> are, in ‘all levels of civil service, rks: such as lifetime job security, os om wkleed. and an often anyhody, a be. fired in the civil service, r ederal. or. Provincial. In fact the civil _ In‘ this next few difficult months the pre- sent government of the Province of British to reduce the size of the civil service is essen- ~ tial. Everyone ‘knows that, despite all the rhetoric, breast-heating and anquished cries. It.i8. going to be a painful. time for a lot of people, a. time. of re-location and anxiety. There ‘is no way to avoid that. - But this'is a free enterprise country. The free enterprise system works. Let's en- courage these soon-to-be displaced civil ser- vants to get out there in the real world like the rest.ofus. . : Our -ountry needs more enterpreneurs, not more civllseryants.' * There is a paradox between Grouse Moun- - tain and. Cypress’ Park. Grouse Mountain Resorts. Ltd.;..a private company is in _ Keceivership: and in a cash flow bind from “their skihal, | Cypress. Park, on ‘the other hand, is under government control and is apparently suffer- ing © the same: malaise as their Grouse The ‘provincial government ‘is trying to “privatize” Cypress by finding free enter- prisers to take over and run the operation - while the folk on Grouse Mountain are try- ing to find municipal money to help them run their operations. A “damned if you do, damned if you don't” situation. ‘Vout Waetd oF nanrth Alm weet VARCOUrER sunday north shore news 1139 Lonsdale Ave., North Vancouver, B.C. V7M 2H4 Olsplay Advertising Classified Advertising Newsroom Circulation 980-0511 986-6222 965-2131 986-1337 Publisher Peter Speck Advertising Olrector Associate Publisher Editor-in-chief Tim Francis Robert Graham Noel Wright Personnel Director Classitied Director Circulation Director Mra. Berni Hillard isabelle Jennings Brian A Ellis Production Director Office Manager Photography Manager * Chris Johnson Donna Grandy Terry Peters North Shore News, founded in 1969 as an independent community Newspaper and qualitied under Schedule fl, Part i, Paragraph Ill of the Excise Tax Act. is published each Wodnesday and Sunday by North Shore Free Press Lid. and distributed to every door on the North Shore. Second Clase Mail Registration Number 3685 Entire contents * 1962 North Shore Free Presse Ltd. All rights reserved. ., Subscriptions, North and Weat Vancouver, $25 per yoar Mailing rates available on request . No fresponaibdity accepted for unsohcited maternal inctuding manuscripia and pictures which ahoutd be accompanied by 4 atamped addreased envotope VERIFIED CIRCULATION 64,450 Wecdneaday, 64,278 Sunday sm & By DUART S. MacLEAN President, Taxi Owners Assn. of B.C. THE HONOURABLE Jack Davis, criticising the local taxi licensing system, draws a picture of a jigsaw puzzle of municipalities, each with its. own separate taxi business. He also mentions a study by the Economic Council of Canada stating that such licensing causes a marked increase in costs and considerable waste of energy. This could not be ~ further from the truth. The typical taxi business on the North Shore is licensed for the whole area from Horseshoe Bay to Deep Cove; with a population of 135,000. This area is well- defined geographically and is large enough in both size and population to be self- sufficient. The City of Vancouver, with 440 square miles and a population of 415,000 is a se- cond major licensing area. East from Vancouver are two more major licensing areas: Burnaby, with a population of 135,000, and New Westminster/ Co- quitlam, with a population of 100,000. The purpose of such a system is twofold. First, the local community has a taxi business directly responsible to itself. If;. for instance, West Vancouver has a pro- | blem with poor service, council can deal with fleets specifically responsible, to the local government, as they are licensed locally as well as provincially. Under to serve West Van uver. Second, it is done: for:the. . “efficiency: purpose of ° through elitaination ‘of “dead” miles and wasted time. Because’ of - relatively large scale of. the licensed areas outlined above, the portion of. trips that cross from one zone: to another would be approx- _ imately 10% of all trips. As Jack pointed ‘out, these trips are not efficient. but if inefficiency of the occa- sional: ‘trip beyond licensed areas. - The: ; ‘dispersal of a taxi fleet into a‘much largér area is self-defeating. As calls.are received from father afield, the fleet would be required to disperse in order to ser- vice..a broader area with a subsequent increase in dead miles and longer response. time. “What a day! The, computer broke down and we all had | to think.” ~ ANNOYING COST OF WASTE Let’s synchronize the lights By WALTER BLOCK IT’S NOT carthshaking. It has nothing to dq with unemployment, inflation, war, or crime — the “big” worries besetting modern civilization. But it is