The pres­i­dent of the Route 2 Maxi Taxi As­so­ci­a­tion, Bren­ton Knights, has called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­peal the re­cent in­crease in Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route (PBR) per­mit fees, while re­as­sur­ing that fares for pas­sen­gers are not ex­pect­ed to rise im­me­di­ate­ly.

Speak­ing on CNC3’s The Morn­ing Brew yes­ter­day, Knights warned that the dou­bling of the cost for a per­mit could place added pres­sure on an al­ready strained pub­lic trans­port sec­tor. He al­so urged the Gov­ern­ment to en­gage with maxi taxi op­er­a­tors be­fore im­ple­ment­ing any fur­ther changes.

Ad­dress­ing con­cerns about how the in­crease might af­fect pas­sen­gers, Knights said the as­so­ci­a­tion does not want to di­rect­ly pass on the cost. “Well, we don’t want to out­right and tell them that, and take that stand. That is not our po­si­tion as a re­spon­si­ble or­gan­i­sa­tion. What we do, we look at the risk as­sess­ment for op­er­a­tional cost in terms of be­ing vi­able. That will be a fac­tor, but our op­er­a­tional cost is be­ing af­fect­ed from many dif­fer­ent an­gles.