The erm may have a point regardless of his reasoning.
Daimler is one of the biggest proponents of rideshare in the world. In fact it was one of it’s brand CEOs that coined the phrase Airbnb on wheels and mytaxi is the only Dublin firm that employs private hire vehicles to cover taxi work.
NTA had no hand, act or part in Hail0’s decision to discount PUC. I’m sure the erm is well aware of NTAs responses to that question long before Hail0 arrived, in fact one of C2K’s drivers carried a letter from NTA to show clients that complained at being charged PUC from the depot. As Tim Arnold explained to me the policy stemmed from it’s London operation. mytaxi is the only Dublin firm currently offering discounts of up to 36%.
The demand that he concludes must be there all the time is demand that will be there as long as it is subsidised by mytaxi, the subsidies will end when drivers are plentiful and desperate enough to chase discounted work during peak periods regardless of whether those drivers operate Taxis, Hackneys, Limousines, Local Area Hackneys or Rideshare.
Any potential competitor would have to compete for drivers. In the current economic climate any discounts offered to passengers would have to be offered at the firm’s expense a la mytaxi. Obviously having several big players competing for passengers would benefit drivers as the vouchers they throw around end up as cash in drivers’ pockets. The problem arises when one firm wins that battle and dominates the trade.
Given the erm’s expertise - he is Bill Cullen’s go to man for advice on motor trade and IT investment and is frequently called upon to lecture treasury personnel of multinationals in the IT sector on economics - it seems reasonable to ignore reason and accept that we need to back mytaxi, so let’s consider how we can achieve that. I would suggest that the Unions ought to pool their resources and hire the erm to negotiate with mytaxi. Things that could be agreed include increasing commission to 30% with immediate effect, lifting the current temporary moratorium on the issue of saloon plates, reverting to the pre-Kathleen Doyle entrance exam and contracting mytaxi to operate DAA ranks. Why hasn’t anyone thought of this before?