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Old October 20th 04, 10:00 PM posted to uk.transport.london
John Rowland John Rowland is offline
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First recorded activity at LondonBanter: Jul 2003
Posts: 2,577
Default Livingstone's latest wheeze

Apparently Livingstone wants to fit GPS-controlled speed limiters to buses
and taxis which will prevent them from ever breaking the speed limit.

http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles...nderbonnet.htm

The consequences seem fairly obvious to me.

1) Taxis will become significantly slower than minicabs, and so will become
a distress purchase for people who can't get a minicab. People will prefer
any minicab, even an illegal one, to a taxi.

2) Car drivers will do everything they can to prevent taxis pulling out in
front of them, so that they won't be held up. This will make taxis even
slower with respect to minicabs.

3) Taxi drivers will earn less money, because there will be less demand for
them, and they will take longer to do the jobs that they get but won't get
any extra money for them. Minicab drivers will earn more money, because
there will be more demand for minicabs.

4) Although taxis will probably survive in Central London, they will cease
to exist in the suburbs, because there will be no point in spending a year
or more doing the suburban knowledge and buying or hiring an expensive
wheelchair-accessible vehicle if you can earn more money as a minicab
driver.

5) The decimation of the suburban taxi trade and growth of the minicab trade
will mean that the disabled won't be able to get around at all.

--
John Rowland - Spamtrapped
Transport Plans for the London Area, updated 2001
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acro...69/tpftla.html
A man's vehicle is a symbol of his manhood.
That's why my vehicle's the Piccadilly Line -
It's the size of a county and it comes every two and a half minutes