Bierbrodt, Bryan Ketter, also hit him. Ziada followed a car containing Bierbrodt, Ketter and others to a parking lot. The parties gave different versions of what happened next — with Bierbrodt and his companions claiming Ziada tried to run people over, while Ziada said they pounded on his cab.

Ketter was found guilty of misdemeanor battery, but Bierbrodt was acquitted.

The United Taxidrivers Community Council, a driver advocacy group, has highlighted the Ziada case as an example of the problem of violence against cabdrivers.

Both Bierbrodt and Julie Wayland, 41, of Lake View, one of the other people in the car, complained about Ziada to the city’s Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection, accusing him of unsafe driving, abusive behavior and discourteous conduct. The city dismissed Bierbrodt’s complaint and all but one count of Wayland’s.

“I’m glad that he has to take an anger management class because I think he clearly needs it and at least for four days he’ll be off the road,” said Wayland. “I really think he drove recklessly.”

Ziada has filed a civil suit against Ketter and Bierbrodt.

Ziada is currently the defendant in a personal injury lawsuit filed on behalf of Chicago attorney Tom Leahy, in a separate incident. The suit claims that Leahy’s daughter was a passenger in a cab Ziada was driving on Feb. 7, 2008. The cab broke down on the Kennedy Expressway, and Tom Leahy came to get his daughter in his car.

The suit claims that in attempt to collect the fare, Ziada reached into Tom Leahy’s car to get grab the ignition key, and in the process, hit Leahy in the jaw.

Ziada admits he grabbed for the key after Leahy had made an obscene gesture when Ziada asked for his fare. But Ziada, while admitting he “made a mistake” in grabbing for the key and not just calling police, denies he hit Leahy.

When the company starts its weekly cruises again next January, it will not visit Bahrain because in its first season, which ended in April, passengers had been put off the destination by unscrupulous taxi drivers overcharging them and the distance between the port and the city centre.

The Miami-based Royal Caribbean launched its first cruises around the Gulf in January, bringing more than 32,000 passengers to the region in four months on its Brilliance of the Seas liner, which carries up to 2,500 guests. The one-week cruises, which sailed out of Dubai, stopped in Muscat, Fujairah, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain.

A 2,000-passenger ship brings an average revenue of US$274,165 (Dh1 million) to each port of call, according to research by the shipping news organisation Seatrade. Bahrain has cited the cruise sector as an important part of its tourism strategy.

The Brilliance of the Seas cruises included a stop at Bahrain’s new Shaikh Khalifa bin Salman Port.

“We have taken Bahrain out of the itinerary,” said Helen Beck, the regional sales director of Royal Caribbean. “We had quite a lot of negativity from UK guests in particular.”

She said the cruises would instead feature an extended overnight stop in Muscat, rather than visit Bahrain.

“We’re speaking to the tourism department in Bahrain and taking the feedback to pieces,” said Ms Beck. “There’s an awful lot of things to do and see. We’re working very closely to get the issues resolved and get them [Bahrain] back into the programme as soon as possible”

Bahrain’s tourism sector, part of the country’s ministry of culture and information, declined to comment. Guests from the UK accounted for about 55 per cent of the passengers on Royal Caribbean’s Gulf cruises in the first season.

German and US passengers made up the bulk of the rest. A few guests came from the Gulf region.

“The first season in any destination is always interesting,” said Ms Beck, adding the region had a lot of potential but there was still much work to be done in the region’s fledgling cruise sector. The voyages have been running near full capacity so far.

Royal Caribbean plans to run cruises over the same period next year but will then sail during the standard November-to-April season. Miss Beck said one of the main issues still to be resolved was the fact that passengers from certain countries had to buy multiple visas to visit the different destinations the Gulf cruise called at in the UAE.

“That really does present us with a challenge and drives away some potential guests,” said Ms Beck.

Also, she said, destinations in the region needed to consider locating their cruise terminals away from commercial shipping ports, which were generally unattractive points of entry for cruise passengers.

Feedback from passengers on their visits to Abu Dhabi was generally positive but as in the case of Bahrain, a number of people complained they had been overcharged by taxi drivers, who behaved like “bees around a honey pot” when passengers disembarked at Port Zayed, Ms Beck said.

“If it’s the first impression that people get of a destination, it stays with them,” she said, adding that Royal Caribbean planned to discuss the situation with the relevant authorities.

The Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority is carrying out a feasibility study on building a dedicated cruise terminal. The authority said a preferred site had been identified, which it said would be needed to advance the emirate’s ambitions of growing its ports sector.

The authority said the choice of site was awaiting government approval. Abu Dhabi is looking at a target of 300 ships and more than 600,000 passengers a year by 2030.

From: Thenational.ae