Telde taxi drivers call a demonstration tired of not raising the urban rate

File image of the taxi rank in San Juan. / C7

They will protest next Thursday through the streets of the city before the delay of the City Council to update prices frozen since 2013

The Telde taxi collective has gotten tired of waiting. This Friday, the majority cooperative of the municipality informed the Telde City Council that next Thursday all the taxi drivers of the city are summoned to a demonstration to protest the
“excessive” tardiness by the Department of Transport to execute a “necessary”
rise in the prices of tariff 1 (the urban one).

«We are tired of going out to work in the city and
that only gives us losses. We have been providing a public service with the same prices since 2013, while all the expenses that we have to face have not stopped rising, especially after the pandemic and the war in Ukraine. If it were not for tariff 3 (the interurban one), we would be sunk”, cries the president of the Telde Taxi Drivers Cooperative,
Lawrence Rodriguez.

The sector had given the local government
until this Friday, February 10 as the maximum term for the final report to be presented with the new prices of the urban tariff and, thus, to be able to continue advancing in this process of updating prices for the service. The aforementioned document is based on an economic study created by a company commissioned by the council to determine what the new service fees should be, although the final decision is made by the
area ofTransportation directed by Agustín Arencibia.

The cooperative states in the request for a demonstration presented to the Government Delegation in the Canary Islands that the protest will start next Thursday, February 16 at 9:00 a.m. from Cánovas del Castillo 114 street and will travel through Calle de la Cruz, Callejón del Castillo, Acuarelista Elías Marrero, the GC-100 towards San Juan and will end in the parking lots of El Cubillo, next to the municipal offices of the Telde City Council. In addition, they add, they plan to last eight hours and
that 193 vehicles attend throughout the day.

insufficient proposal

It should be remembered that less than a month ago the taxi drivers described as “insufficient” and “unacceptable” the first proposal to increase the rate proposed by the local government, which mainly contemplated that the lowering of the daytime flag would pass
from 2.40 to 2.70 eurosthe night from 3.00 to 3.40 euros and that the cost per kilometer traveled went from being worth 0.63 euros every 1,034 meters 24 hours a day to 0.70 euros every 1,000 meters from 6:30 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. and 0, 80 euros between 10:00 p.m. and 6:30 a.m.

“We understand that the sector does not deserve this. We want to provide a quality service, but the first thing is to be able to charge what we understand as a fair price with the urban rate.
The councilor has not done his job since he has been in charge of the Department of Transportation and has shown with his actions that he does not care about the taxi bus or its problems, ”complains Lorenzo Rodríguez.