Editorial | Taxi bosses shun the real issue

The taxi operators who struck on Monday accomplished little, except maybe to further alienate most Jamaicans. They could hardly have expected the Government to just fold and accept their demand for another traffic ticket amnesty.

Yet, could they appropriately muster them, taxi operators have complaints that are worthy of rational discussion, as part of a broader debate on developing a decent public transportation system. The matter of an amnesty might be part of those talks.

Monday’s strikes, which left thousands of commuters stranded across the island and badly affected industry and commerce, was part of a push, mainly by the people who run route taxis, to be allowed not to pay outstanding traffic tickets. Or, if they have to honour them, to do so without the threat of being carted off to jail for having ignored warrants from the courts.

Their concern is against the backdrop of the imminent promulgation of a new Traffic Act, which carries far heftier fines and other penalties for breaches of the Road Code, which most Jamaicans believe taxi and bus drivers do with impunity. It is not uncommon, the authorities say, for a single bus or taxi driver to have scores of unpaid traffic tickets. Taxi operators, though, claim, not without some justification, that the information system is not accessible across the Government, making them susceptible to accusations of failing to meet legal obligations and, thus, susceptible to police harassment.

Jamaica has been on this path of traffic ticket amnesty before – in 2012 and 2017 – when a general reprieve from arrest and jail led to hundreds of millions of dollars being paid into the Government’s coffers, although most of the inflows came towards the end of the grace period. On those occasions, the amnesty was popular.

This time, there seems to be little sympathy from the wider public. That is not only because this request is pitched narrowly – for the benefit of a single group. Rather, there is in society a paradoxical antipathy to route taxi and allied independent bus operators.

On the one hand, commuters prefer them over the Jamaica Urban Transit Company (JUTC), the state-owned bus company that operates primarily in the Kingston metropolitan area. The route taxis get passengers to their destinations faster than the JUTC buses, which, of a fashion, operate in accordance with a structured system. Its buses ostensibly run to schedules and drivers are expected to follow the road codes.

But it is for the same reasons that route taxis are popular that they are resented and reviled.

They are quick because their drivers break the rules. They race each other to the next passenger, often ignore traffic signals, frequently veer from designated routes, and commonly drive in the lanes belonging to oncoming traffic, so as to get ahead of everyone else. The bottom line: they intimidate other road users and, not infrequently, cause accidents.

CREDIBLE TRANSPORT SECTOR

However, there is an explanation for the menace. It makes economic sense to the drivers.

Official data suggest that there are more than 30,000 registered, or legal, taxis. There are several thousand additional illegal ones – the so-called ‘robots’. The business is fiercely competitive. Its margins are thin.

Indeed, until the taxi operators received a 15 per cent hike in August 2021 (they had asked for 80 per cent), their fares were, at least formally, frozen for eight years. With that increase, a 10-kilometre ride should cost a commuter $150, or around 98 US cents. Fundamentally, taxi operators have subsidised commuters and, ultimately, industry. And inflation’s erosion of last year’s rate hike is unlikely to be offset by the Government’s recent offer of a $25,000 grant per operator to deal with higher petrol prices. Taxi operators have an incentive to hustle.

In other words, charging an uneconomic fare for public transportation has consequences. They are obvious in the ramshackle exemplified by route taxis. In stark contrast to the private operators, the JUTC, which transports fewer passengers than route taxis and operates in an area where only half of Jamaica’s population lives, will this fiscal year receive nearly $11 billion in operating subsidies from taxpayers. The Government will also spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on its fleet upgrade. Yet the company provides a subpar service.

Modern, efficient economies, even in these days of online work, require good public transport systems. Jamaica’s is not good. Generally, we have what we pay for. Which is the discussion which people like Egeton Newman, Aaron Mattis and Raymond Bynes, as spokesmen for the sector, should be having with the transport minister, Audley Shaw. They are perhaps afraid of its deep engagement.

For inevitably, any such discussion will lead to how a credible transport sector is to be structured, the obligations and performance targets of those who operate within it, how they are to be held accountable, and the sanctions for breaches – especially if taxpayers are asked to support the enterprises. It is something that Minister Shaw should have had on his agenda long ago, and it is urgent that he begins.