This Mr Paul Chan and many other so called "scholars" like
to compare HK, NY and Singapore without even trying to understand
how taxis operate in the various cities.
Let this simple minded taxi driver tell you something:
In HK, taxis operate within restricted geographical areas.
Although the red taxis (majority) can operate all of HK,
except south of Lantau island, most travel within the city urban
area itself. Green taxis operate within the New Territories
and Blue taxis, within Lantau island. Thus, they travel
relatively short distances thereby making more trips. Most
people live and work within the urban area.
In NY, most cabs operate within the Brooklyn and Queens areas,
where most people live and work too. Very few travel South to
Straten Island or north to Manhattan or even Bronx. You try
getting a cab in Manhattan and ask the driver to take you to
Straten or even NY city.
In Singapore, you have people living in the far areas of
Woodlands, Pasir Ris and Jurong West, but work in the City. If you
fetch a pax at night from the city to Jurong West at 12am, chances
are you are going to have to make an empty trip back to the
city to fetch more people. The surcharge helps to
compensate this, although that is not the real intent.
Let's look at the statistics. HK has 18,138 taxis making
about 1 million passenger trips a day. That means each taxi makes
55 passenger trips a day (Sep 2013 figures).
In Singapore, we have 27,492 taxis making 813,763 passenger
trips a day (Nov 2013 figures). That means each taxi makes
only 29.6 passenger trips a day which is about half that of HK.
What does it tell you? That HK taxis make shorter trips
mostly within the urban areas only, whilst in Singapore, you make
longer passenger trips in and out of the city to the
heartlands.
If you can guarantee me at least 55 passenger trips a day, then
perhaps we can talk about removing the surcharges.
Imagine we follow HK style...
Break Singapore into 4 portion (NSEW) and the drop off point in
the middle of Singapore (dunno where?? Let's say Bugis)
North, South, East and West have 5k Taxis ea..
Pax from Jurong wants to go to Changi.. they must alight at
Bugis and take another taxi plying in their destinated area...
Seems like bus interchange leh..But definately able to spread
out the taxis...
However, still a lot of grey area lah... Do paxs want to pay 2 x
trip fare??? Who (TDs) should be in which area???
