Only Comfort meets taxi availability standards
01 Jul 2015|1,856 views
The Straits Times reported that only one of the six cab companies here has met taxi availability standards set by the transport authorities. Comfort managed to fully meet the requirements, while CityCab, TransCab and Premier had lapses. SMRT and Prime failed to meet the standards and will be fined, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said yesterday.
SMRT has been fined around $45,000 for failing to meet standards in the first two months of the January to April review period, while Prime has to pay about $44,000 for flunking in the first three months. They have two weeks to pay the fines, which are based on a firm's fleet size.
Besides meeting the minimum daily mileage, taxi operators have to make sure a high percentage of their fleet is operating during peak hours. For instance, from 7:00am to 11:00am and 5:00pm to 11:00pm, 85 percent of cabs have to be on the road - up from 70 percent when the standards were introduced in 2013.
The LTA's action comes amid a public debate about how the taxi service, a perennial bugbear with commuters, can be improved. Many welcome the introduction of taxi app services, such as Uber and GrabTaxi, as these offer alternative rides. But taxi operators have argued that the new players are thriving on unfair competition.
The latest results took into account a new method of measuring availability, the LTA said. It is now based on a taxi company's hired-out fleet instead of its total fleet. The authority said the move was in response to feedback from the National Taxi Association and taxi firms, and was applied retrospectively from 1st Jan this year.
LTA said this was a more accurate way of measuring availability. Cabbies would not have to increase their mileage to make up for the non-performance of unhired taxis.
The Straits Times reported that only one of the six cab companies here has met taxi availability standards set by the transport authorities. Comfort managed to fully meet the requirements, while CityCab, TransCab and Premier had lapses. SMRT and Prime failed to meet the standards and will be fined, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) said yesterday.
SMRT has been fined around $45,000 for failing to meet standards in the first two months of the January to April review period, while Prime has to pay about $44,000 for flunking in the first three months. They have two weeks to pay the fines, which are based on a firm's fleet size.
Besides meeting the minimum daily mileage, taxi operators have to make sure a high percentage of their fleet is operating during peak hours. For instance, from 7:00am to 11:00am and 5:00pm to 11:00pm, 85 percent of cabs have to be on the road - up from 70 percent when the standards were introduced in 2013.
The LTA's action comes amid a public debate about how the taxi service, a perennial bugbear with commuters, can be improved. Many welcome the introduction of taxi app services, such as Uber and GrabTaxi, as these offer alternative rides. But taxi operators have argued that the new players are thriving on unfair competition.
The latest results took into account a new method of measuring availability, the LTA said. It is now based on a taxi company's hired-out fleet instead of its total fleet. The authority said the move was in response to feedback from the National Taxi Association and taxi firms, and was applied retrospectively from 1st Jan this year.
LTA said this was a more accurate way of measuring availability. Cabbies would not have to increase their mileage to make up for the non-performance of unhired taxis.
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