On 31 January 2025 two members of the Ticino cantonal parliament, Tiziano Galeazzi and Roberta Soldati, filed a motion on the taxi sector. The point that matters to anyone actually running a dispatch operation is the second one: they ask for "a study of a unified solution (operations centre) for all taxi operators in Ticino".
And they immediately specify what they do not mean: "not understood as cantonal administration, but as an operations centre", preferably run by private parties, so as not to weigh on cantonal finances.
What else it asks
Beyond the shared dispatch, the motion asks the municipalities and the canton to analyse the problem by reactivating a 2023 intercommunal working group, to put contracts, social benefits, wages and tariffs under a single regulation by abolishing the current A and B categories, to identify who should supervise the system, and to look at foreign experience, including capping the number of drivers.
On that last point: it is the motion's request, reported as such. Software for licensed operators has no business holding a position on how many licences there should be.
The government's answer, and the line that counts
The State Council invited parliament not to follow up on the motion. The main reason is municipal autonomy: the proposal, it writes, "would tangibly affect the current municipal autonomy in defining and managing local specificities". It adds that it does not want to take "the indicated path of cantonalisation", preferring to leave room for different solutions across the territory.
So far, an ordinary refusal. Then comes the sentence that is worth more than the rest. An operations centre run by private parties, the government says, "falls within the freedom of commerce and organisation of those who wish to offer taxi services".
Read for what it is: the canton will not build that dispatch centre, and it puts in writing that building it is up to whoever offers the service. It is not a door closing. It is a door pointed at somebody else.
This is worth stating precisely, because it is easy to misread: the government said no to a public solution and observed that a private one is legitimate. It did not endorse anyone.
Ten years, same place
This is not the first attempt. In 2015 a member of parliament filed a motion for a cantonal taxi regulation modelled on Zurich. That act, according to local press, was withdrawn on 11 December 2023 without having produced the regulation.
Ten years between the first request and the second, and Ticino still regulates taxis municipality by municipality. In Lugano alone, more than two hundred professionals compete for the same ground.
Anyone waiting for the solution to arrive from above now has a track record to reason from, and it says the same thing every time.
A note on sourcing
The number of the parliamentary act and its current status could not be verified on the primary source: the cantonal parliament's own site refused connection from here, repeatedly. So the motion is cited through the press, no act number appears, and nothing is claimed about how the vote went. If and when the primary source is reachable, that detail belongs in the piece.
What is left, and to whom
Three things are known. Parliament thinks a shared dispatch would help. The government will not build it. And the same government writes that building it falls within the freedom of those who offer the service.
There is no fourth party in that list.
Original (Italian): In Ticino la centrale unica l'ha chiesta il parlamento
Disclosure: I build UrbanGo, dispatch software for licensed taxi and private-hire operators. Everything above is sourced; this paragraph is the part where I sell something.
