October 2007

TAXI INDUSTRY ACCREDITATION

The VTD article in the September edition of Taxi Talk (page 29) on the matter of taxi industry accreditation said, amongst other things, that the Minister for Public Transport was to release the draft taxi industry accreditation service standards for public comment in October (now early October).

The draft taxi industry accreditation regulations are also due to be released around this time for public comment.

Whilst the VTA and others have been consulted through the development of the accreditation service standards, there have been some important matters raised by the VTA that have not yet been satisfactorily addressed. These matters, in the main, stem from differences between theoretical ideology and the reality of the taxi industry and its operation.

So that there is no misunderstanding and the VTA is not again falsely accused of trying to derail accreditation, it is appropriate to revisit what I said in the February edition of Taxi Talk.

“I for one have been a long time advocate for the introduction of an accreditation regime for the taxi industry, provided the regime is solely about increasing the lowest common denominator of performance within each supply chain link.

I am not an advocate of an accreditation regime that has the following implications:

• Interferes in the legal business affairs of participants;
• Interferes in the commercial arrangements between links;
• Prevents link participants from growing their businesses;
• Inhibits new initiatives and products;
• Doesn’t recognise that there is commercial competition between link participants;
• Doesn’t recognise that taxi participants have invested in their industry and must be able to realise the benefits of that investment.”

The article went on to say:

“Despite the theory as to why an accreditation regime has merit, the fact remains that the taxi industry in Victoria works wonderfully well and delivers a service to the public that rarely fails.

Think about it, the taxi industry in Victoria undertakes some 30 million passenger trips each year carrying some 50 million people. If the combined number of complaints to the depots and the VTTD was as high as 5,000 (which is doubtful), the failure rate would still be a tiny 0.017 percent.”

The article also said:

“So I say to government and others that if you really want to help the taxi industry, the following would be a good start in the short term:

• Quit taking cheap shots at the taxi industry and build on the positives;
• Quit thinking and saying that the fix to driver performance is more basic training;
• Concentrate on the poor performers and get rid of the repeat offenders;
• A fare structure that properly rewards drivers for effort, and operators for effort, costs and investment;
• Resource the VTTD with the right number of appropriate people to detect and deal with the poor performers (particularly repeat offenders);
• Ensure that police officers properly support the efforts and incidents of drivers.”

The VTA continues to believe that some aspects of the taxi industry accreditation package are flawed, and indeed flawed to the extent that performance and customer service quality could diminish rather than improve.

This belief and the reasons for it have been made known to government and the VTA will continue to press for changes.

Nonetheless, the taxi industry across Victoria will be subject to an accreditation regime from 31 December this year. This regime will progressively be implemented over a period of time to eventually cover all taxi licence holders, taxi operators, primary taxi networks, secondary taxi networks, and possibly other taxi network services.

Components of the accreditation package will be contained in the Transport Act, Regulations, Gazetted accreditation standards, taxi licence conditions, VTD operational and administrative policies, and VTD directives to licence holders and operators.

The VTD is going to have a mammoth task to communicate all the changes, requirements and implementation timetable to all the stakeholders. It is important that this be done in a timely, complete and clear manner.

Taxi industry accreditation is a key topic for discussion at the VTA State Taxi Conference on 22 and 23 October (see conference information elsewhere in this Taxi Talk).

Is this the last of the sweeping changes for the taxi industry this year? Probably not.

Neil Sach
VTA CEO