Why You Can't Find a Taxi in Paris

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March/April 2010

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WHY YOU CAN’T FIND A TAXI IN PARIS

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FEATURE

Why it’s so Hard to Find a Cab in Paris

12 Paris | March/April

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...and What is Being Done About it

by Jeffrey T. Iverson

ith a vast subway network, tramways, bus lanes and, yes, Vélibs, Paris has earned a global reputation as one of the world’s easiest cities to get around in. But tell that to Michel and Nicole, who had Friday night tickets to a comedy at the Théâtre de la Michodière. When Michel got back late from work to their rue d’Alésia home, they realized that public transport would not get them there in time. After a frustrating 15 minutes on the phone with radio cab companies who could only tell them that no taxis were available, they raced down to the nearest cab stand – only to find six other people waiting impatiently in the evening drizzle. The few taxis that drove by were all full, and the play started without them. The exasperating experience left them asking a question that has plagued Parisians for decades – où sont les taxis?

Over the last two years, a series of aborted reform attempts and trafficparalyzing strikes have brought to light a blight on Paris’s supposedly stellar mobility record – a chronic shortage of available taxis. With 16,623 cabs as of last January, Paris has only slightly more taxis than it had in 1937, when the fleet numbered some 14,000.

Parisians have started venting long-harbored frustrations on online forums and news websites. “It’s incredible to see how much Paris is lacking in taxis!” bemoaned François on Lepoint.fr. “Mis-

PHOTO: BRIAN WRIGHT DESIGNLAB7.COM

W

sion impossible after 1 am… 45-minute waits at the train station,” agreed Eric.

The Economist weekly (gloatingly) juxtaposed London’s world-famous taxi service with Paris’, criticizing Sarkozy and a string of French governments who “have caved in to the militant taxi lobby, and have not dared to increase the number of licenses.”

To glimpse the complexity of the problem, you need to leave the city for Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport. On a recent morning, baggage-laden travelers arriving from around the world were wandering out into the chilly morning air at the exit of Terminal 2A. Bleary-eyed and anxious to grab a cab as quickly as possible, they craned their heads to spot the taxi stand amid the

minal, passing another dapper gentleman leading a group of Spaniards who had just been solicited coming out of baggage claim.

Ouanfouf’s anger was palpable.

“Here you have shuttles, cars, limousines, none of them with the right to be soliciting passengers,” he fumed. “Yet here they are doing just that from morning to night with total impunity.”

A disoriented-looking woman standing nearby commented on the scene. “It’s confusing, you walk out and there are

London’s black cabs have tripled in number, while less than 2,000 new licenses were created in Paris over the past 30 years hustle. “Taxi for Paris?” a sharplydressed man asked an American tourist, who nodded and followed him across the street to a line of unmarked cars with drivers waiting at the wheels.

Watching the transaction from the sidewalk was Djillali Ouanfouf, an offduty Parisian taxi driver. “Now he’s going to tell him it’ll cost 120€,” he said. Sure enough, the American suddenly stopped and, shaking his head in frustration, started back toward the ter-

tons of people and cars, but you can’t tell who’s a taxi and who isn’t,” said Sylvie Boustie, an Alberta wine importer who had flown in from Canada for a trade show. “To see this at Paris’ airport is shameful, it gives you a poor image of the city.”

Unfortunately, those travelers who eventually come upon the real taxi stand slightly further away may find that meeting a true Paris cabby does not improve that image. Travelers in a March/April | Paris 13

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2009 poll by Hotel.com, leader in online hotel reservation, ranked Paris taxis the least friendly in the world. Perhaps a sour mood is inevitable, though, given that most drivers will already have lingered two or three hours five kilometers away at the “base arrière taxis,” Roissy’s largest taxi parking lot, where up to 1,000 taxis await their turn. Baptized ‘Guantanamo’ by its users for the fenced enclosure, electronic badge-controlled entry point, and less than luxurious amenities (four Turkish toilets shared by all), it’s the source of recurrent grievances by the profession – who nonetheless keep coming back.

Paris has roughly the same number of taxis today as it had in 1937 As Ouanfouf explains, with a large number of Paris drivers living in the Seine-Saint-Denis and Val d’Oise suburbs, many prefer to start their morning at nearby Roissy with hopes of one big fare back to Paris, rather than risk losing two hours in rush hour driving empty into the capital. “Either you lose time in traffic, or you lose it waiting at Charles de Gaulle,” he says.

According to a report by Marc Lebret of Paris’ Council for Sustainable Economic Development, “Of the 6,000-9,000 available taxis at any given hour of the day, 2,000-3,000 will be stuck at the airports for anywhere from one to four hours.” On an average day during morning rush hour, when hundreds of taxis are wallowing in traffic between the airports and Paris, back in the capital an estimated 20-45 percent of clients’ requests go unsatisfied, according to a study by G7, France’s leading taxi company. Another study

by Paris taxi cooperative GESCOP placed the number closer to 70 percent.

