<TABLE cellSpacing=0 cellPadding=0 width="100%" border=0><TBODY><TR>High cab rentals and surcharges akin to price fixing
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->LAST Saturday's letter, 'Lowering taxi fares won't help cabbies', reflects the perennial controversy over public transport fare structures.
The common practice of large taxi operators charging high rentals on cabbies and unilaterally imposing phone- booking fees and other surcharges on commuters is akin to price fixing and against the spirit of the Competition Act.
There is no logic in imposing Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) charges on taxis when they are bona fide 'public transport' vehicles and not private cars. Our lawmakers should correct these anomalies. Only when rental is reduced to a fair level, say a 30 per cent cut, and all surcharges abolished, with no ERP charges, would taxi fares come down to 'affordable' levels.
To revamp the taxi industry, we should look at the time-proven, meter-based and regulated single-fare system in Hong Kong, where 90 per cent of taxis are owned by individuals.
Each cab there makes 61 daily passenger trips, while a Singapore cab does about 37 trips. We have 24,000 taxis while Hong Kong has only 18,000. Sad to note, we do fewer daily trips despite having more cabs. It means that our taxi fleets are not efficient in picking up passengers on the roads.
At the same time, cabbies are struggling with customer-unfriendly impediments. In terms of the compound passenger load factor, Hong Kong cabs perform 2.2 times better than us.
Perhaps, we need to do some retrospective study on the merits or demerits of deregulation. Profit for shareholders is the prime objective of listed corporations. Allowing taxis to come under the control of two large listed corporations may not be in the best interest of the public after all. If we don't revert to a simple meter-based fare system regulated by the Ministry of Transport and eliminate all impediments in the system, we would be perpetuating the burden on customers and cabbies.
Paul Chan
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<!-- START OF : div id="storytext"--><!-- more than 4 paragraphs -->LAST Saturday's letter, 'Lowering taxi fares won't help cabbies', reflects the perennial controversy over public transport fare structures.
The common practice of large taxi operators charging high rentals on cabbies and unilaterally imposing phone- booking fees and other surcharges on commuters is akin to price fixing and against the spirit of the Competition Act.
There is no logic in imposing Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) charges on taxis when they are bona fide 'public transport' vehicles and not private cars. Our lawmakers should correct these anomalies. Only when rental is reduced to a fair level, say a 30 per cent cut, and all surcharges abolished, with no ERP charges, would taxi fares come down to 'affordable' levels.
To revamp the taxi industry, we should look at the time-proven, meter-based and regulated single-fare system in Hong Kong, where 90 per cent of taxis are owned by individuals.
Each cab there makes 61 daily passenger trips, while a Singapore cab does about 37 trips. We have 24,000 taxis while Hong Kong has only 18,000. Sad to note, we do fewer daily trips despite having more cabs. It means that our taxi fleets are not efficient in picking up passengers on the roads.
At the same time, cabbies are struggling with customer-unfriendly impediments. In terms of the compound passenger load factor, Hong Kong cabs perform 2.2 times better than us.
Perhaps, we need to do some retrospective study on the merits or demerits of deregulation. Profit for shareholders is the prime objective of listed corporations. Allowing taxis to come under the control of two large listed corporations may not be in the best interest of the public after all. If we don't revert to a simple meter-based fare system regulated by the Ministry of Transport and eliminate all impediments in the system, we would be perpetuating the burden on customers and cabbies.
Paul Chan
