Taxi fare to be increased com Jan08  

Well, at least you get to own the cab you are driving. Once the price of the cab has been paid off, the cost of driving the car is just the maintenance.

Many years ago it used to be like that for some companies.
But now that the bigger company has bought out these smaller ones, they are all on rental basis.

Asking for fare increase is one way to increase the income of the driver. But what is the figging point if later in the year they increase the rental again?
With road usages planned for a pay per use, where another additional 30 more gantries planned to be up for next year, driving is getting more and more expensive!

And road tax is not going to be reduced anytime soon.
With the higher cost of using the road coupled with a higher rental fee, what good is an increase in fares?

The situation is only bad here. It is not even the ratio of taxi to people. Just look at Hong Kong and you will know.

Precisely! And we have a whole bunch of government sponsored scholars sitting at the top of so many ministries not able to think of something good to revamp the situation.

Mind you, those sponsored scholars are sponsored by tax payer's money. Your money and my money! And my tax dollars are not working hard enough IMHO.
All they can think of is to increase the cost of usage to hurt people in the pocket as a form of regulation. That is like so outdated!

I was going thru this weeks papers.
They are moving forward with the increase to the coming Monday. (17 Dec 2007).
So instead of waiting for Jan next year, it will be the period before Christmas. The period where most people will take cabs cos of last minute shopping. Laden with bags of goods and stuff, not likely one will want to struggle with other commuters in the train or the bus to go home.

Scheming buggers! I wonder when the rest of the taxi companies will follow suit. Humbug!

Well, taxis are indispensable for some people in certain jobs.
I remember back when I was a vendor doing support for systems in companies, we can only do work or upgrades on the systems in the night when the traffic accessing the servers are low.

And these hours that we are allowed to work is at the ungodly hours like 1 or 2 am and lasts till about 4 or 5 am.
Those are the times where we do not have the luxury of the public transport, be it the bus or the trains.

And in remote places like data centers in the far corners of the island, any public transport serving the area has already stopped.

So to get our jobs done, we have to take a cab in and take a cab home when we are done. So taking a cab for these people are a necessity rather than a luxury. And I am sure there are much more jobs out there that require one to work in unearthly hours as well.

Like some of the forum readers who wrote into straits times, the whole system has to be revamped before any good services can be seen from the taxi fleet as a whole.
Added the few black sheep that spoil the reputation of taxi drivers in recent months, I am sure the revamp would be welcomed.

I was going thru this weeks papers.
They are moving forward with the increase to the coming Monday. (17 Dec 2007).
So instead of waiting for Jan next year, it will be the period before Christmas. The period where most people will take cabs cos of last minute shopping. Laden with bags of goods and stuff, not likely one will want to struggle with other commuters in the train or the bus to go home.

Scheming buggers! I wonder when the rest of the taxi companies will follow suit. Humbug!

LOL.. Totally expected. Actually, due to petrol price increase, the taxi drivers were asking for rental decrease but in the end.. the company decides to pass the cost to us. =(
Except for living with it.. nothing much we can do.

I have to agree with you. We as consumers can only suck our thumbs and bear with it.
Most times, when we do get a taxi, it is out of necessity rather than luxury.
I cannot imagine going for a night job to carry out my duties 3-4 hours in advance so that I can take the public transport. Then wait another 3-4 hours after the job so that I can catch the morning bus to go home.

This is ridiculous!

Sigh~~~ another increase in expenses at the cost of other necessities in life!

That is the very question I always wanted to ask.
The taxi companies just rents the cars out to the drivers. They do not provide the drivers fuel for driving the taxis. The cost of petrol or diesel is borne by the drivers, not the taxi companies.

Even when they are subsidizing the diesel or petrol that they sell to the drivers, the profits they make more than cover for the subsidies.

So higher fuel prices as an excuse to raise rents is really not an excuse at all!
All they keep saying is that they are concern that the drivers are not earning enough. So the onus is to increase the flag down fare and the distance rate so that the drivers can earn more. I can almost guarantee you that not long after the drivers get their fare increases, the rental fees will go up, citing unknown rise in operations costs. That would negate the increase in fares in the first place. Then the cycles goes all over again.

It is getting more and more like listening to a broken record over and over and over and over.... again!

I was going thru this weeks papers.
They are moving forward with the increase to the coming Monday. (17 Dec 2007).
So instead of waiting for Jan next year, it will be the period before Christmas. The period where most people will take cabs cos of last minute shopping. Laden with bags of goods and stuff, not likely one will want to struggle with other commuters in the train or the bus to go home.

