Ratman's wife hit the nail on the head.
"The chance of either happening: slim to none. The taxi lobby is simply too powerful and elections are coming up. Parochial interests far outweigh any thought of the public good or creating a competitive tourist product. The same thing explains the presence of lots of big cruise ships."
Indeed there is a very incestuous relationship between elected officials and the Taxi constituency in the bvi. It is not at all unlike current controversies in the states over collective bargaining rights for public workers. The problem comes in when those regulating or determining income and benefits are beholding to the union and commit to long term damaging policy to garner financial support for the next election. Nothing wrong with unions and collective bargaining, but it should be adversarial, not "I'll give you whatever you ask since you elected me".
Unfortunately the taxi owners wield huge political clout in the bvi. The politicians will look to the taxi interests ahead of what is in the long term best interest of tourism. The taxi industry is of course hugely dependent on cruise ship business. They see the cruise ship passenger as a lamb to be slaughtered...an endless steam of robots with cash. The government sees happy taxi drivers as a path to reelection. The old days and the reasonable fares and friendly service have been swapped for "load em up, move em out".
Like now in many states the reckoning for excess is at hand, at some point the decision to focus on the quick buck to keep a political constituency happy will backfire and cause severe pain...see Illinois, California etc. You can shear the sheep many times, but you can only eat him once.
--------------------
Copied and pasted.