Exemplary model for a good taxi service

I don't always agree with Austin Gatt, but I certainly support him in his efforts to bring about some sort of reform in the present white taxi system. The system is operating a cartel, he says. And he is right, of course. After all, a cartel operates in the best interests of its members, rather than in the interests of its customers - in this case the general public.

The minister would like to increase the number of licences from the present 250 to 700, but the Transport Federation is horrified. They would prefer a market study to be carried out first. In my view if the minister thinks the market will support the extra number of licences, he should go ahead and issue them regardless and certainly not succumb to the blackmail of threatened strike action. Only in that way will the market find its right level, and only in that way will the general public benefit.

The Transport Federation criticises the Government for not carrying out studies "evaluating what the Maltese market can actually support", but the Federation knows that such studies would merely support the status quo. That is not the point - the point is that the market, in order to be healthy and free from all manner of restrictions that exist at present, has to be expanded in order to cope with a latent demand for an efficient, readily available, reasonably priced taxi service right across the island. A cruising service for example (as in London), that not only allows a cab to be hailed in the street, but also allows it to pick up a customer from a bus stop. Some of the tired tourists coming off the beach at Għadira in the summer months, only to wait in vain to get on the overcrowded buses, would appreciate that.

The white taxi drivers will say that it would not be economical for them to cruise the streets looking for customers. In the luxury saloon cars they drive, I don't suppose it would. But then I have always thought that these gas guzzlers are unsuitable for Malta anyway, certainly unsuitable for Valletta's narrow streets.

During the hottest days of last year's summer, I needed to go into Valletta occasionally, something I did not relish. I parked in the Floriana car park and called up a taxi service that operates little electric golf carts around the city. I sat on the wall in the shade for no more than 10 minutes and up it came, complete with cheerful driver. Usually I had to visit a certain office in a narrow side street off Old Bakery Street.

The little cab would put me down outside the building and charge me 50 cents.

Half an hour or so later, I would come out of the building, phone up the taxi service and a golf cart would appear shortly afterwards to take me back to the car park. This went on for a month, actually. Sometimes I had to visit other parts of the city, but the service was always the same. That is what I call a taxi service par excellence, similar in a way to a rickshaw in Shanghai - in other words, transport at a reasonable price, in a vehicle ideally suited for its location.

I used to chat to the drivers. On one occasion, I suggested that these little vehicles were ideal for cruise liner passengers who wanted to go from the terminal up to the city, rather than having to take a conventional taxi for such a short journey. To my amazement, I was told they were not allowed to pick up passengers from the terminal. By so doing they would be straying into lucrative forbidden territory, but if they picked up a passenger in the city who wanted to return to the ship, they could do that as long as they disappeared afterwards! I see more clearly now what Dr Gatt has in mind.