The taxi market in Northern Ireland is an absolute mess.
In 2014 about 16,000 taxi licences were registered in Northern Ireland. By the end of 2023 this had fallen to 7,500. Industry estimates they’re only less than 5,000 active drivers per week.
The core problem is the Department of Infrastructure have made it so difficult to get a licence and potential drivers have to jump through umpteen hoops. It can now take over six months to get a taxi licence. Add in the high cost of fuel, insurance, depot rent, car purchase and maintenance, etc. Many potential drivers have rationally concluded that they would be better off doing another job.
This has made it very difficult for people to get home from a night out, thus having knock-on effects for our night time economy as many people leave early to make sure they get the last bus or train home.
The DVA Taxi manual is nearly 200 pages long! Not to diminish the noble art of taxi driving but is it any more complicated than following Google Maps successfully and not assaulting the passengers? Why does it need to be so complicated?
A lot of taxi drivers tended to be older guys and when Covid hit a lot of them just took the opportunity to retire. Younger guys find it’s less hassle and more profitable to just be delivering parcels and takeaways than people.
There needs to be some way that people can be part-time taxi drivers for the busy times, for example weekends at nights, but at the moment this seems to be impossible to do.
Legislation and the big existing players do all they can to block new entrants like Uber so it seems there is nothing that the pair of passengers can do except wait for the onward march of technology.
Robotaxis are now a common sight in a lot of American cities and they are now coming to London.
It’s an absolute shame that Stormont is so obstructive to local people trying to earn a bit of extra income and provide a valuable service to the community and instead we must wait for our tech overlords to provide us with a functioning service.
Managing Editor of Slugger O’Toole. I help to manage Slugger by taking care of the site as well as running our live events. My background is in business, marketing and IT. My politics tend towards middle-of-the-road pragmatism; I am not a member of any political party. When not stuck in front of a screen, I am a parkrun Run Director.
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