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Deluge in italy1/22/2024 ![]() ![]() In the end, his Airbnb host had to pick them up. He waited more than 1-1/2 hours for a taxi when he arrived at Como in northern Italy from neighbouring Switzerland. Kwame Prempeh from Ghana is on holiday in Italy with his wife and three children. during the week because of prolonged maintenance work, while the bus service is notoriously fickle, regularly hit by strikes and breakdowns. Rome's main metro lines shut at 9.00 p.m. ![]() "We can talk about this, but we cannot ignore the fact that bus and metro lines are poor and that, in order to keep costs down, service is reduced or closes too early in the evening," said Loreno Bittarelli, head of the Radio Taxi Union of Italy. Taxi leaders say they are being made a scapegoat for Rome's many traffic woes and complain that outside the main tourist months there would not be enough work to go around if the city council issued more licences. The same lobby has prevented full-scale Uber operations in the country, arguing they posed a safety risk to customers. The previous government of Mario Draghi tried to reform the sector, but abandoned the plan in the face of rowdy street protests by angry taxi drivers, who traditionally draw support from the conservative parties currently in power. "It is really hard to find taxis and that is a problem not just for tourists, but for the economy as a whole," said Andrea Giuricin, a transport economist at Milan's Bicocca university. By contrast, London has some 19,000 taxis plus 96,000 private hire vehicles, according to 2020 data, while Paris has 18,500 taxis and at least 30,000 licences for private vehicles. Rome has just 7,800 taxis, with no new licences issued since 2006, and an additional 1,000 executive private hire cars, which also serve as top-end Uber vehicles. "Given how hot it is, you would have thought there would be many more taxis." "This would not be acceptable in the United States," said Taylor Simmons, a nanny from Seattle, waiting in a long line outside Rome's main station, with no protection from the sun. It also shines a spotlight on the country's inability to reform, or take advantage of new technologies. Rome, along with other Italian cities, have long experienced shortages of cabs, with the powerful taxi lobbies resisting efforts to issue more licences or fully embrace the arrival of ride-hailing competitors like Uber and Lyft.īut the massive influx of tourists, coupled with the heatwave, has turned a problem into crisis and raises doubts about Italy's ability to cope with ever bigger crowds forecast by the tourism ministry in the coming years. Finding a taxi in Rome these days is about as hard as catching a cool breeze in the heat-drenched Italian capital.Īs temperatures approach record highs in the city, people seeking a cab at the central station have reported having to wait well over an hour in scorching sunlight, while taxi ranks dotted across the city often lie deserted. ![]()
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