Pablo Samper, a councilman and spokesperson for Sueña Torrevieja, openly questioned the Torrevieja City Council’s decision to issue taxi licenses with “inaccessible technical requirements” and a deadline of March 24th.

Following the City Council’s revision of the municipal ordinance and announcement of the introduction of 16 taxi licenses in multiple phases, the process was started. Six licenses are offered for tender in the first round. There are currently about eighty-four taxis operating in the city.

Since the tender was launched, Samper notes, interested parties have encountered “serious difficulties in being able to submit bids.” The opposition councillor claims that the procedure’s intricacy demonstrates that it was created “without taking into account the reality of the sector.” According to him, the process necessitates a level of computer proficiency and administrative procedure knowledge “that is unacceptable for any ordinary person,” to the extent that the profile of the contractor is utilised by municipal supplier companies to choose public tenders.

Giving more points to bidders who buy an electric or hybrid car—especially if it’s a Euro cab modified for persons with limited mobility—is one of the prize criteria.

No hybrids

Since there are presently no hybrid vans that are modified for Euro taxis available in dealerships and the models that could meet the requirements have delivery times of four to six months, Samper claims that “the lack of supply on the market makes this requirement practically impossible to meet.”

Additionally, these cars need to be adapted to accommodate disabled individuals once they are purchased, which results in an extra three to five weeks of waiting. Some hybrid versions aren’t even adaptable because ramps can’t be installed because the batteries are on the underside of the car.

The City Council demands that the licenses granted be operational within 60 days, notwithstanding these challenges, “which makes this process, quite simply, unfeasible,” according to Samper.

Five years old

Another requirement is that cars must be no more than five years old; newer models receive more points. The technical sheet is the sole way to confirm that the date of the vehicle’s first registration is the date required by the City Council to be used for assessment. “How is it possible for a bidder to display the technical sheet of an unpurchased vehicle? This opposing party notes that this is an obvious illustration of the process’s flaws.

Answers

Sueña Torrevieja cannot keep quiet about a tender that excludes the great majority of drivers and jeopardises our city’s taxi service because “Torrevieja needs solutions, not a process designed to fail,” says Samper.

“We have to deal with an unfathomable technical process, impossible timeframes, and unmet criteria. The councillor asserts that the City Council needs to fix these mistakes right away in order to make obtaining a taxi licence feasible, equitable, and open.

In Torrevieja, a municipality with over 106,000 residents according to the municipal register and ten thousand fewer according to the National Institute of Statistics’ official census, there are very few offers from Driver-Drive Tourism Vehicles (VTC) businesses like Uber, Cabify, or Bolt.