My blog (http://www.cabby65.blogspot.com) is about my life and experiences as a cabby in Singapore.
Hopefully, my today's posting about my observations and experiences of a few
things uniquely Singapore will be helpful in widening my readers'
perspectives of taxi drivers here. I hope you're not tired of the banality of my posts.
Now, I'm thinking frivolously of the word -"rank", which has all sorts
of meanings. Rank could mean a position in an army or a taxi rank could
mean a taxi queue or taxi stand. You could also use rank to emphasize
something that's is terribly smelly.
For me, taxi rank is closest to my heart. You see, whenever I see an
empty taxi rank, I can't resist the temptation to get in quickly and be
the
first in the rank instantly. But usually ranks have taxis on them and
when you join one, you have to wait until you progress to the front
before getting a customer. Believe me, more often than not. you have to
usually make a long,
long wait before you get a customer, especially at airport taxi rank.
Frequently, it takes about an hour of waiting in an airport rank before a
customer jumps in. So you can imagine when the customer wants to drop
off just a few kilometers from the airport. like Simei or Pasir Ris,
your heart shattered when the taxi fare is less than $10 (inclusive of
$3 airport surcharge) and
that's for an hour of frustrating wait in the airport rank. Well, just curse your dammed luck, buddy!
At the same time,
you can also imagine the attraction when a taxi driver sees an rank
empty. But buddies, don't be too happy. Why a taxi rank is empty?.
Usually, it's because there are no people around. I usually give myself ten
minutes in an empty taxi rank. If no customers approaches by then, I
would quickly move off to ply the road elsewhere.
Now, in uniquely Singapore, we have the ERP (Electronic Road Pricing) system,
which is an electronic system of road pricing based on a pay-as-you-use
principle. Adopted in 1998. Singapore was the first city in the world
to implement an electronic toll road collection system with flexible
pricing to control traffic congestion.
ERP gantries are placed around the CBD (Central Business District - city areas), major expressways and heavily used roads. If a
customer board a cab inside the CBD from 5pm to midnight at every day of the week, they have to
pay a surcharge of $3. Most cabbies are seduced by this surcharge and
converge into CBD like bees to honey. All ranks inside the CBD at
popular shopping malls, like Lucky Plaza and office buildings in Suntec
are lined with many, many taxis with ready customers. Whereas, just outside the CBD, around
the fringes taxi ranks at Far East Plaza, Orchard Tower, Vivo City, etc..etc.., the ranks are empty
of taxis but with many angry customers. This is what I call "the CBD
Dilemma". This is indeed a problem that has plagued the taxi business
here for a long time and nobody seems to have a solution for it.
It's natural for cabbies to prefer picking customers inside CBD to earn
the $3 surcharge. They are ply the streets for the money not for
pleasure. Perhaps, LTA should designate some "popular fringes CBD taxi
stands" with
location surcharge of $2 like the Singapore Expo Center in Changi. I
think it's worth paying an extra $2 than endure a frustrating half an
hour wait at taxi ranks. By the way, taxi is not a public transport
service like buses or MRT trains but a premium transport service run by
self-employed drivers and private companies. I can hear screams of protests from taxi commuters, liao!. But in today's ST forum, someone suggested starting the $3 CBD surcharge earlier from 2pm instead of 5pm. Sure or not?
Anyway, when it's midnight without the $3 surcharge but instead the 50%
midnight surcharge rolls in, it
seems that all the taxis in Singapore (about 28,000) are out and
everywhere looking for business. They would come like army of termites
and cleared all the once-angry customers within minutes and soon, the
streets are filled with hundreds of empty taxis hunting for the few
customers left...it's a pathetic sight. Each will try to out race
the other as soon as the traffic light turn green. Most of the time,
they race for nothing.
There are so many things I love about being a cabbie, mainly, the
people and the adventure and the unpredictability of each shift. And of
course, the flexible working hours. You're your own boss, with nobody
breathing down your neck. But there are also a few things that I
dislike, like traffic jams and accidents and all the abuses that some
difficult customers heaped on cabbies. Well, take the heat or get out of
the kitchen.
"After all being said, I now recall a Malay family of a mother and two
teenage daughters in my cab last night. On the way, they were talking in
Malay, which I don't understand. They talked and laughed, laughed and
talked, for the whole journey. Nothing in this world seemed to be able
to spoil their high spirit. And that's the spirit I like to adopt." ....by Dr.Cai Mingjie.. a PhD taxi driver.
Please post in forum 1802, Singapore taxis. This one is a dead forum except for the ghostly presence of its former chiefs and they were are very big on rank.