These days the social category most hated by citizens is certainly one: that of the increasingly unobtainable taxi drivers. "A taxi called desire” was the headline yesterday Corriere della Sera paraphrasing the title of the famous 50s film starring Vivien Leigh and Marlon Brando inspired by the famous playwright Tennessee Williams. In Italy, taxis have disappeared: in large and small towns, at the exits of railway stations and airports but also in the heart of cities. Raise your hand if you have never found yourself standing in endless queues to find a taxi. Of course, generalizations are always trivial and it is not right to criminalize all taxi drivers, among whom there are many honest workers who struggle to make ends meet and who take years to pay their expensive bills. licenses. But, as she said Toto, it is the sum that makes the total and the total tells of a category closed like a hedgehog and dominated by an arrogant, sometimes violent and fascist-like minority that has long forgotten two uncomfortable truths: that the taxi is a public service required to respect precise rules for the protection of identification and that the taxi drivers' wages are not a kind concession from heaven but are paid by the customers themselves.
Taxis that cannot be found, controversial causes and an absolute certainty: there are too few
The fact is that today taxis are impossible to find. Nobody can really explain why. Taxi drivers spread their arms saying that we are faced with a tourist flow higher than expected but there are those who say that in reality the category is silently carrying out a sort of white strike in protest against the very timid measures of the Government on double licenses and finally there are those who think that there is some sort of perverse game among the most important radio taxi e Uber to fleece the customer and get higher rates. Based on the agreement of 24 May 2022 between 3570, the most important radio taxi in Rome, and Uber, if I call a public car with the Uber app, a partner taxi can also arrive but the rate is the same or higher than the one of a normal taxi?
The taxi drivers' own goal and the urgency for the Government and mayors to wake up
Be that as it may, the lack of taxis is the most glaring own goal that knowingly or not the taxi drivers could do to themselves because, after these months of hell, no one, but absolutely no one, will be able to deny that there are few taxis, too few and that, willy-nilly, we must increase the rates by popular acclaim. licenses (with adequate compensation of course) or recognize full rights to competition from Uber and its Ncc. It's time for the Government and the mayors to wake up because there are no more alibis and it's true that taxi drivers have become a strong power which certainly counts in elections but remember that other citizens also vote and that some even vote with their head is not that extravagant.
