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JNugent[_5_] · April 29th 13, 11:59 PM posted to uk.transport.london

On 19/03/2013 19:59, wrote:
In article ,
(David Cantrell) wrote:

On Fri, Mar 15, 2013 at 11:40:47PM +0000, Charles Ellson wrote:
On 15 Mar 2013 23:03:57 GMT, Neil Williams
wrote:
Outside London, anyway, people tend to
call both varieties taxis.
There is a lot of "outside London", have you travelled all of it ? For
some years now the difference between taxis and hired cars has been
hammered into the public for various (usually crime-related) reasons
so I expect most people do know the difference.

In most places there only exists one type, so no, I wouldn't expect many
people to know the difference - the difference only exists in a few
large cities. And even when people do know the difference, I still
wouldn't expect them to pedantically use the correct word all the time,
just like I don't expect Londoners to only use "tube" to refer to the
deep tunnels.

It's a lot more complicated than that. Both exist in Cambridge, not a very
large city. The difference here is that our hire cars have meters and charge
the same fares as taxis do. Most other cities, e.g. London and Birmingham,
don't allow meters in hire cars which generally charge different fares from
taxis as a result.

Birmingham was cited by the PP. The City of Birmingham operates under
exactly the same legislation as the City of Cambridge in this area of
activity (essentially the 1976 Local Government (Miscellaneous
Provisions) Act).

So unless the City of Cambridge has acquired specific local authority
legislation (eg, via a local Corporation Act promoted through
Parliament), it does not have the power to force the owners of private
hire cars to install or use meters, any more than Birmingham does.

Indeed, it doesn't have the power at all to control the fares of private
hire cars. Or, for that matter, to seek to control the route(s) taken by
private hire cars carrying fare-paying passengers. Those are a couple of
the main differences between taxis and vehicles which are not taxis.