Manchester s Motorcab Tariff.
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The Corporation of the City of Mantheater, which has never gone out of its way to encourage the employment of public-service motor vehicles, has definitely approved conditions under which inotortabs shall work in that city, which have no exact parallel in this country. The taxicab, which, in the Metropolis and in almost all other large cities, has won for itself an undisputed place amongst all other classes of public-service transport facilities, is only tolerated in Manchester on condition that its tariff of charges shall in no way differ from that considered suitable for the obsolete horsedrawn cab. This manifold schedule legalizes the following charges: 9d. per mile for one or two passengers. 2s. per hour for one or two passengers. Is. per mile for three or more passeligers.
2s. 6d. per hour for three or more passengers.
Double fares are chargeable between midnight and 7 a.m.
Fares mist be charged by time or distance only, and not by time and distance combined.
Objectionable Results of the Tariff.
The features of this tariff which are so obviously objectionable are: the lack of uniformity of the vaiious charges, which necessitates the provision of a fareregistering instrument with four separate speeds, and which, at once, opens the door to improper setting of the taximeter by the driver, and removes the principal recommendation of the instrument, viz., the certain and reliable registration of the actual fare which is legally chargeable ; the nullifying of the principal mechanical characteristic of the taximeter, viz., the ability to effect a combined charge for time and distance ; the lack of proportion between the rate of charging by time and of that by distance, having due regard to the increased average speed of the motorcab; and, lastly, the distrust with which the public is certain to regard taximeter-registration under such conditions. The increased speed, the extended range of operation and the greater cost of maintenance, as compared with the oldtashiuned horse-cab, are factors which undoubtedly call for a differentiation of tariff.
Some Examples of Inequity. The method by which attention may best be drawn to the inequitable working, which is an actual result of these regulations, is to quote a few examples of typical hirings. Within the eightmile radius, a cab may, for instance, he hired to proceed eight miles. This, on the ninepenny tariff, would call for a charge of 6s. The cab may be kept waiting for, say, four horns, and, subsequently, taken back to the starting point, at, a further charge of 6s.-12s. in all. Assuming, therefore, the total hiring to he for five hours, if hired by time, the driver would have earned 10s. only. He would, therefore, under such conditions, presumably have preferred to have been engaged under the distance schedule. He would then have earned 12s. with nothing to show for the four hours of waiting ! Again, four passengers can hire a cab at 8 p.m. and, providing that they do not
ride farther than 10 miles, they can keep the vehicle until midnight for 10s. If these four passengers, however, hire the cab at 12 midnight., make a journey of five miles and then discharge the driver, the fare is again 10s. In one case, the cab does 10 miles and takes four hours to earn 10s., in the other case, the same amount is earned in 20 min. for a total journey of five miles. Instances of this kind, in which unfair treatment results to the driver, could be quoted ud infinitum. It must now suffice to say that —as has been proved throughout the country—the specific advantages, which accrue to the public front the use of the taximeter, disappear where their confidence is not ensured. There is no way in which public distrust can so readily be earned in this matter as by placing in the hands of a driver the opportunity to juggle with alternative tariffs.
Taximeters of Little Use.
It will probably come as a surprise to many, to whom TNIanchoster has always appeared to bear an undeniable reputation for enterprise, to realize that the fitting of taximeters is optional on the part of the owners of motorcabs in Cottonopolis. Indeed, it is difficult to realize what advantage is to accrue to owners, in the face of the puzzling range of tariffs which is in force in Manchester, by. the fitting of " cash registers " to motorcabs. As it is, drivers are not allowed to wind up their clocks, and the time mechanism of the instrument is thus rendered inoperative. Only the distance-recording gear is usable, and, as has been shown above, the charges which are based on this record are subject to so many modifications that, from the point of view of the " protection of the public," the instrument is practically useless.
Protection for the Public.
Watch Committees and similar bodies are officially presumed to take little care of the interests of the proprietors of public-service vehicles, it being their
principal object to ensure that the rights and the convenience of the man in the street are thoroughly protected. That the convenience of this long-suffering and oft-quoted individual counts for but little in the official organization of motorcab traffic in Manchester is self. evident. It, is certainly permissible to inquire if the imposition of conditions which have resulted in the limitation of Manchester's taxicab total to 72, compared with Liverpool's 128, can be considered to have served the public convenience. Unless the confusion which these tariffs occasion in the minds of a hirer may be considered as an asset by the motorcab owner, it is doubtful if the latter would find remuneration in other hiringa than those which take him outside the eight-mile radius from Manchester Town Hall,
A Non-progressive Policy.
The application by the City Council of the old horse-cab tariff to taxicab traffic can only be accounted for by a desire to protect the obsolete horse vehicle. This regrettable lack of initiative cannot be permanent, and we feel sure that the authorities in Manchester will. before long, realize that the action of the other licensing authorities in this country, by which, almost without exception, rational tariffs and regulations have been imposed, cannot be far wrong. The surest way to " protect the public' in this matter is mechanically to render it impossible to deceive anybody. .A single tariff and a reliable taximeter, in combination, is the means which has been found elsewhere to be perfectly satisfactory. Under the existing conditions at Man. ehester, the hirer is as much at the mercy of "the man behind the taximeter" as he has been, for years past, of the free lance driver of a horse-cab. That the motorcab owner suffers is no matter for the official mind ; his only hope of relief lies with a fuller realization of the necessities of public convenience by the " powers that. be."