Most coverage of the Broome Chamber survey has led with the 84% number. That’s the easy story. Pearl Coast Rental is the operator with the most to gain from amplifying it. We are not a neutral observer.
This post is about the harder number. 6% of respondents said no to introducing rideshare in Broome. They are a minority. They are also a real cohort of business owners, with real reasons, in a town where every operator’s view counts.
Here is what they told us.
Who the 6% were
When we coded the negative responses against the free-text fields the respondents had filled in, we found two distinct clusters. They weren’t equal in size — the operator cluster was the larger one — but both were substantive enough to take seriously.
Cluster one: existing taxi operators and drivers. Most of the no votes came from people who currently make a living moving people around Broome under the existing taxi licensing system. Their concern was straightforward: a new entrant in a small market threatens their income, and the regulatory framework that protects taxi licensing is the same framework that has historically been undercut every time rideshare arrives in a new town.
Cluster two: standards and safety concerns. A smaller group raised concerns about the quality of vehicles, the vetting of drivers, and what happens if something goes wrong in a town where the nearest serious police presence might be two hours away. These weren’t anti-rideshare arguments in principle — they were “before you launch this, prove you can run it safely” arguments.
Both clusters deserve a direct response, not deflection.
To the existing operators
The Broome taxi business is not the Sydney taxi business. The structural problem we wrote about in post 02 of this series is not a critique of any individual driver. We know most of the operating drivers in Broome. Several have been doing this for longer than Plum Oak has held the WACHS PATS contract. The professionalism is real. The market is just chronically undersupplied.
Here is what we believe and have committed to internally:
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Rideshare and taxis are not zero-sum in an undersupplied market. When demand exceeds capacity — which the survey data shows is almost continuously the case in Broome — adding supply does not destroy the existing operators. It picks up the trips they were already turning away.
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Several Pearl Coast Rental driver-partners will be existing taxi drivers. If you’re already licensed and already driving in Broome, the path onto our platform is the shortest path in the country. The vehicle is ready. The mentorship is built in. The bonus structure for activation is up to $3,000 — terms apply — and that bonus is available to existing drivers, not just new entrants.
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We will publish our trip volume data quarterly. If we are pulling work away from the existing fleet rather than expanding the total trip pool, the data will show it. We commit to making that data public on this site so the market — and any regulator who wants to look — can verify what’s actually happening.
If the data ever shows we are shrinking the existing taxi market rather than expanding the trip pool, we will adjust. We have said the same thing to the WA Department of Transport.
To the standards-and-safety concerns
These are the concerns we find easiest to engage with, because they are concerns we share.
Three points on what is in place.
Driver vetting. Every Uber driver-partner in Australia is required to hold a current full Australian driver’s licence, pass a National Police Check, and complete the Uber-required vehicle inspection. Pearl Coast Rental adds a layer on top: every driver-partner we onboard locally is assigned a mentor from our driver development team — someone who has driven in Broome for a year or more — for their first 20 trips. That’s not standard practice for rideshare elsewhere in Australia. It is for us, because we are doing this in a regional market where the consequences of getting it wrong are visible to everyone.
Vehicle standards. Our rental fleet is manufacturer-warranted, comprehensively insured, and serviced on the same cycle as fleet vehicles in metropolitan markets. The pricing tiers on the Programs page include the insurance, registration, CTP and roadside-assistance cover in the weekly rate — we are not running a stripped-back regional product.
Safety in incidents. Every Uber trip is GPS-tracked end to end and recorded against the driver and rider account. That is materially better than a non-metered private car operating outside the licensed network — which is what 43% of survey respondents reported their customers had been overcharged by. A regulated rideshare service is not a step down on safety. In this market it is a step up.
What we have not yet done
We do not yet have a public-meeting calendar with the Broome Chamber, the existing taxi network, and the WA Department of Transport. We should. We’ve started internal conversations on what that looks like and we’ll publish the dates when they’re set.
We do not yet have a sector-by-sector cost-of-failure model that quantifies what the existing transport supply gap is costing the town. That’s post 09 of this series, still in draft.
We have not run the survey in any town other than Broome. The next wave, in 2027, will cover Derby, Fitzroy Crossing, Karratha, Port Hedland, Kununurra and Halls Creek. The 6% may be a different number in those markets and we should know that before we expand into them.
Why this post matters
A market only works if dissent gets heard. The 84% number is the one we will be quoting in pitches and on the homepage. The 6% number is the one we have to live with day to day. They are the people we will see in the Chamber meetings, at the airport, on the road into town.
We do not need them to agree with us about rideshare. We need them to know that we read their answers, took them seriously, and structured our launch around hearing them out.
If you were one of the 6% and you want to talk to us directly — about anything we got wrong in this post, or anything we haven’t yet committed to publicly — we are easy to reach. The number on the footer of this site is Lockie’s mobile. It picks up.