TAXI SERVICE TO RACES

Press, Volume LXXIX, Issue 24052, 14 September 1943, Page 4

TAXI SERVICE TO RACES

_♦ SPECIAL LICENCES TO BE SUSPENDED

DECISION OF APPEAL AUTHORITY (P.A.) AUCKLAND, September 13. In a decision received by the Metropolitan Licensing Authority at to-day s meeting, Sir Francis Frazer, the Transport Appeal Authority, has reversed the decision of the licensing authority, which had declined to suspend licences granted to certain taxi-cab operators to conduct passenger services at separate fares to race meetings in the Auckland metropolitan area. In his decision, Sir Francis Frazer said the prohibition would not affect taxi-cabs in respect of which special licences had been issued. “We accordingly have the somewhat Gilbertian situation in which a taxi-cab operating as such may not be used to take passengers to a race meeting, while another taxi-cab, which has temporarily changed its character and become a service car for the day, may be used to take the same passengers to the same race meeting. If, owing to war conditions, it is reasonable or unreasonable, as the case may be, to prohibit a taxi-driver from taking a passenger and four friends at an exclusive fare to a race meeting, it is equally reasonable or unreasonable to prohibit him from taking them there at separate fares.”

in his judgment, Sir Francis Frazer commented on the necessity to conserve stocks of petrol and rubber, but said it would be impracticable to insist upon absolute essentiality in the case of all taxi work. It was impossible to hold that any justification existed under present war-time conditions for the running of special services to race meetings in a metropolitan area, where trams and trains were available for racegoers. It was the least essential type of service imaginable, and its importance was almost nil. The appeal was allowed, and the decision of the licensing authority reversed.