No surprise then that an eight-city sur14 Paris | March/April

vey by CNRS economist Richard Dar- Charles de Gaulle, eager to jumpstart France’s economy,, assembled experts béra found that one in four Parisians demand more taxis for their city – twice to identify “the obstacles to expansion.”

Finding their way onto the shortlist as many as residents of London. The were Paris taxis, the economists calling bottom line, as Darbéra says, is that compared with other European capitals for thousands of new licenses. After two “by all standards, it is Paris that far and days of debilitating taxi strikes, the reform was buried, and for the next 30 away has the fewest taxis.” years, while London’s black cabs tripled The shortage in Paris has created in number, less than 2,000 new licenses stiff competition to join the ranks of liwere created in Paris. cense-holding ‘artisans,’ who account To make matters worse, when new for around two-thirds of the profession.

After passing written, medical and road competitors started emerging in the 1970s in the form of voitures de petites exams, as well as criminal background checks, a candidate must either buy a li- remises or Private Hire Vehicles (PHVs) – taxis reserved by phone but cense from a retiring driver – costing anywhere from 140,000€ to 200,000€ restricted from street business – taxi unions flexed their muscles again. The – or add his name to the thousands algovernment responded with a series of ready on the Préfecture de Police’s 17laws and directives Darbéra describes year waiting list for a free license. as “a systematic policy of extinction to Under this system, more than 4,400 taxi drivers spend much of their career renting a license owned by taxi companies to bring in 1,100€ to 2,125€ a month, with a minority working as salaried drivers (earning 1,100€ to 1,600€ a month). Artisans' monthly net revenues vary between 1,500€ and 3,000€, according to the National Federation of Artisan Taxis (FNAT), but that’s while paying off a typical seven-year license loan.

Once debt free, artisans’ monthly net earnings can exceed 4500€.

As Darbéra recounts in his 2009 book, Où vont les taxis? (Where are the taxis going?), this chronic penury is the result of a long history of government capitulation before a profession with an unmatched ability to paralyze a city. In 1958, a ‘Guantanamo,’ the taxi parking lot at Roissy-Charles de Gaulle Airport newly-elected President where some 1,000 drivers wait up to three hours to get a fare into Paris.

PHOTO: AFP JACK GUEZ

FEATURE

PHOTO: FRÉDÉRIC DEKKAL

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the benefit of the taxis’ monopoly,” which saw PHVs dwindle to around 100 today. Meanwhile in London, PHVs eventually became today’s 42,000 minicabs, complementing the city’s 24,000 black cabs. Likewise in New York, today 50,000 liveries serve the phone reservation market, with 14,000 yellow cabs working the city’s streets and taxi stands.

It was thus is keeping with French tradition that in 2008, another newlyelected president, Nicolas Sarkozy, anxious to boost France’s economy, commissioned a report on the “inhibitors to growth” that sure enough identified taxis as a major stumbling block. The 2008 Attali commission recommended measures intended to eventually raise Paris taxi numbers as high as 60,000, such as providing free licenses to the Préfecture’s entire waiting list, and reopening a market for potentially thousands of new PHVs. Once again, though, after two days of debilitating taxi strikes, the Attali recommendations were abandoned.

But this time, before the dust had even settled, Sarkozy was again insisting that “no one will change my belief that there is a problem of taxi supply,” and called the profession to new negotiations based on another taxi study – the Chassigneux report. The resulting protocol agreement, reached in May 2008, has since resulted in the first real growth in taxi numbers in recent times.

With already more than 723 new licenses granted, several measures are intended to increase the Paris taxi fleet to 20,000. The City of Paris has eagerly prepared the ground for new users, renovating taxi stands and creating a new number – 01 45 30 30 30 – that allows users to circumvent busy call centers and ring their nearest taxi stand directly.

Not to say the reform was swallowed wholesale by the profession. In December 2009, taxis answering a call by the Union for the Defense of Paris

Taxis Drivers (SDCTP) blocked traffic to Paris airports to protest plans to allot a percentage of new licenses to taxi rental companies. In the eyes of Ouanfouf, secretary general of SDCTP, the system in which taxi drivers rent their license from taxi companies at fees from 3300€ to 4500€ a month, sometimes obliging them to work far beyond the legal 11-hour day, is akin to “modern slavery,” he says. “The government sets your prices, your work hours, but they leave the renters to set any fees they like,” he protests. The movement succeeded, and the new licenses were instead reserved exclusively for salaried and rental taxi drivers on the Prefecture’s waiting list. But the rental companies achieved a net gain nonetheless, in the form of hundreds of authorizations to double up drivers on existing licenses, making a single license useable for day and nighttime shifts – not exactly the progress SDCTP hoped for.

