Taxi Protest Dublin Monday 2/2/09 8.30am

dublin | worker & community struggles and protests | event notice Saturday January 31, 2009 05:18 by Concerned Commuter - None

Enough Is Enough!

Taxi drivers will stage a protest this Monday 2/2/09 at 8.30am from the Garden of Remberance, Parnell Square to Merrion Square to demand an immediate stop to the issuing willy nilly of new taxi licences.

The dogs in the street know there's far too many taxis in Dublin. Dublin has more taxis per head of population than New York. Anybody who's in town Friday or Saturday night knows that the city centre is clogged with empty taxis with their lights on. This is causing serious traffic congestion and major delays to bus services. A good example is Kelly's Corner to Dame Street. Most weekends this route is gridlocked from end to end with empty taxis with their lights on with the result that the traffic is worse than during than the Monday to Friday rush hour. This is yet another example of the disaster of Fianna Fáilure/Regressive Undemocrats fanatical love of unbridled lazzerie farie free market thatcherite economics and to hell with everyone else. Well like other workers we've finally had enough and we're not taking it anymore. Even if you had 100,000 taxis on the streets of Dublin, it still won't sort the problem of not been able to get a taxi at 3am on a Saturday night. That's a twofold problem. Firstly, everywhere closes at the same time, and secondly, the lack of a proper public transport system. But guess what? Our 'geniuses' in power have actually made these problems much worse by forcing everywhere to shut at 2.30am at the weekend, when people in Europe are only going out, and by introducing savage cuts to the Nitelink from this weekend. Now Nitelinks will only run hourly, instead of every 20 minutes Friday and Saturday, and they will stop at 3am instead of 4.30am, and the already very restricted Monday to Thursday Nitelink service is gone as and from Monday 2/2/09.