Taxis for the proletariat
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TAXIS and hire cars "appear to be an inceasingly important part of the national public transport system and not an expensive mode of transport used mainly by the better-off," says the Transport and Road Research Laboratory. In any event, most employed people are now in the better-off middle class, although many political glue-sniffers still suffer working-class halucinations.
I remember a 15-year-old boy, with his own ideas about the redistribution of wealth, once telling a Sunday newspaper that he would have no compunction about mugging if he was short of his taxi ride in London.
According to the TRRL, real levels in taxi fares outside London remained constant from 1973 until 1979, when they rose, but this did not prevent a fall of about 20 per cent between 1951 and 1980. In London the drop was some 10 per cent.
Consequently, in some places in 1980 it was as cheap or cheaper for four adults to travel by taxi as by bus. With the impending increase in London bus and railway fares, this will soon be the case in the metropolis, too.