LTA gets tough on taxis misusing ‘on-call’ sign
The Land Transport Authority (LTA) announced on Wednesday it is raising the Quality of Service (QoS) standards of taxi companies in three areas — safety, drivers' conduct and the availability of taxis through call booking.
One of the new measures will require operators to equip all taxis with a centrally-controlled "on call" system by 2015 to minimise misuse of the sign.
This comes after frequent complaints from commuters that taxi drivers seem to use the "on call" sign before the start of surcharges.
At least 40 percent of the taxi fleet must fulfill this requirement by the end of this year.
To reduce empty cruising of taxis, all new taxi companies will also be required to equip their entire fleet with call booking capabilities so that they can assign jobs to taxis near the caller.
The minimum fleet size has also been doubled to 800 "to ensure that individual taxi companies have sufficient critical mass to provide an adequate level of service to the commuters".
These revised licensing requirements will take immediate effect for all new taxi operators. Existing companies will need to meet the requirements when they renew their Taxi Operator License.
In a move to shorten commuters' waiting time to get a taxi through call booking, LTA will also raise the QoS standards for call booking performance indicators.
For instance, large taxi companies will now need to achieve a call answer rate of at least 95 per cent, up from the current 90 per cent.
Of the calls that get through the booking hotline, at least 92 per cent must be successfully matched and at least 95 per cent of passengers, instead of 85 per cent currently, will have their called cabs arrive within 10 minutes.
From 1 October, the hourly monitoring of call booking performance indicators for the evening peak period will also be extended to 12 midnight, up an hour from the current 5pm to 11pm, to also cover weekends and public holidays.
LTA added in its statement that it plans to study measures with the National Taxi Association to regulate taxi availability, especially during peak hours.
The study is expected to be completed later this year and results will be announced then.
