OF ROME AND THE QUALITY OF SERVICE Save the drivers from the pain annuity
The Abominable (+54% for the first five kilometers) an increase in taxi fares to Rome is a story that goes beyond the specific issue. It is a mirror of three broad trend in the country, all of concern. I transport, not only in Rome but are not considered a service, but an annuity. And the passenger, tourist or resident that is not a customer or user, it is by plucking a chicken or a nuisance to be avoided. It happens, arriving at Fiumicino or Ciampino airport, ask a guy to feel: "'Ndo going?". It does not know where to go. He wants to know if you are Italian or foreign. If the answer is "what?", The taxi will be ready, perhaps to venture along the Great Ring Road. If you answer "go downtown" or "my business", find a car willing to take charge and be a destination business.
Worldwide, the number indicates the size of the taxi and the purchasing power of the middle class. In Moscow there are very few: the rich have chauffeured limousine, others go underground. In Berlin, London, New York, there are many: the taxi is not considered an oddity by flawed, but an opportunity for those who want to avoid the rigmarole of parking, permits, fines. The Italian middle class which is strangled by an inflation rises again, and particularly affects those small power consumption - bars, restaurants, holidays, short trips - which are not from sybaritic luxuries but the engine of an economy like ours, that little value to its extraordinary potential for tourism. Among the major bottlenecks in the Italian economy then there, of course, the corporate cover. Just ask Roman taxi drivers - or Milanese where full-bodied increases are triggered by little - if they are happy with the new rates. Many are worried. Fear, or have occurred, to work less. They would rather work more and earn more. Something that should be encouraged, with taxation. Instead the opposite happens.
This is not to blame one rather than another . The more heterogeneous a category such as taxi drivers. To anyone who happened to be the trickster, and certainly more than a percentage, the practitioner correctly, the madman who does not want to close the window in January or lower the radio volume that informs all Lazio's winter market, and delightful person with which to open a conversation. Taxi drivers are also much talk because they have a particular importance in politics as well, for two reasons: they can capture a city, as happened not only in Rome but also in Paris, and remained - in a fragmented society like ours and in a time marked by distance communication - one of the last professional contact with people, sometimes able to convey an opinion, a direction, the criterion of a character (as they have helped to Formentini Milanese taxi drivers, and how their colleagues Romans damaged Rutelli?).
This political influence is used, sometimes with open-mindedness , a category that is legitimately defending against a proletarianization and abroad has now occurred. "Do you know why the rates have increased the cab in Manhattan? Why is it also increased the fee to Al Qaeda "laughs David Letterman, alluding to the invasion of drivers from ancient Islamic countries. We remain loyal to our Tassinari, provided the cost does not continue to grow in inverse proportion to the quality of the service. A Manhattan speak English well as a strange, but if you wait for a taxi in the street stops to ask if by chance you need. At Fiumicino Us firm to "'nd you?".
Aldo Cazzullo
January 27, 2011 by Corriere della Sera
