A new rule on making taxis in South Gloucestershire accessible to people in wheelchairs has been delayed because of “recent global events”. The rule was scheduled to come into force next month, but has been paused due to climate change, the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
In a bid to make travelling easier for disabled people, South Gloucestershire Council decided in 2017 to encourage hackney carriage taxis to switch to wheelchair-accessible vehicles. A hard deadline for all hackney carriages to be wheelchair-accessible was set for April 1 this year.
But taxi drivers have urged the council to delay the rollout of the new rule. The council is also considering a separate rule forcing all taxis to be electric by 2030, and electric wheelchair-accessible taxis are currently “prohibitively expensive”.
