Waiting for an Accessible Taxi

For decades, people with disabilities have had to put up with a second-class taxi service with only a proportion of taxis being wheelchair-accessible. This has been justified on the basis that there was no generally-acceptable taxi vehicle that was wheelchair accessible.

The quid pro quo was that the taxi industry undertook to provide comparable response times for phone bookings, but this has been more a hope than an expectation - and did not help people with disabilities get a taxi at a rank or hailing on the street. In recent times, the WA Taxi Council has been trying to weasel out of even this concession by seeking an exemption from the requirement from the Australian Human Rights Commission, which oversees the Standards.

So it was with disbelief, tinged with sadness, that I saw the Department of Transport advertising in The West Australian (Saturday 3rd August, p44) for manufacturer expressions of interest for a 'purpose-built taxi trial' that did not mention accessibility at all.

This is a once-only opportunity to move towards a totally accessible taxi fleet - as, for example, New York is doing.

It is no longer the case that there is no generally-acceptable taxi vehicle that is wheelchair accessible. New York can do it and there are numerous vehicles in most other developed countries that are used as accessible taxis - not just the basic van-based vehicles we see in Perth.

I call upon the Department of Transport to withdraw its current call for expressions of interest for a purpose-built taxi trial and to replace it with one that calls for the vehicles to be wheelchair-accessible.