ONE of the persistent complaints heard locally is about the quality and cost of the island’s taxi service.

The letter on this page is fairly typical of the criticisms that are levelled at the trade.

Yet many readers know from personal experience that there are excellent cabbies who provide a first-class service and who really work hard to give customer satisfaction.

Those customers who rate the service are frequently those who use the same firm or individual regularly and who are able to book in advance. The serious complaints are generally from people attempting to get a taxi on the spur of the moment, such as arriving at the airport or trying to leave Town late at the weekend.

Then, delays can be expected.

One of the difficulties is in knowing where the middle ground lies – and in assessing what an acceptable wait actually is.

For cynical islanders, one of the problems is that they do not regard Environment as a dispassionate arbiter of either fares or services and the reliance of the department on information from the trade is seen as further proof of that.

Rather more than three years ago, the then Environment minister responded in detail to questions from this newspaper about the service.

One of the department’s intentions at that stage was to commission an unmet demand survey, which would have provided some independent data.

That, however, has never been done because Environment decided to spend the money elsewhere.

As a result, islanders ‘know’ that there are times when taxis are unavailable and are irritated by that.

More taxis on the road would appear to be a sensible solution, but the taxi federation says there are enough as it is – but they would say that, wouldn’t they?

The lack of objective information is unfortunate for taxi drivers, the department and islanders, because it leaves the service open to possibly uninformed criticism.

The other point is this: if government is to interfere in the normal competitive commercial process, it has to show that there is a benefit.

But it currently cannot.