taxi operators | WhaleTales Blog by Chris von Ulmenstein

The Sweet Service Award goes to Cape Town Mayor Geordin Hill-Lewis for his consistent, regular, and honest feedback at all hours of the day and night to the residents of Cape Town during the eight day Taxi Strike. At all times the stand of the City of Cape Town has been that lawlessness will not be tolerated and that the City will do its best to protect operating public transport and even trucks delivering food.

The Sour Service Award goes to SANTACO for extending the strike by another week when it rejected the terms of the City’s demands last Friday yet accepted them in the final negotiations last night, causing financial hardship to its own taxi operators and taxi commuters, the loss of lives, and affected almost every resident in Cape Town, in that food stocks were running low or out of basic items in supermarkets.

The WhaleTales Sweet & Sour Service Awards are presented every Friday on the WhaleTales blog. Nominations for the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be sent to Chris von Ulmenstein at chrisvonulmenstein [at] gmail.com. Past winners of the Sweet and Sour Service Awards can be read on the Friday posts of this blog.m

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Good news in a City of Cape Town weekly newsletter is the development of a by-law intended to regulate the metered taxi industry in Cape Town, which has got out of hand in the operation of its service.

The City’s by-law is intended to regulate fares, ‘pick-up conditions’, safety, vehicle standards, and to set minimum service standards, intended to be implemented over the next three years. In developing the new strategy, the City of Cape Town consulted with the Western Cape Metered Taxi Council, and did a comparative study of international best practice in cities such as New York, Dublin, Sydney, and Nairobi.

The City had set a moratorium on issuing new taxi licences until yesterday, and now all new applications will be evaluated against the new metered taxi strategy. Included in the strategy is addressing the following concerns regarding the industry: Continue reading →