IRU-ECMT Report on Improving Access to Taxis - Nina Nizovsky

Nina Nizovsky, Vice-President of the IRU Group “Taxis and Hire Cars with Driver”

Challenges and opportunities for taxi operators to provide services with accessible taxis
The situation in Finland

The ability of taxis to serve all customers in an equal manner has been an important issue in The IRU Taxi Group and ECMT for over a decade. Considerable efforts to improve the situation have also been made in my own country, Finland.

According to the Finnish Constitution, all citizens are equal before the law and no one can without acceptable reasons, be treated differently for example due to disabilities. This means that public services, such as public transport, need to be accessible for everyone.

This Finnish Ministry of Transport and Communications published a report on Accessible customer services in public transport in 2006. This was the result of a three year research and development programme, which was launched to support the implementations of accessibility strategy. Special focus in this programme called ELSA was on public transport, including taxis. The list of partners in the programme was extensive including authorities, organisations of disabled and aged and transport operators. After being a member of the ELSA group for three years, I cannot avoid citing this report in many parts of my presentation.

The ELSA programme on its part indicates that there has been a strong interest in Finland to give real meaning to the concept of equality. Almost 20 years ago, in the beginning of 1988, a law was enforced which gave the mobility-impaired the right to daily transport to work or school, plus 18 one-way recreational trips per month with a fare which usually amounts to the price paid for mainstream public transport. Funding is provided by local and central governments. The mobility impaired, who have the right to these subsidized trips, more than often use taxis.

Incentives

Here comes my first important point concerning accessibility: user-side subsidy. Only if disabled people are able to make serious use of taxis, the market becomes interesting to the taxi trade. This has been the case in Finland. Many disabled customers are able and also willing to use normal taxis, which would mean Type Two taxis, but for the persons who want to travel in their own wheelchair, there are approximately 1.000 minivan –type taxis with ramps and up to 500 so called Service Taxis or Invataxis, which are equipped with a lift. These vehicles are very close to what is meant by Type One taxis in the report. Altogether this amounts to 15 percent of the whole taxi fleet, which seems to be quite the right proportion in our circumstances.

At the moment the situation might be changing, since due to economic reasons the central government strongly urges municipalities and county districts to establish local Travel Dispatch Centres to combine the trips of elderly and disabled people. This is due to the fact that the country is aging. At present 15 percent of Finns are at least 65 years old. In 2030 the number is estimated to cover more than 25 percent of the population. By the year 2030, the number of people over 75 years of age will double from the present. This poses a challenge to the national economy in many fields of life including the passenger transport sector.

Many people with reduced mobility consider these Travel Dispatch Centres slow, difficult to use and even unreliable and have thus cut down their own trips. It is still too early to predict what will happen, since the whole model of combining the trips is very new on a national scale. We still lack long-time experience and proper research on this issue.

Financial support from the government to the taxi trade is important also. In Finland all taxis receive a reduction of the vehicle tax to up to 11.700 euros. In many cases, especially in the case of multipurpose vans, the actual vehicle tax is bigger than this amount. It seems that if the amount of the tax reduction does not follow the rising of the taxes, taxi owners tend to switch back to cheaper sedan cars. The price for licences does not differ.

Acceptance of vehicle models for the taxi trade is important. Up to now this has not posed a problem in our country. It is clear however, that if a wrong type of model would be imposed, the proportion of Type One taxis would diminish. The vehicle has to be well adapted to the difficult weather conditions of our country, with snow, ice and very low temperatures and also long distances. It has to be easily resold and it also has to be suitable for use in different kinds of customer needs. The bigger problem in Finland has been the rejection of minivan type vehicles by some customer groups, although this seems to be a minor problem nowadays.

Regulatory measures

Besides financial incentives also regulatory measures are used to encourage the provision of accessible taxis. Because the amount of taxi licences is restricted, the waiting time for a taxi driver to receive a licence of his own is many years, even up to 10 years in some areas. The Invataxi licence is normally obtained in a very much shorter time. The licence is then specified as an Invataxi licence and the vehicle may not be changes to a sedan car.

A new taxi law will come into force in Finland on August 1st this year. This law stresses the need to provide enough accessible taxis. Will there later on be some kind of a definition of what this means in percentages, is not yet clear. In the quality norms of the new taxi law it is stressed, that the drivers should recognize the needs of disabled customers. This includes all kinds of disabilities, not just disabilities connected to reduced mobility.

Driver training

From the quality requirements it is easy to move to training of taxi drivers. Good customer service requires knowledge and skills. But knowledge and skills are no good and not enough if the attitude is not right. It is important to remember that each passenger is a human being with his or her own rights. And it is essential to earn the confidence of the customer. One big obstacle for mobility especially for the sensory and cognitive disabled, is the lack of trust in himself and the whole service chain.

The personal input of the driver especially in services like the taxi business, is of paramount importance. Attitude is something that might be difficult to learn. But training is still the key to better service. Training in disability awareness should be compulsory for all taxi drivers. A law making driver training obligatory to all taxi drivers will probably be passed in 2007 or 2008. The training programme would probably include also raining in disability awareness.

The passenger is usually the best expert in his own disability and the assistance he personally needs. The driver should not be afraid to ask how he can help, in case the passenger wants to be helped at all.

Infrastructure

Still one more challenge to the taxi operators is investing in proper Taxi Dispatch Centres and equipment in the vehicles, to make it easy for the impaired customers to reach taxi services. In a country with long distances, the Taxi Dispatch Centres are a key to availability as a whole. Taxis, especially accessible taxis, are not hailed on streets. This is also partly due to the climate, which is quite chilly a big part of the year. The fact that taxis are usually ordered by telephone, especially in the country–side,also has an influence on the proportion of accessible taxis needed. Not all, not even a very great proportion of taxis need to be Type One vehicles, if Taxi Dispatch Centres are well planned and working.

For passengers with hearing problems or for deaf passengers, the availability of SMS –order is crucial.

Concerning the infrastructure, one of the difficulties is that the authorities do not always recognize the need to park taxis in restricted areas for taking in or waiting for a passenger with mobility problems.

For the Type Two taxis development of colour contrasts for grab handles, fitting in an induction loop and good lighting are all acceptable recommendations.

Summary

As a summary and taking into account the experiences in Finland, I would say that the recommendations and conclusions of the joint ECMT - IRU Study are relevant and valid. I trust that our group, the IRU Taxi Group, is ready to accept them.

The recommendations should not however be imposed on taxi operators, but rather offer them incentives. The time span of 5 - 15 years in the progress of vehicle design is acceptable.

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