annoying, and when multiplied countless times throughout our socic- ty, it can add up to quite a wastc. Every morning, I travel to work from my home in North Vancouver along the Upper Levels Highway - heading westward onto the Lions Gate Bridge. I, along with perhaps 50 = other motorists, stop for red lights at cach intersection we pass. We arrive at Lonsdale just as the light turns red, for the longest wait possible (an agonizing minute and threc- quarters), and then have the entire process repeated at Westview Drive. Please don't get me wrong; I'm not against traffic lights. And I realize that into every life must fall a share of red lights. The trouble on thigafretch of the road is that the fraffic signals are perversely synchronized, devilishly timed, so as to keep traffic flow to a minimum. And to add insult to injury, it is the rush hour _etraffic which is epsyared in this net. Now it would be easy to set things aright in this one particular case. And perhaps traffic may eventually be speeded up on the Upper Levels Highway, if enough Noel Wright on vacation citizens become outraged at the ineptitude, and register their Aispleasure forcefully enough. But that is not the point. Rather, the issue is to con- front the institutional ar- rangements which make such a fiasco possible in the first place, and allow it to continue for years, I refer, of course, to the fact that there is no automatic way, in this case, that consumer displeasure can be immediately translated into incentives to change, matters. For tho, highways are run through the public sector. They are financed through taxes which we must pay whether or not we are satisfied with services rendered. Therefore, our bureaucratic masters have little reason to tailor their actions to suit our needs. In contrast, those in charge of the private sector, the businessmen, must scurry around with their tails between their legs in an ongoing and undying effort to please us. The customer is always right! For if we are unsatisifed, we can take our business clsewhere — and the firm in question will bear the consequences. The trouble for our socic- ty is that so many, many poor and services are now the public sector. The bureaucrats are thus shield- ed from the effects of con- sumer sovercignty, The sup- pliers of air, rail and river transportation of mail ser- vice, of automobile fuel, of insurance, of schools and universities, of recreational spas (Whistler), of natural resources, ¢tc. ¢ctc., are now in a position to effectively ig- nore the wishes of the paying customers. And that. is because, - while we the citizens most certainly foot the bill, we do so in a man- ner, (taxes) whjch is almost “Trips d do. not always: come at. convenient: “times ° when cabs are handy, nor do they always return. the’ cab:.to its too .often require’ ‘the “dis- patching of’ ‘a cab from. the ~ perhaps ~ ‘destination. even further afield. The.. _Economic. ‘Council may have* ‘cothe .to certain decisions on thé ‘local: faxi scene, but its. activities did not merit the. term “study. " Taxicabs: -on - the’.*Lower Mainland are the .cheapest taxis in British Columbia. They ° ‘dre slightly more.ex- pensive than those.on the Prairies but costs are much greater here. a These are the annual in- surance’ premiums: paid by major . taxi. : operators. in western. Cities: ' “Calgary, $1,450.00; | Edmonton, $1,200.00; Winnipeg, $1, 465. 00; Vancouver, $4, 800.00. Gasoline taxes should also” have been mentioned in the study. Here are the. Pprovin- cial gas taxes. per-gallop in western cities: Calgary; Nil; Edmonton, Nil; Winnipeg, li¢; Regina, Van- couver, 28.5¢.. Studies have: shown that a Vancouver ‘taxicab..’carries far more passengers. ‘than one in any other major city in ‘Canada.': ‘IT ami sure ‘that any study Nil; ; worthy: ofthe term would find'the taxicabs.in the local area the most: efficient in Canada when all factors are ‘considered. If it. works, Jack, don't fix it. completely divorced from the quality of the services rendered. We must pay for the post office, for example, whether we like it or not. Yes, the road to privatiza- tion is a complicated one. But if we are to bring any semblance of rationality to our economy, if we are to place the wishes of con- sumers at central stage, if we are to rein in our Civil ser- vants, we must move down this path. Crown Corpora- tions and government departments of many sizes. shapes and varicties must be made accountable once again, by subjecting them to the profit and loss system of the private marketplace. For an authoritative ac- count of how this was done once, and how it can be done again, the reader is referred to a magnificent Fraser Jn- stitute book, Privatization: Theory and Practice, Distributing Shares in Private and Public Enter- prises: The BCRIC Case. Dentstanaup ine small boat. 60% of all boating deaths are Caused by falling overboard.