Contrary to FNAT, which favors more conservative growth of the sector based on a complicated economic index, SDCTP largely favors further increases in new licenses for salaried and rental drivers. It also regrets that of the 3,600 new taxis planned to reach the 20,000 target in 2012, only 2,000 constitute actual taxi licenses. An extension of the legal workday from 10 to 11 hours accounts for the ‘creation’ of 500 taxis; improved regulation of the Roissy base arrière accounts for 200; and the creation of a rush hour lane reserved for taxis and buses on the A1 highway between Roissy and Paris is supposed to create 600 additional taxis as well – one measure widely applauded by the profession, having long argued that improving the city’s congested traffic was the real key to alleviating any perceived taxi shortage.

Now, though, we may never know whether that argument holds water.

After barely a 10-month trial period, the rush hour A1 lane – which actually included only five kilometers of a much

The View from the Driver’s Seat Djillali Ouanfouf, 45, is Secretary General of the SDCTP. He is married, with two children.

“As a salaried driver I earn about 1,300€ working 11 hours a day, six days a week.

After 17 years in the profession, I’m still waiting for my free license. We’re in favor of new licenses – at a certain annual quota, so the existing licenses retain their value and the artisan drivers can retire with something in their pockets. But licenses for salaried and rental drivers only, not the rental companies. Guys prefer to buy a license for 180,000€ and go into debt and suffer seven years paying it off because at least they’re doing it for themselves. The rental system is like a mafia.

Imagine the pressure on a guy who gets up in the morning, says goodbye to his wife and kids, and then tells himself, ‘now I have to make 160€ to pay my boss.’

The biggest problems for Paris taxi drivers are the stress of the rental system, and the stress of traffic. At certain hours, you can wait for 30 – 40 minutes without getting a taxi in Paris. Why? Because if a taxi picks up someone at 7 am who asks for Charles de Gaulle airport, the driver is forced to stay there and wait for a fare back. To come back to serve clients in Paris, they’ll spend one-and-a-half hours stuck in traffic jams. I’m convinced that if this stress was lessened, the quality of the service would be vastly improved.”

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FEATURE

longer lane originally envisioned – closed in February for 18 months or more during the renovation of A1’s Landy tunnel. The news angers drivers like Faycol Montassar, who insists taxis wouldn’t linger at Guantanamo if they could shoot back to Paris in 30 minutes.

“I don’t get up in the morning to go and play cards at Roissy,” he says. “If they give us the means to come back to Paris and serve the clients, we will.”

In the long term, Darbéra fears that even if all the current reforms were successful, the chronic taxi shortage Parisians have long endured wouldn’t be fully alleviated. In his eyes, only the creation of a market for Personal Hire Vehicles – the measure proposed by Attali in 2008 –would allow for the development of a diverse, reasonably-priced taxi service capable of satisfying Parisians’ needs.

Darbéra’s survey reveals that while taxis are predominantly used by the richest 20% of the population in both London and Paris, in London the poorest 20% of the population use taxis as 16 Paris | March/April

often as the richest in Paris – 13 trips per year per capita – with taxi service distributed over a far wider portion of the population in London than in Paris.

This is thanks to a highly competitive industry climate, in which minicabs offer lower fares on average than the regulated black cab fares. The absence of such offerings in Paris may explain why 23 percent of Parisians report they never use a taxi – more than in any other city surveyed.

But a law quietly passed this summer may hint that the government is gearing up to change that. In July the city’s 300-some moto-taxis, at the behest of the drivers themselves, were given a regulatory context bringing them as close as anything else in France to the traditional PHV. Henceforth, clients of moto-taxi companies like Citybird, the market leader with a 29-bike fleet, are guaranteed their driver has a clean criminal record, an expert motorcycle driver’s license, and a vehicle meeting safety standards. For Citybird’s president, Cyril Masson, the

legislation is a sign of change to come.

“We are one of the responses the government and the Préfecture are starting to apply in response to the lack of taxis,” he says. “I think the next step is they are going to begin opening the market for competition by [fourwheel] PHVs.” Hélène Manceron, communication director for FNAT, shares Masson’s suspicions, but fears what it would mean for the profession. “We have a government with liberal leanings that’s allowing people to create fleets of vehicles, but who’s going to control this?” she says. “Five years from now this will have destabilized the taxi industry.”

Perhaps. But at least in the eyes of Ouanfouf, things really couldn’t get much worse. “Honestly, I’ve traveled in Spain, Italy, Belgium, Germany and England, I think the Paris taxi driver is at the bottom in terms of status, work conditions and methods – and this has direct repercussions on the quality of the service,” he says. “We have a lot of work to do.” n

PHOTO: AFP PATRICK KOVARIK

Paris taxi drivers launched a massive strike at the place de la République in January 2008 to protest the recommendations of an official report calling for the free distribution of licenses to all those on the waiting list.

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