Rome, the call for 1,000 new taxi licences is coming. Assignments at the end of September

On the launching ramp in Rome is the long-awaited public call for one thousand new taxi licences, just a few days after the national strike called by the category for 21 May in protest against the new regulations on Ncc. Taking stock of the timing and procedure of the selection process was the Mobility Councillor of Roma Capitale Eugenio Patanè at a hearing in the Capitoline Transparency Commission. The call for tenders, he explained, is still in the pipeline, but by May the comparison with the Transport Regulatory Authority (Art) should be closed. Following this, 'part of June will be dedicated to discussions with the unions. In July there will be the call for tenders and it will be the Formez, a public agency, that will hold the competitions for both taxis and Nccs, and the operations they carry out are very fast. We hope by the end of September to have the winners and then in the following months the issuing of licences'.

The new taxi licences, as repeatedly stated by mayor Roberto Gualtieri and councillor Patanè himself, are one thousand permanent and 500 seasonal. More white car drivers will be ensured thanks to the use of so-called 'second drivers', i.e. the possibility for taxi drivers holding a taxi licence to appoint a second driver to work a second daily shift with the same car. ''To date, we have about 450 second taxi drivers. By the end of the year we aim to get to about 800, so we will double that. In essence, this means issuing about 800 new licences,'' explained the councillor, who is optimistic about the possibility of relaunching the second drivers introduced by the new taxi regulations approved by the Capitoline Assembly in June 2023.

"We will respect Art's guidelines for the announcement," Patané continued, "It is not possible today for a taxi driver or a Ncc who gets behind the wheel not to have some basic notions: I will not ask him what is depicted on the bas-reliefs of Trajan's Column, but at least that if a passenger asks to be taken to the Forma Urbis or the Domus Aurea the taxi driver knows where they are. And then basic notions of English, as required by the guidelines: they are needed because we are a tourist city. I don't ask for two languages, but at least a bit of English they must know. As it is in the Art guidelines - he added - that taxi drivers know the basic rules on taxation: they must know what they are up against if they don't give a receipt or refuse to do so, what it means not to have a POS: the basic rules must be known'.

The incoming call for tenders will also pay special attention to the mobility service for disabled passengers, among the most deficient aspects also pointed out recently by the Antitrust Authority. At the moment, stressed Patanè. in the capital there are only ''40 taxi licences for the transport of the disabled. A bit of a disgrace that we must remedy. I think one of the discussions we must have with the unions at the beginning of June is to say that an important percentage of the new licences can be used for the disabled. We must at least quadruple the allocation of taxi licences for people with disabilities''.

Still on the taxi and urban mobility front, the day also saw developments in Milan, the other major Italian city engaged in anadministrative tour de force to increase the supply of white cars to ward off peaks in demand, especially in the summer period and during major events. The Municipality of Milan - and this is the novelty - will hold a second tender to increase the number of taxis in the city after the one held in mid-March for 450 new licences: the goal is to arrive at almost a thousand more cars. "We are determined to ensure that by the end of the year there will be 450 new taxis and then we confirm our desire to get to almost a thousand, the 971 that are permissible by law," explained mayor Giuseppe Sala during a live Instagram feed, "through a second tender that we will launch as soon as the first one is over. We broke it in two because we wanted to understand what would happen and we did well given the appeals'. There are currently 4,885 taxis on the road in Milan. 'The last licences were issued 21 years ago in 2003,' he added. 'During my first term we realised that the service, but this opinion is denied by taxi drivers, was insufficient and tourism in Milan had developed in the meantime, so we needed more taxis. 'I think that at the end of the year we will have almost 500 more taxis and then we will move on,' he concluded.