London Banter - Door to door transport

In article ,
(JNugent) wrote:

On 19/03/2013 19:59, wrote:
In article ,
(David Cantrell) wrote:

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 11:40:47PM +0000, Charles Ellson wrote:
On 15 Mar 2013 23:03:57 GMT, Neil Williams
wrote:
Outside London, anyway, people tend to call both varieties taxis.
There is a lot of "outside London", have you travelled all of it ? For
some years now the difference between taxis and hired cars has been
hammered into the public for various (usually crime-related) reasons
so I expect most people do know the difference.

In most places there only exists one type, so no, I wouldn't expect
many people to know the difference - the difference only exists in a
few large cities. And even when people do know the difference, I still
wouldn't expect them to pedantically use the correct word all the time,
just like I don't expect Londoners to only use "tube" to refer to the
deep tunnels.

It's a lot more complicated than that. Both exist in Cambridge, not a
very large city. The difference here is that our hire cars have meters
and charge the same fares as taxis do. Most other cities, e.g. London
and Birmingham, don't allow meters in hire cars which generally charge
different fares from taxis as a result.

Birmingham was cited by the PP. The City of Birmingham operates under
exactly the same legislation as the City of Cambridge in this area of
activity (essentially the 1976 Local Government (Miscellaneous
Provisions) Act).

So unless the City of Cambridge has acquired specific local authority
legislation (eg, via a local Corporation Act promoted through
Parliament), it does not have the power to force the owners of
private hire cars to install or use meters, any more than Birmingham
does.

Indeed, it doesn't have the power at all to control the fares of
private hire cars. Or, for that matter, to seek to control the
route(s) taken by private hire cars carrying fare-paying passengers.
Those are a couple of the main differences between taxis and vehicles
which are not taxis.

I think you are correct about the law. I reported what happens in Cambridge.
It is a choice of the operators. Unlike in many places, hire cars are
allowed in areas restricted to buses and taxis here. This may have been
influenced by the practice on fares at the time (in the 1970s) and may
therefore have influenced the trade to maintain the local system ever since.
Removing those freedoms has been touted as a possible consequence of the Law
Commission proposals which would ban meters in hire cars.

Colin Rosenstiel