Adrian O’Malley and his daughter were ready to leave Sydney’s international airport after coming home from a holiday in April when the taxi driver took their luggage out of the boot and left them at the kerb.<\/p>\n
Mr O’Malley, who lives with half-blindness in both eyes and has not been able to legally drive since having a stroke 19 years ago, says the driver told him he didn’t have to accept his subsidised taxi card as payment.<\/p>\n
The payment, called the Taxi Transport Subsidy Scheme (TTSS), covers 50 per cent of the fare to the value of $60 using a smart card or paper voucher.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Mr O’Malley says there is a gap in the legislation addressing refusing TTSS payments.\u00a0 (ABC Radio Sydney: Declan Bowring)<\/p>\n
“When the scheme works well, it works well,” Mr O’Malley told 702 ABC Radio Sydney.<\/p>\n
“When it doesn’t, it works terribly. It means people with disability experience refusal of service, they receive abuse, they get kicked out of taxis.”<\/p>\n
He says this was far from an isolated experience, and it had happened to him at least four times since April.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr O’Malley, who works in the disability services sector, says there is a loophole in taxi regulation that allows for the refusal of the TTSS as payment.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He wants to see a clause added to the regulation to prevent taxis from rejecting the TTSS.<\/p>\n
“Give me power,” Mr O’Malley said.<\/p>\n
“There are clauses about not putting the meter on, there are clauses about not accepting fares.<\/p>\n
“There\u2019s no clause to make it illegal to accept TTSS in whatever way, be it paper voucher or by card.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The head of the NSW Taxi Council says a loophole allowing drivers to refuse payment via the TTSS needs to be closed. (ABC News: Simon Amery)<\/p>\n
Taxi council calls for loophole closure<\/p>\n
NSW Taxi Council CEO Nick Abrahim said taxi drivers were not fined for refusing to take the TTSS because they were still accepting a fare, just not the TTSS method.<\/p>\n
Mr Abrahim told ABC Radio Sydney it was more common for drivers to take passengers and then claim to not be able to take the TTSS, which is paid for using a smart card on Cabcharge technology or a paper form carried by the passengers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Mr Abrahim said he’d like to see what he describes as a “loophole” closed.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s not necessarily a fare refusal, because he\u2019s taking the passenger,” Mr Abrahim told 702 ABC Radio Sydney.<\/p>\n
“I do not believe there are specific laws in place that target the TTSS refusal itself.”<\/p>\n
Mr O’Malley said fines for refusing service should apply to both the driver and the taxi provider.<\/p>\n
“Industry will very quickly clean up its act,” Mr O’Malley said.<\/p>\n
Transport for NSW looking into issue\u00a0<\/p>\n
Lewis Clark, from Transport for NSW, apologised for Mr O’Malley’s negative TTSS experiences.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He told 702 ABC Radio Sydney that they would be willing to see if there was a loophole in the legislation that needed fixing.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“Our expectation is that all drivers are expected to take, either the physical TTSS vouchers, or the TTSS smart cards as payment for taxi journeys,” Mr Clark said.<\/p>\n
“We’re happy to consider looking at whether there are changes needed to the legislation for some of the incidents we’ve heard about.”<\/p>\n
Mr Clark said complaints should be made to the 1800 500 410 Taxi Fare Hotline if riders had issues with fare refusal. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Ride-share operator Uber said it had been running a 12-week trial of subsidised trips for passengers with disabilities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adrian O’Malley and his daughter were ready to leave Sydney’s international airport after coming home from a holiday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":216272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[64,63,99,132196,37486,95316,132194,132195],"class_list":["post-216271","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-disability-and-transport","tag-rideshare","tag-taxi-fares","tag-taxis-and-disability","tag-taxis-and-rideshare"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/216272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}