Any Future Deregulation and/or Regulation Needs to Recognise

By setting a fixed annual fee for the leasing of taxi plates, rather than releasing extra plates by means of a tendering or auction process, Governments can indirectly impact on the values of those conventional perpetual plates currently in the market. If the annual lease fee for plates is significantly reduced to encourage a ‘take-up’ of leased plates for example, this will impact on the market value of conventional perpetual plates.

By adopting mechanisms where transparent models have been applied for the annual review of taxi fares, and an annual review of the need to increase (or otherwise) taxi plate numbers, significant stability appears to have been introduced into those markets.

The importance of the development, and maintenance of relevant data bases to Government agencies who manage the supply and operation of the taxi services in their jurisdictions cannot be overemphasised. The importance of these databases is reflected in their need for the application of models relating to both taxi fare increases, and the increase in supply of taxi plates, on a regular (annual) basis. In addition the management of the information (data) relating to the application of new technology should be available to the relevant agencies to assist with the model based decision making processes.

The need for individual jurisdictions to develop appropriate models to determine the future release of taxi plates. These models should be applied on a regular basis (eg annually) and comprise appropriately weighted components, including those relating to the demand and supply of taxi services, reflecting the needs of all relevant stakeholders.

The model to determine the future release of taxi plates should be such as to promote the productive efficiency of the industry, including the avoidance of significantly longer periods of waiting time for drivers for little or no overall benefit to customers.

The fact that the taxi market is a dynamic industry which must be managed in an orderly manner to reflect current and future relevant changes expected to impact on the industry, including demographic and technological changes.

Regulatory intervention in the taxi industry can be categorised into quantity (entry) regulation, quality regulation, price regulation and market conduct regulation. For those countries that have attempted complete deregulation, they have had to reregulate in some way. The evidence reported in the OECD report clearly indicates that deregulation of taxi markets has led to reregulation in the case of quality and price, as well as market conduct regulation. While entry deregulation has been introduced in some countries, many of these have had to introduce entry regulations to locations having a high demand for taxi services such as airports and train stations.