Centerlines - April 2008 - (Page 29) PASSENGER FOCUS Barry Rempel, CEO of the Winnipeg Airports Authority: “Having the availability of cabs, newer cabs and drivers who could be the ambassadors for your community are critical components.” charter flights would arrive here and sometimes no cabs were available for the passengers,” said Rempel. Upping the Bar Unicity will ensure that any vehicles doing pick-ups at the airport will be seven-years-old or less by Dec. 31, 2008, and five years old or less by December 2010. A minimum taxicab age of five years is within the recommended range of three to seven years suggested in the standards for taxicab services developed by the Airport Ground Transportation Association in 2005. Unicity taxicab drivers will also train to meet national standards established by the Canadian Tourism Human Resource Council. The contract specifies that 25 percent of Unicity’s drivers must be certified by June 31, 2008; 75 percent by June 31, 2009; and 100 percent by December 2009. Drivers will spend up to 12 hours improving their knowledge of the national standards, along with local tourism and service knowledge developed and delivered by the Manitoba Tourism Education Council. “There will be guest speakers and group discussions to review items and terminology and discuss customer expectations. We want to encourage the drivers to take the next step up in professionalism,” explained Manitoba Tourism Council CEO Bev Shuttleworth. She is also responsible for the development of the driver training workshops program, established specifically to fulfill the training terms of the airport/Unicity contract. “For seven years people have been talk ing about the need to improve taxicab service. The airport, with its new infrastructure, sees the importance of this. Drivers often forget that they are in the tourism business, particularly at the airport where they are the first point of contact for our city and province. Our goal is to provide drivers with the customer’s perspective, to enhance the customer’s experience,” Shuttleworth explained. Pragmatism in Training The local tourism council will add to the course content as it sees fit. For example, since 85 to 90 percent of the taxi drivers in the city do not speak English as their first language, it is working with Manitoba’s Language Assessment Branch with a view to possibly developing classes to teach drivers English relevant to their job. If other topics come up that will help drivers do their job better, they will be added to the course. There will be TAXICAB STANDARDS The Airport Ground Transportation Association adopted a set of minimum standards for taxicab services in the fall of 2005 as recommendations of industry best practices. The inspiration for their development came from concerns that taxicab standards had deteriorated over the previous two decades. “We felt that we needed minimum standards,” said Dr. Ray Mundy, director of the Center for Transportation Studies at the University of Missouri–St. Louis and the association’s executive director. “We had been getting a lot of calls asking if there were any taxicab standards out there. Airports feel they have a moral obligation to look out for the interests of the travelling public.” The standards were distilled from suggestions solicited from about 100 airports, large and small, mostly from the United States and Canada, plus a handful from other countries. The recommended standards include: • Suggested vehicle age from three to seven years • Uniform dress code • Minimum driver age of 21 to 25 years • One to three years’ experience • Exclusive taxi concession or some mechanism that limits the number of taxicabs servicing an airport at any one time • The taxi company, vehicle owner and taxi operator should be held responsible for the actions of the taxi operator www.aci-na.org | CENTERLINES 29 http://www.aci-na.org
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