Toulouse: Taxis, customers are very rare
Since the covid pandemic, taxis have not returned to their previous activity. Telecommuting hasn’t helped.
“If I didn’t have the medical activity, I wouldn’t get out of it,” admits Franck, a taxi driver for six years. Moreover, some have become full-time medical taxis”.
Since the covid pandemic, taxi drivers have struggled to find customers. A situation that teleworking has further aggravated: “We can wait two hours to do a race, deplores Franck, and only small races. People eat lunch less in restaurants, no longer smoke on the plane as before with teleworking and video. Society has changed and we taxis are directly linked to these sectors. So when they are bad, we are bad too”.
“Despite this worrying situation, taxi driver is a good job”
According to him, a young person who starts in this profession with a license and gasoline in charge cannot get by. “This state causes a lot of dropouts.”
Philippe Durant, president of the National Union of Taxis (UNT) 31, agrees with these words: “Taxis that don’t want to do medical work are really struggling. They can wait for hours at the airport or at the Matabiau train station. I myself had to wait from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the station to pick up a client”. This degraded situation does not encourage vocations: “Colleagues who retire and who sell their license also have difficulty finding a buyer. Young people hesitate to embark on this activity, which has become very risky. Some go into so much debt that they find themselves in precariousness. “Despite everything, taxi driver is a beautiful job. Lots of encounters. A profession where nothing is ever the same”, assures Franck.