Taxi and Ncc reform: 2.4 billion turnover and an estimated 85,000 new jobs
The opening of the urban non-scheduled mobility market could generate a significant increase in services, employment and tax revenues, with a positive impact on tourism and the automotive sector.
by Flavia Landolfi and Vittorio Nuti
Key points
Worth EUR 2.4 billion in turnover and 85,000 new employees, with EUR 500 million in tax revenues that would enter the state coffers, the reform of urban non-scheduled mobility in terms of greater market opening, proposed by Muoviti Italia - a movement for mobility reform - in a study edited by its spokesperson, transport economist and Bicocca professor Andrea Giuricin.
Numbers that capture the impact of the entry of new taxi and Ncc licences in major urban centres, with an increase in service availability and a reduction in waiting times: demand is there, supply is insufficient. The crux is exquisitely regulatory. The Italian model has rigidities stratified over the years, closed-number licences, territorial constraints, and stakes born in some cases before mobility on demand.
The Constitutional Court has repeatedly recalled the need to balance public interest and competition, while Antiturst and the Transportation Authority have for years been calling for the expansion of services to improve quality, efficiency and consumer protection. The study cross-references these indications and shows, with a benchmark analysis based mainly on the experiences of France and Portugal, that the issue is not only one of principle, but purely economic.
The analysis lines up the distortions of a system that has left Italian cities with one of the lowest taxi-population ratios in Europe. In France there are around 60 thousand taxi licences, in Portugal 21 thousand while in Italy there are just 28 thousand licences. But it is the ratio to the population that explains the adequacy of the service. So if in Portugal there is one taxi for every 526 people, in France one for every 1,111 users, in Italy the service is covered with the ratio of one car for over two thousand users. As a result, in Italian cities, unmet demand at peak times reaches 50 per cent of requests in Rome and Naples.
Ncc numbers
Not only that: there is the whole world of Ncc to supplement the mobility offer. In France and Portugal, black cars have recently been reformed with an increase of some 56 thousand new operators in France and 36 thousand new operators in Portugal.
