Something Wrong with Our Taxi System

It’s so hard to get a taxi even after peak hour. It seems as if all cabs are waiting for you to use the advance booking. Or perhaps they select certain areas they want to go to. It’s totally impossible and frustrating when it rains. Is it an issue of not enough cabs on the road to support the demand? Especially now that it’s almost impossible to afford a car based on the new COE, and our population is increasing.

Have you had a similar issue when trying to get a cab? It’s frustrating to me as I really am a stickler for punctuality and the worse thing is for me to keep people waiting. Hope taxi operators like Comfort & City Cab can field this question and improve on this very essential service. But then again they are probably only interested in profit and satisfying the shareholder like for most companies?

I have to add that once I get into the cab the cabbies are so polite and nice that I forget my frustration. Anyway they are just trying to make the best living possible. It’s the system that I fault. Somehow I feel that I had much better service when Comfort and City Cabs were separate competing companies. Now that they are one, it feels like they are monopolizing the whole scene.

In other countries taxi service might be a whole lot crappier but then again they have much cheaper cars (no COE) and don’t have to rely on public transport as much.

Well just my complaints for the day.

About bookjunkie

Blogging about life in Singapore & recently cancer too.
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16 Responses to Something Wrong with Our Taxi System

  1. Katrijn says:

    When leaves his office, there is never a cab – when he turns the corner, all the cabs are waiting until the CBD workers use the advance booking system! It’s not allowed, but they still do it. I also read on uncle Frank’s taxi driver blog that taxi driver sit out the rain, because it’s dangerous to drive in the rain and also their taxi’s get really wet and dirty. Apparently, that’s why there’s never a cab when it’s raining!

    • bookjunkie says:

      I heard about the rain reason too. It’s really so frustrating and I hate being late. Feel so desperate at time when I keep calling or using the app and get a ‘fail or no taxis try again 10 minutes later’. My blood pressure rises.

  2. gdy2shoez says:

    I’m a victim of being ‘cut’ by a call-book passenger myself. The ease of booking a cab with a few touches on a mobile phone app has placed a premium on getting anywhere on time. Out of 5 cabs I wait for, 4 are usually ON CALL. We have taxi stands where no taxi stops and crowded taxi stands where half the cabs coming in are ON CALL. Yes the taxi system is in omnishambles, and if the China bus strike had gone out of hand, we commuters would be totally SCREWED.

    • bookjunkie says:

      Yeah and we’re supposed to be relying on public transport…so incredibly frustrating. Yes it’s impossible to get a taxi at the taxi stands…something very wrong. Thanks for your input too 🙂

  3. sos says:

    They say that there are too many cabs in Singapore but I feel there are very few when you need one 🙂 I don’t know where thay are hiding. And so many of them are like, won’t go here, will go only here blah blah…

  4. Charley says:

    No taxis in the rain is because they are more likely to have accidents and they have $1000 docked from their pay if they have a crash, until it is proven it is not their fault. So blame Comfort and City etc not the drivers.

    Its definitely getting worse though even trying to book them often have to try 3-4 tries to get one in the CBD…..

  5. Kirsten says:

    Trying to find a taxi can be an utter nightmare. Could it really be possible that there aren’t enough taxis in Singapore?

    I think there are many taxi drivers who do in a way try to game the system by resorting to certain strategies. I can’t really blame them; it’s not easy and everyone’s trying to find the best way to get by.

  6. octo says:

    The taxi companies need to enforce stricter policies for the drivers – to many flouting rules to squeeze more benefits for themselves. The docking of $1000 is obviously to encourage safe driving and the companies are right to do that, If they are not even confident of driving safely in the rain and choose to hide at the roadside, they should not even become taxi drivers in the first place as they are putting others’ lives at risk for their own rice bowl. The companies should also make booking acceptance mandatory since they already have a tracking system – just assign directly to any of the drivers in the booking vicinity and penalize them if they reject it. Cabbies are simply given too much freedom nowadays that they forget they are in a service industry and customers’ needs should always come first.

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