Unintended Consequences

[BrianSullivan]

newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2010-01-20/Letters/Resident_says_rules_may_have_unintended_consequenc.html

Resident says rules may have unintended consequences

While I can understand and respect the Borough Council for attempting to address quality of life and safety problems surrounding taxi cabs in Freehold Borough, parts of the recent ordinance raise questions and concerns.
The ordinance reduces the number of licensed cabs in the borough from 30 to 25. Not only does this take jobs away from people, it simply does not make sense to do this. Decreasing the amount of licensed cabs will only increase the number of gypsy cabs.

According to the council, gypsy cabs are creating a large part of the quality of life problem surrounding taxis.

Further, the need for taxi services will not be reduced by this ordinance; the demand for cabs will remain the same, thus lowering the number of licenses will only create a bigger demand on current taxi drivers.

If anything, this will increase the number of gypsy cabs, causing possible hardships on legal law abiding cab operators.




I am fearful that we may see undesirable and unintended consequences from this new ordinance.

Brian Sullivan
Freehold Borough

[lisas84]

Brian, the overall taxi ordinance that was created involved much citizen input spanning almost a year. I remember that Ted Miller even said something to the effect that this was a step in the right direction.

Although I understand your logic, I remembered at a council meeting that there were reasons for lowering the numbers and I just checked and found out that the number of taxis were lowered for 2 reasons:
1. Citizens were complaining about the number of taxis in town. In their outreach to citizens, other than driving, this was the top complaint. (And elected officials are duty-bound to respond to the needs and desire of the residents.)
2. Also, the internal data shows that since 2003, the last time the ordinance was revised, that the population of Freehold Borough has decreased and therefore the need for 30 taxis should be reduced to 25 by attrition.

As far as the gypsy cabs are concerned. There was a charge by the LLA that Freehold Borough was ticketing the gypsy cabs too much. The LLA showed data about how effective FB police was in combating this problem. The LLA complained about it because it was their constituency that were getting the tickets.

Meanwhile, on a different note, I think it should be a national law that all taxis must be golden-yellow like you see in NYC. I was lucky enough to actually take one of the five remaining old-fashioned checker cabs at the time in 1994. I wish those would make a comeback.

[Mike Rosseel]

Jan 20, 2010 7:49:20 GMT -5 BrianSullivan said:

newstranscript.gmnews.com/news/2010-01-20/Letters/Resident_says_rules_may_have_unintended_consequenc.html

Resident says rules may have unintended consequences

While I can understand and respect the Borough Council for attempting to address quality of life and safety problems surrounding taxi cabs in Freehold Borough, parts of the recent ordinance raise questions and concerns.
The ordinance reduces the number of licensed cabs in the borough from 30 to 25. Not only does this take jobs away from people, it simply does not make sense to do this. Decreasing the amount of licensed cabs will only increase the number of gypsy cabs.

According to the council, gypsy cabs are creating a large part of the quality of life problem surrounding taxis.

Further, the need for taxi services will not be reduced by this ordinance; the demand for cabs will remain the same, thus lowering the number of licenses will only create a bigger demand on current taxi drivers.

If anything, this will increase the number of gypsy cabs, causing possible hardships on legal law abiding cab operators.




I am fearful that we may see undesirable and unintended consequences from this new ordinance.

Brian Sullivan
Freehold Borough

Brian, i understand your point of view and im not saying your wrong, just not sure what the alternative is. If these people will run illegal taxi services then they should have consequences. I think the council took the right step and if dealing with "gypsy" cabs for a while is the only answer then what else can we do?

[adefonzo]

Jan 20, 2010 19:18:25 GMT -5 Mike Rosseel said:

Brian, i understand your point of view and im not saying your wrong, just not sure what the alternative is. If these people will run illegal taxi services then they should have consequences. I think the council took the right step and if dealing with "gypsy" cabs for a while is the only answer then what else can we do?

The first thing the Town Council could do (although I am not entirely sure of their power to do so) would be to institute some very VERY severe penalties for people found to be operating gypsy cabs. If you want to deter gypsy cabs from popping up everywhere, the answer is not cutting legitimate taxi licenses, but dealing with the gypsy cabs themselves. Make it an extreme financial risk for the people operating these illegal taxis, and perhaps they will think twice about doing it. Seems simple enough...but as I said, I am not sure about the town's ability to do so legally.

[BrianSullivan]

Mar 11, 2010 5:25:36 GMT -5 adefonzo said:

Jan 20, 2010 19:18:25 GMT -5 Mike Rosseel said:

Brian, i understand your point of view and im not saying your wrong, just not sure what the alternative is. If these people will run illegal taxi services then they should have consequences. I think the council took the right step and if dealing with "gypsy" cabs for a while is the only answer then what else can we do?

The first thing the Town Council could do (although I am not entirely sure of their power to do so) would be to institute some very VERY severe penalties for people found to be operating gypsy cabs. If you want to deter gypsy cabs from popping up everywhere, the answer is not cutting legitimate taxi licenses, but dealing with the gypsy cabs themselves. Make it an extreme financial risk for the people operating these illegal taxis, and perhaps they will think twice about doing it. Seems simple enough...but as I said, I am not sure about the town's ability to do so legally.

That is my point. Without hammering illegal cabs, I do not see what good limiting the legal ones will do. I think the town is right about tackling the issue and have done some good things, but this one thing they did doesn't make sense.