PRINCE.EDWARD.ISLAND (CBC) - With gasoline and other costs rising, taxi drivers have asked Charlottetown city council for an increase in fares.

"It's not just the fuel," Neal Harpham, president of the Taxi Drivers Association, told CBC News Tuesday.

"Everything's gone up, and we've been stuck for the same for so long, our industry has never really caught up to anything that I'm aware of, in all the time that I've been in it ... Somebody at the end of the day has to go and pay for that $2.50 loaf of bread, and you've got to find a way to do it."

Taxi drivers in Charlottetown work by zone, not by meter. The current rates, set in 2005, start at $5. Harpham recently took a petition signed by the owners and drivers of all four Charlottetown cab companies to the city's police committee asking for a $1 increase in fares.

Harpham, who has been working in the industry for 34 years, said he's been getting a lot of support from customers.

"It's amazing. It's really the first time that I recall that much [support] being generated by customers who can't believe that we're all still in business," he said.

"I even had a customer here yesterday who told me that that was not enough. I mean, what could I say to that?"

Earlier this week, the police committee told city council it will soon introduce a resolution to increase taxi fares. Harpham is confident the resolution will pass.

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