Scheming buggers! I wonder when the rest of the taxi companies will follow suit. Humbug!

I do agree that my approach is a little over generalizing the situation.
But those additional couldn't be that high to warrant such a high increase.

Back in the 80s, renting a cab cost only like $60 a day.
Correct me if I am wrong. Two years ago,it was about $75-80.
Current rentals are about $94-103.

My dad used to work as a taxi driver and he manages to put me through primary and secondary school.
My buddy's father was also a taxi driver and he managed to put two sons through tertiary education, both graduated with diplomas.

So it makes me wonder, why so many are still grumbling about not being able to earn enough when there are more passengers than cabs to go around.

I was going thru this weeks papers.
They are moving forward with the increase to the coming Monday. (17 Dec 2007).
So instead of waiting for Jan next year, it will be the period before Christmas. The period where most people will take cabs cos of last minute shopping. Laden with bags of goods and stuff, not likely one will want to struggle with other commuters in the train or the bus to go home.

Scheming buggers! I wonder when the rest of the taxi companies will follow suit. Humbug!

Ha ha ha... I am a system engineer.
Not much of a number person. Just that I get long commutes to work and my mind starts to wonder.
I am just trying to make sense of all the figures that are deemed increasing which I cannot compute.
So when I cannot justify it, I cannot accept the reasoning given behind the raise.
Simple as that. ;)

Faint ah. Last time you study wat one?

ha ha ha... computers lah.

Diao.

Computing?
Computer Science?
Computer Engineering?
Computer games?

Ah duh~~~!
Computer Science lah.
Back in my days, there were no such thing as Computer Engineering or Computer Games modules.

I was going thru this weeks papers.
They are moving forward with the increase to the coming Monday. (17 Dec 2007).
So instead of waiting for Jan next year, it will be the period before Christmas. The period where most people will take cabs cos of last minute shopping. Laden with bags of goods and stuff, not likely one will want to struggle with other commuters in the train or the bus to go home.

Scheming buggers! I wonder when the rest of the taxi companies will follow suit. Humbug!

I know that cost is increasing due to fuel and fall of the US dollar.
What the government can help to do is to reduce the tax on these items and cost could be controlled to some extend.
In stead of reducing cost for us, they are saying we have to bite the bullet and bear with it. Sigh~~~~!

I was going thru this weeks papers.
They are moving forward with the increase to the coming Monday. (17 Dec 2007).
So instead of waiting for Jan next year, it will be the period before Christmas. The period where most people will take cabs cos of last minute shopping. Laden with bags of goods and stuff, not likely one will want to struggle with other commuters in the train or the bus to go home.

Scheming buggers! I wonder when the rest of the taxi companies will follow suit. Humbug!

Where I am from, the prices of getting a car is getting cheaper and cheaper. But there is a catch! The cost of using the road is getting more and more expensive!
Imagine, those darn ERP gantries charging up to $7.50 for a one way trip from home to town. And with the recent increase in ERP, it is now way more than that!
Now they are planning another 30 more gantries island wide.
When they first announce the erection of these gantries, there were promises of reduction in the road taxes as people will be charged for road usage.
Now that the gantries are up for years already, there is no reduction in sight. In fact, the cost for using the gantries are getting more and more expensive with each passing month!

I was going thru this weeks papers.
They are moving forward with the increase to the coming Monday. (17 Dec 2007).
So instead of waiting for Jan next year, it will be the period before Christmas. The period where most people will take cabs cos of last minute shopping. Laden with bags of goods and stuff, not likely one will want to struggle with other commuters in the train or the bus to go home.

Scheming buggers! I wonder when the rest of the taxi companies will follow suit. Humbug!

Tell me about it squaretile.
They make it so that more people will take the train and the buses especially when the last bus or train is leaving for home.

Then these transport company will come up with excuse saying they need to allocate more resources to handle the larger crowd. Then comes the crap about having to deploy more trains and extending the last train hours to cater tot he crowd.

Then comes the ultimate crunch! They need to increase fare due to these additional "services" which increased operation costs!
So PTC will "in view of this" increase fares.

It is a conspiracy, I tell you! *grumble* *grumble*

I was going thru this weeks papers.
They are moving forward with the increase to the coming Monday. (17 Dec 2007).
So instead of waiting for Jan next year, it will be the period before Christmas. The period where most people will take cabs cos of last minute shopping. Laden with bags of goods and stuff, not likely one will want to struggle with other commuters in the train or the bus to go home.

Scheming buggers! I wonder when the rest of the taxi companies will follow suit. Humbug!