Rome Airport Transportation: The Strike Of Rome’s Taxis
Italian taxi drivers on strike renewed mid-July 2006, following the consultation on government plans to liberalize the sector, allowing chaos in many cities. The drivers staged various forms of protests, besieging main squares, deliberately snarling traffic, blocking access to several airports and organizing go-slow drive, the local media. In Rome, the pilot descended on central Piazza Venezia, in the heart of Rome, shortly after midnight after taxi unions abandoned the negotiating table.
He stayed there all night and forced local authorities to close the square to traffic. Some 60 other taxis took part in a go-Drive Slow from the main town to town and back, allowing other events were repeated difficulties in Naples, Turin, Genoa and Milan, where drivers blocked access to the airport city. Italian Minister of Economic Development, which drafted the bill opposed by the pilots, said that "they (the drivers) and not the city itself." The problem is a controversial decree that the government intends to liberalize the licensing for taxis and the state of quasi-monopoly of local taxi federations break.
The decree ordering local governments to increase the number of taxi licenses issued and give temporary permits during periods of Advanced predictable. One of the most controversial is a provision that would have allowed private enterprises to enter the sector by acquiring licenses and then hiring their own drivers. taxi permits in Rome are considered as assets by the private owners, that trade retire or pass on to their children. The practice is a gray market in which the cost of a permit can reach € 200,000 ($ 240,000).
Italy 40,000 taxi fleet is the smallest in Europe. According to official statistics, there are 2.1 taxis per thousand inhabitants in Rome compared to 8.3 in London and 9.9 in Barcelona. The number of taxis in Rome 5820, more than 61,000 cons in London, about 43,000 in New York and 17,000 in Paris, says the report. Complaints from residents and tourists to the difficulty in finding taxis during peak hours and at night were shot in recent years, with taxi drivers accused of deliberately limiting the number of cars on hand to ensure their income and values their license .