Text On Taxis

Singaporeans have a love-hate relationship with taxis. We love that there are so many of them, we hate there are none around when we need them. We love them when the driver puts the pedal to metal and deftly executes F1-quality manouvres to get us to that already-late meeting, we hate it when taxis miss crashing into our cars by a hair's breadth while performing those moves. We love how taxis are so cheap, in Bangkok, and hate how pricey a 10-minute ride can be in London, Paris and New York (one reason by Singaporeans can’t be famous fashion designers).

In la-la land, prices are set to go up. Iran, Iraq, Nigeria and Osama's band of merry albeit angsty men have in one way or another had an impact on world oil prices, and in turn played havoc on stock markets, electricity prices and taxi fares. How macro to micro, sort of like the butterfly in chaos theory except in reverse. The major taxi companies have announced hikes to flag-down fares, distance rates and booking fees. Taxi drivers yelled 'It's about time' and toasted the news over mugs of Guinness Stout at coffeeshops while the public gasped with looks of shock and horror. In the back of our minds, we knew that taxi fares were going up – we just needed to make that obligatory whimper of objection.

Here’s my take on making everyone happy:
- raise the flag down, from $2.40 to $5.
- forget about booking charges and surcharges. They don’t serve a purpose. They in fact make taxi drivers lazy and contribute to the whole “it’s 10pm, I’m in town, and all the taxis are ON CALL” phenomenon. Ok, maybe a dollar for getting a taxi into a off-main-road location.
- keep the same distance rates

Taxis, like women, one cable provider and air pollution, we’ll all learn to live and get by. For the time being.