The Other Side of Midnight by Mike Heffernan

Author:Mike Heffernan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ebook, book
Publisher: Creative Book Publishing
Published: 2013-02-01T05:00:00+00:00

Fighting Over Scraps

Charlie, driving for thirty-seven years

Among taxicab drivers, the most commonly expressed misconceptions about the taxicab industry are that the licence holders (stand owners, brokers and owner operators) own their taxicab licences and that there are too many taxicabs operating in St. John’s. These are beliefs born out of the frustration of not being able to affect positive change. Historians call this “revisionism.” In the case of the St. John’s taxicab industry it is a reordering of the past which serves the function of explaining oppression and exploitation.

In reality, unlike New York, where taxicab drivers purchase “medallions” at exorbitant prices, in St. John’s, the city leases licences. Researchers working on behalf of the Commission of Inquiry into the St. John’s Taxicab Industry combed the mountain of documentation in the city’s archives. Beginning in 1989, all cabs were required to be attached to a stand. During the inquiry, some stand owners stated that prior to the change in regulation they held the operator licence. But because of this arbitrary decision by council, the licences were given to the drivers. However, the commission determined that “before 1989, applications for a stand licence were taken by the stand owners to mean taxicab operator licences. But the bylaw was quite clear. The stand did not acquire these. The cab owners did.” Commission researchers also examined the number of taxicabs operating in other similarly sized cities as St. John’s: Halifax, Dartmouth, Saint John, Kitchener-Waterloo and Hamilton. They determined that St. John’s had a comparable number of taxis offering an adequate level of service. In fact, St. John’s consistently ranks below the national average of taxis per-capita. But the belief that the stand owners hold the licences, and that these licences are too numerous, persists.

Somebody needs to do a survey across Canada to find out how many taxis should be on the streets in a city like ours. We probably got twice the national average. Anytime somebody retires and got a licence, retire the licence. We got 364 taxis in St. John’s. In 1980- something, we had 364 taxis in St. John’s. And there was no business then, either. But now we got 364 taxis with about 2,000 drivers. But back then you had 364 taxis and 1,000 drivers. The only thing that’s going to correct this industry is to pick a number that sits well with how much population there is. If you got 500,000 people, pick a number. Right now, the number of taxi licences that are given out each year are based on arbitrary numbers. The numbers are random, at best.

There’s a whole story behind that. It was the late ‘80s, or the early ‘90s. I don’t remember the exact time. All the individual taxi companies owned the licences. For instance, Dave Gulliver, who owned Gulliver’s Taxi, he probably had forty or fifty licences. A lot of people in the taxi industry didn’t like the owners having all the licences. They spoke up and said, “We think the individual drivers should own the licences.

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