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Having barely recovered from the stormy territorial council meeting of September 26, the elected representatives are due to return to the arena this Thursday, October 3. And one subject already promises debate. The sixth item on the agenda, under Administrative Affairs, concerns the adjustment of the cab fare grid for the period 2024-2028. Will the third time be the charm? For the past two years, the cab association has been calling for an update of the fare grid. The reason is that it dates back to 2017, even though it should be revised every five years. Dimitri Lédée, an elected member of the Action-Equilibre group, was in charge of this issue until April 11. This was the date of the territorial council meeting, when he declared that he did not have enough data to propose a tangible rate schedule. To break the deadlock, the dossier was entrusted to Francius Matignon, the elected representative of Saint-Barth D'abord. Without success, since at the territorial council meeting on July 18, the elected representatives rejected the proposals submitted by the cab association, preferring to adopt Maxime Desouches' proposal to apply the night fares charged in 2018 for daytime journeys, and to add five euros for night-time journeys, from midnight to five in the morning.
A 50% rate increase
Needless to say, this decision has angered cabs. "We have people deciding for us, without listening to us, about things they don't understand, so it's really problematic," says Sabrina Zimmerman, president of the association. Cabs are not the only ones unhappy. As early as the day after the vote, some elected representatives asked the President of the Collectivité to reverse the decision. "It didn't provide a real solution to the needs of cab drivers to have fares that were truly regulated," recounts Francius Matignon, who voted against the grid he had worked on. The proposal I had sent was the upper range, and it was indeed very high," concedes the territorial councillor. But I think it was necessary to discuss it and reduce it to 50% or 60% of the amount requested by the cab drivers. "Faced with this general discontent, a new grid was once again worked on. This time by the vice-president of the cab association and directly by the president of the Collectivité, Xavier Lédée. Whereas the first schedule proposed a 100% increase in fares, this one is closer to a 50% increase. "This seems to us to be coherent, in line with the rate of inflation, and could satisfy both cabs and customers", says Sabrina Zimmerman.
A new scale proposed as an amendment
A proposal contested by Dimitri Lédée. This scale is not coherent," asserts the territorial councillor. If tomorrow we have to re-evaluate it upwards or downwards, how can we readjust the grid when we don't know what it was based on? "Once again, the councillor denounces the lack of data, with rates set "on the fly". For his part, the elected representative is preparing his own mileage-indexed fare grid, which he will present as an amendment. Otherwise, the territorial councillor is already planning to vote against the new scale proposed by the cab association. An argument that is unlikely to stand up to Francius Matignon's favorable vote, which will surely be followed by his Saint-Barth d'Abord group.
