A new taxi company, Angel Cabs in Dublin 15, provides an all-female driver service, which is proving so popular among older women that the firm is now expanding into other areas in the city, writes Catherine Foley
IN RECENT MONTHS, members of the Mountview senior citizens' group in Blanchardstown, Dublin have been travelling home in style, tired but happy after a night on the town.
Bridie O'Neill, their organiser and coordinator, books a new all-female taxi service, Angel Cabs, to transport the ladies on their evenings out. The group recently went to see Sonny Knowles perform at the Helix. The night prior to that they travelled to the Ronan Collins Showband Hits Live!at the National Concert Hall. Afterwards, Angel Cab drivers were waiting outside to take them home.
All the Blanchardstown ladies feel safe knowing that their drivers are women.
Angel Cabs is an all-female taxi service which was introduced in March in the Dublin 15 area. It has been so successful that the service will start in Dublin 4 from this Saturday.
O'Neill says that without it her members, many who live alone and feel isolated in their homes, would not go out at night.
The drivers are all very nice and obliging, says O'Neill, looking across at her regular driver, Antoinette Issolah. "That's an angel sitting there," she says. "We are delighted. We use them anywhere we are going now."
Many of the group members are widows and are getting to an age when travelling alone at night with an unknown man is stressful.
"It is nice to know a woman is going to pick you up. And you'll chat more to a woman," she says. "I'm not knocking the men drivers but I'd never travel home on my own with a man."
Apart from going to shows, the service means that many of the senior citizens in the group, who are mostly in their 70s and 80s, are using the service to visit their families more often. The Angel Cabs taxi is "like a lifeline" to them all, she says.
Beer Over, originally from Sudan and a young married mother who lives in the Dublin 15 area, uses the Angel Cab drivers regularly.
"It's all about safety," she says. "There's a demand from people like me coming to a new country. I feel safer with women. Once I heard about this company I never called another."
Antoinette Issolah is driving around Blanchardstown in her taxi, waiting for the next booking on the dedicated phone line, or for a fare that she will pick up on the street. She has been a taxi driver for four years and signed up to work for Angel Cabs when it launched. She is one of the company's six drivers in the area. On a weekday morning last week, business was slow but Issolah had two bookings. One customer was an elderly woman who wanted to go to the Mater hospital, while the second caller was a woman who wanted to go to the local shops. Issolah said she is slowly building up a bank of regular customers.
Issolah has also had a booking to take children to school. Men are also ringing up to book the service for their wives. Recently one man rang to book a cab to the airport for his girlfriend who was going to Spain. She has no fear now working late on weekend nights as she knows her customers are women.
"I've never really had any bad experiences," she says, but she always felt there was an element of risk. By talking directly to a customer on the Angel Cab phone line she can "vet" the caller. "It's great for the driver and the customer too."
FRIDAY AND SATURDAY nights are now her busiest times. "I wouldn't have worked Saturday nights before but now I know it's a woman I feel safer as well."
Businessman Gerard McCarthy set up Angel Cabs after surveying about 120 women working in businesses throughout the Dublin area. One in four said they would prefer to be driven by a woman.
So successful has the Dublin 15 service been he is opening in Dublin 4 from Saturday and has 10 female drivers lined up. The company, which is described on its website as a female-friendly service, has dedicated phone numbers for a standard taxi service and a wheelchair-accessible service. These same services will be available in Dublin 4 once it gets established, says McCarthy.
"If Dublin 4 goes well, the next step then will be to seek investors for a fully-fledged service with a base, operators, advanced booking, GPS dispatch systems. I'm taking it step by step. There's a lot of chaos in the taxi business."
THE SYSTEM HE'S using is based on a mobile phone circuit where calls go through to the drivers.
"This means I can offer a limited service for the time being, suited for immediate booking, not advance bookings as we have no base or operators to take calls."
Although it's a business, he says one of the motivations for him is the public-service element. "You have people who are nervous about travelling in safety in a taxi . . . there are quite a few female drivers around Dublin, but they are either operating on their own at ranks, or are attached to companies where you might have 400 drivers, with 399 men.
"I've had between 40 and 50 female drivers who have approached me already and I want to link all these individual female drivers together so it will make it easier for the public to access them."
www.angelcabs.ie. For drivers in D15 call 01-5242803. For drivers in D4 call 01-5242806.
