Legal issues at the TAXI Forum 2013

The International Eurasian Forum "Taxi" was held in St. Petersburg on August 8 and 9, 2013. During the working sessions, the speakers raised the most pressing issues of the modern taxi industry, discussed the features of legal regulation and the positive aspects of the use of modern technologies.

Since recently, lawmakers have seriously taken up the reform of the taxi. The problem is that the adopted laws and amendments caused an ambiguous reaction in the taxi community. Many reviews on the Internet contained criticism of the adopted Federal Law No. 69, popularly called the "taxi law". Part of the law came into force in the summer of 2012, but only in full force earned it now.

The results of the "law on taxis" and the peculiarities of the legal regulation of the taxi sector in the city of St. Petersburg at the forum were told by Stanislav V. Popov - Chairman of the Committee for Transport of St. Petersburg. He noted several important legislative moments and gave an impressive number of statistics. So, on the diagram presented by Stanislav Vladimirovich it was shown that the smallest percentage of obtaining official licenses for taxiing is accounted for in 2012, when Federal Law No. 69 first began its work.

But more important was to bring comparative data on the advantages and disadvantages of taxiing legislation before and after the adoption of the "taxi law". It turned out that previously there were more advantages than disadvantages. For example, the shortcomings of the laws were the lack of the possibility of bringing carriers to administrative liability for the lack of an agreement and the lack of authority to establish a color for cars. And if the first defect can be considered serious, the second one is unlikely to be considered significant. With the adoption in 2011 of Federal Law No. 69, it was possible to move the minuses into the column of pluses, but the list of shortcomings expanded: the lack of regulations on the regulation of dispatch services, lack of authority to regulate work at organized taxi stops, and so on. As far as all this is worth the opportunity to adopt a single color, there is no point in judging.

One has only to say that this is more a desire to imitate Europe and the United States, where a taxi can only be yellow. But do not forget - these countries practice uniformity of color is already a tradition and is present for many decades. In the US, this is more likely due to one of the first official taxi services, which was known as Yellow Cab Co. (Hence the yellow color). In the states, taxi drivers consciously go for painting the car in yellow, because it causes confidence in customers and helps to find out a taxi in the city traffic of cars. In Russia, for the time being, there are no such deeply rooted traditions.

The situation with modern legislation in the field of taxi was commented by the representative of MADIV, a partner of the International Eurasian Forum "Taxi":

- Indeed, the law was not liked by everyone. Even if we look at the statistics, we can conclude that with the entry into force of the law, the number of drivers wishing to obtain a license has decreased. Of course, compared to 2012, this show has increased. But this is more likely due to the growth of the market of taxi services in the country. Since MADIV and other similar companies have started their activities, taxi services are becoming larger in both large and small cities. The forum already heard suggestions to recognize the taxi public transport. And it is right. While developing technical solutions, MADIV also followed the general development of the taxi market. And he developed more than well, approaching the Western type. Artificial stimulation by the introduction of unnecessary norms, like color uniformity will not accelerate, but rather slow down the progress.

While the new law is working at full strength for less than six months, and making long-term forecasts early. But here conclusions about the need for another round of legal reform were voiced at the 2013 Eurasian Forum.