Taxi drivers decide to unify their service across Mallorca to be more competitive with Uber

The arrival of Uber in Mallorca and the ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union rejecting the possibility of limiting the number of vehicles for hire with driver (VTC) in relation to taxis has made the latter group decide to ‘get their act together’. The meeting held yesterday morning by the presidents of the different taxi associations on the island resulted in the agreement to promote the unification of the service throughout Mallorca, so that in case of saturation of vehicles in a municipality can come to serve other populations, as highlighted by the presidents of the taxi organizations of PIMEM, CAEB and the Part Forana, Gabriel Moragues, Antoni Bauzá and María del Carmen Navarro respectively.

To this end, a debate will be opened among the taxi drivers of the different municipalities so that they support this initiative, and the new government will be asked to promote the application (app) from which citizens can request a taxi service from their mobile phone and, if they do not get a response from any of their town, a vehicle from another area of Mallorca can come to them. The aim is for this improvement to be operational within the next year.

To this end, the collaboration of the mayors will also be sought, pointing to the possibility of transferring the competences of this sector from the local councils to the Government or the Consell de Mallorca.

The aim is to substantially improve the taxi service in order to make it more competitive with other services.

On the 21st different meetings will be held within this collective in order to convince its members. It should be remembered that there are around 2,000 taxi drivers in Mallorca.

One aspect that has been highlighted is the need for the next autonomous government to give a definitive boost to the aforementioned mobile application, as it is a commitment made six years ago by the then Minister of Mobility, Marc Pons, which the Government has been unable to fulfil despite constant announcements that it was being developed.

In this sense, it was regretted that the deficient operation of some taxi stations, which at many times of the day do not attend to customers, give the citizen the feeling that the service is once again collapsed, when this is not the case, it was assured. This problem would be solved with the aforementioned app by connecting all the taxi drivers on the island.

Gabriel Moragues did not hide the fact that the arrival of Uber has favoured the adoption of this initiative, but he stated that the key fact has been the ruling of the Court of Luxembourg which has declared illegal the limitation of one VTC for every 30 taxis in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, considering that in a few months the same will be decided with the ratio of 1/30 which also exists at state level, and which may end up bringing down that of one VTC for every twelve taxis which is applied in Mallorca.

However, on this last point, it was noted that the European Court of Justice has left the door open to the application of other types of limitations on the number of vehicles for hire with driver, but related to environmental or traffic management issues, which gives rise to the preparation of measures to avoid deregulation.

Control over Uber
With regard to Uber, it has been announced that the taxi drivers themselves are going to monitor their activity in order to file the corresponding complaints in the event that any breach of the law is detected. As an example, it has been pointed out that inspections have already been requested in terms of transport and labour.

One aspect that has been emphasised is the need for taxi drivers to remain calm in the face of the introduction of this platform on the island. In this regard, Antoni Bauzá pointed out that Uber vehicles should not be provoked by their behaviour at the airport.

On the other hand, the president of the CAEB taxi association has announced that he is also going to ask the new heads of the island’s public administrations to adopt measures to alleviate the traffic jams that are slowing down the taxi service, although he stressed that for now there are no problems of saturation.

News offered by Diario de Mallorca: Uber arrives in Mallorca | Taxi drivers decide to unify their service throughout Mallorca to be more competitive against Uber (diariodemallorca.es)