Although 90% of the 30.000 Dutch taxis have now been fitted with the new digital taxi computer (BCT), it has just been revealed that downloading the data for on the road inspections will not be possible until well after July 2016. Software problems with the BCT are continuing.

Last week secretary of state for Infrastructure and the Environment, Wilma Mansveld, briefed Dutch Parliament about the ongoing problems with the equipment and the implementation. Her letter goes to show how badly the government has handled the BCT-project so far. Again the Dutch government has failed to properly handle a complicated IT-project.

Mansveld recalls that ordinary taxi’s have had to be fitted with a BCT since July 1, 2014 and contract taxis since February 1, 2015. Meanwhile, this is the case for 30,000 taxis (90% of all taxis in The Netherlands). According to Mansveld supplier Euphoria/Cabman has a market share of 63% of the market, Taxitronic 23% and QTwee (formerly Quipment) of 14%. For taxi operators there is hardly any competition in the BCT-market. QTwee has no technical approval for its BCT yet. It is expected in the coming weeks. Meanwhile Taxitronic and Neone have also gone bankrupt, after Taxamatic and Quipment the third casualty of the BCT-project, further diminishing the choice for taxi operators.

When it comes to reading BCT-data by the ILT-inspectors, this is currently impossible due to design flaws in the BCT’s delivered by the manufacturers, because of the requirement that updates would happen in the workshop and also because of too much room for interpretation in some software specifications. A software update is now being carried out, for which a notification OK from ‘Brussels’ is required. That OK is expected around mid-March. After that a certification process is needed plus an actual update of the different BCT’s. Only after extensive trials by the inspectorate and the tax services the BCT’s can actually be updated. The positive side of this delay is that future updates can be done digitally without a workshop-visit.

• Dutch manufacturer Euphoria/Cabman is currently leading in a BCT- market without competition.