Cabbies Ask For New Plan

Newcastle Herald

Tuesday June 3, 2008

By MICHELLE HARRIS and MARTIN DINNEEN

MORE than 50 concerned Newcastle taxi operators gathered at Hamilton RSL last night to form the Newcastle Taxi Operators Association and voice concerns over the new computer booking system.

The association resolved to issue a letter to Newcastle Taxis, the company providing the booking software, asking for a plan to ensure bugs with the system were ironed out and cab drivers did not lose more money.

Taxi owners have said it was premature for the company to have installed the system across the fleet while it still had so many problems, and that this had cost owners money in terms of lost earnings.

They said the old system should have remained in tandem with the new one until such problems were fixed.

Spokeswoman for the association Karon Sharman said taxi drivers were concerned about their livelihood and their relationship with customers.

"We want the units in the cabs working so we can all get back to work the way we used to," she said.

"The major thing we are noticing is that we are letting down our customers."

Ms Sharman said it was strange for Newcastle Taxis to deny a problem existed with the booking system with so many concerned operators at the meeting.

"We have more than 55 people here with only three operators saying they haven't had major problems with the system, that's a significant number."

Newcastle Taxis spokeswoman Tracey Cain said the dual system set-up ran during the initial installation, in about half-a-dozen Newcastle taxis.

The system in those vehicles required some "tinkering" to eradicate minor problems.

Once that was done, the system was installed into the rest of the fleet.

"It's a standard way to install new technology you bring in a few computers and stabilise any problems with those and then install the rest," Ms Cain said.

The previously used 18-year-old system was removed at the same time because it was at the stage where it was starting to fail.

"There is short-term pain but in the long term there will be gains," she said of the new system, which was designed to be more efficient.

© 2008 Newcastle Herald

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