By Alex Seabrook
Taxi fares in South Gloucestershire will increase by 2.55 per cent after not a single person responded to a public consultation. The higher fares will impact hackney carriages from April, whose numbers in the district are dwindling with only around 50 remaining.
Hackney carriages are the sort of taxis which passengers can hail in the street or catch at a rank, for example outside Bristol Parkway train station or in Hanham and Kingswood. Private hire vehicles, such as Ubers, are not impacted by the fare changes.
The fare hike was approved by councillors on the regulatory committee on Thursday, March 27. Drivers don’t have to charge the higher rates if they don’t want to, but the council sets the highest they are allowed to charge.
The public consultation was advertised in local newspapers, on the council’s website and in messages to taxi drivers. But in recent years, similar consultations have prompted few responses, according to Lily Brine, a licensing service manager at the council.
Asked if she was surprised that nobody responded to the public consultation, she said: “Honestly, no I wasn’t. Based on our previous consultations on fees, charges and tariffs, we don’t usually get a particularly high response to the consultations.
“We really try and push as much information to give people the opportunity. But we haven’t in the last few years had much response.”
There are far fewer traditional taxis left in South Gloucestershire than there used to be. This is partly due to the rise of ride-hailing apps like Uber, and private hire vehicles facing less regulation than hackney carriages. Another factor is how spread out the district is, meaning passengers are less likely to want to hail a taxi on the street, and would pre-book one instead.
New rules introduced by the council mean that this summer, all hackney carriages must be wheelchair-accessible. One taxi driver previously commented that this was prompting many hackney carriage drivers to switch to private hire instead, as the cost of buying a new vehicle was prohibitively expensive.
Ms Brine added: “When I first joined licensing, we had probably had 350 hackneys. It’s now down to about 50. But with private hire vehicles, because of the way that society and technology has changed, it’s gone very much towards private hire and those pre-booked journeys rather than hackney carriages picking up at the side of the road.”
The initial cost of hiring a taxi will be £2.40, which covers the first 115 metres of a journey. Then passengers will be charged 20p for every 111.4 metres or 26.7 seconds waiting.
An additional rate of £1.70 is added between 6pm and 6am during the week, and between 6pm on Friday and 6am on Monday.