In Continuum.

This is not a case of whereby we have taken things for granted because we have these services at the tips of our fingers. If you are a local, you probably have a bus stop fifty to a hundred meters from your front door - save for Pao, who has to walk fifteen minutes to find one. You are probably going to find taxi cabs along the road in front of your house every half a minute or so - again, save for Pao who lives in the middle of nowhere. That can be said about the availability of our buses and taxi cabs, but the same cannot be said regarding their services and of course - their prices. This entry is particularly targeted at how bad our country is when it comes to taxi cabs, the side that foreigners do not see because the locals are suffering because of your presence.

As most of you might have already know, there has been a recent price hike in taxi cabs around the island. Some of us read about them in newspapers or watched it on the news, while some of us learned it the hard way while being stuck in a morning traffic. Here's what it used to be like before the price hike. The moment you jump into the taxi, it'd probably cost you $2.50, no matter where you are going. It was a lot cheaper before the previous price hike, but a lot of us got used to that price anyway, after some time. The meter jumped at a ten cent increment, which is pretty reasonable because jumping at five cents at a time would be pretty ridiculous if you ask me. If you are taking taxis at peak hours of everyday, then you are supposed to pay two dollars on top of what you are already paying for the trip. Of course, calling the cab to a specific location is going to cost you another two dollars more. That was how it was, but we can all throw that mentality out of the windows now, because - the pirates are here.

I read about the price hike in the papers, and the title of the article read "No decrease in the number of passengers: 50% of the interviewed Taxi Drivers. Which got me wondering just how misleading titles like that can be, especially when people are going to think that everybody else has gotten used to the price hike. Of course, fifty percent of the drivers saying one thing could also mean the other half saying the other. The truth is, a lot of us haven't stopped taking taxis simply because a lot of us don't even know about such a thing as a price hike. Jonno was sitting comfortably in the taxi one morning as he traveled towards the gym in town from his home in Sembawang when he discovered that the meter was jumping at an alarming rate, that if it was to be a human heart rate, then that person would have died five minutes into the ride. It is amazing as it is how he survived the trip without murdering the driver one way or another. Either way, the red numbers flashed before his eyes as the taxi pulled up to his location, and that was when he coined the term 'evil' along with all taxi drivers out there. $25, from his house in Sembawang to Orchard Road, he would have walked if he had a choice.

Here's a little rundown on what the prices are like now. Sitting in the cab right now, it'd automatically cost you $2.80, that's 30¢ more than the usual price. On top of that, the meters are no longer jumping at 10¢ increments, but 20¢ increments. That's a hundred percent jump from the previous price, but that's not all. Peak hours used to cost you an extra two dollars, no matter how far you travel. Whether it is going to be from the airport in the East to an army camp in the West, or your house in Ang Mo Kio to Toa Payoh, it costs just two dollars no matter how long it takes, how far it is. This time around, it will cost 35% of the total taxi fare. That is to say, if your trip cost $15 by itself, you'd have to pay $20.25 for the entire trip. Imagine that. Jonno's trip costed him $25 from Sembawang to town, imagine if you have to take a cab home from the airport - which by itself already has its extra charges. Yes, the pirates are here to stay.

The taxi cab companies are probably going to blame it on the recent rise in oil prices around the world, and it inevitably affected the fares on their part. After all, a friend of mine from the States complained that a liter of gas costed him $30.89 last Wednesday. By the time it was Friday, it became $34.49. Everybody who drives is feeling the pinch, which is also why most taxi cab companies have been increasing their fare prices, but it's not like their service or frequencies have improved in any way. They are still ignorant of most local passengers, still giving us dirty stares when we are going to multiple locations, and most of them can't even be bothered about getting to where you want to go at the fastest speed possible. All of them want that extra dollar from you, and they'd do whatever ways possible to achieve that - even if it means that that'd have to get lost on purpose, which happened to me before. 

My Valentine's Day this year in February was pretty much ruined by the fact that my ex and I couldn't find a taxi that very night. It was getting late and she had a curfew to meet, and Marina South wasn't the best place to find a cab if you are in need of one. Every phone line was pretty much engaged at that time, and it was really hard for us to get hold on a cab on that stretch of road anyway. I knew that it was Valentine's Day, but shouldn't the companies have even more cabs, knowing that people would be calling out for them at an increase rate? That never happened, and every phone line was pretty much engaged for the better part of the night. In the end, we had to take the train to Bishan, and my parents were nice enough to give her a lift home. My point is that the companies simply don't bother too much with having more cabs on the road on festive seasons that demand more of such services, especially if people are going to party till after midnight on most occasions. That is not to mention a working system that will not crash if there are too many people calling in at the very same time.

There is also a problem when you are trying to call a cab to a specific location at lunchtime. Some cab companies cannot care less about picking up their phones, because they have to have their lunches first before serving anybody out there. Just a few weeks ago, my mother was in need of a cab to get to the airport because her flight was about to leave at 1 PM. At 11 in the morning, I gave about four companies a call, but all of them claimed that they were too busy at the moment to pick up any calls, which got my mother pretty anxious at that time. Everything just slows down to a crawl, and they won't really care if you are in a hurry or not, because they are not in a hurry themselves. Even with the price hike, the services are still equally bad across the board, save for some considerate drivers out there who still believes that serving is a form of art. 

A lot of drivers out there will not hesitate to rip you off if they can, and there are a couple of ways they can do that. First, suggest routes that are obviously going to be congested at that particular time, and then telling you that the route you suggested is too slow for you. Second strategy involves not asking for a route at all, and they'd just drive through whatever routes they deem to be the slowest of them all, which would of course yield a higher fare at the end of the journey. The third and the last strategy involves taking the wrong route altogether because they have so conveniently heard the wrong destination and mixed things up. NanYang Junior College became NanYang Polytechnic once, and the rest of the way home from there was charged on top of what I had to pay for my initial trip. That happened twice, and the first time was a genuine mistake and was free of charge for the rest of the way - the second driver, wasn't too nice about it. You can forget about compensation most of the time, because they are going to lecture you on how shit happens every now and then, and we should just accept our fate as what it is. Everybody hears the wrong things from time to time, and drivers are human too. That is what they are going to tell you, but it is pretty conveniently to be stuck in the middle of CTE and then to shrug your shoulders while going," Not my fault."

Perhaps being pirates on wheels these days, they should have that basic level of decency when the prices are too high for us to stomach. Some drivers should really learn to be like Jeannie's Dad, who offered to drive me all the way home from Katong - for free. Not to say that all our fares should be reduced to zero from now onwards. It's just that when we have to empty our wallets just to pay for a comfortable trip from point A to point B, we have the right to demand a higher quality service from this industry, not the same bunch of inconsiderate and money-hungry drivers who are out to suck your money. Start picking up phone calls from customers, stop giving dirty stares when we are going to multiple locations, and please confirm the location the next time we tell it to you. All of these adds up to a good service, and that is the least you could do to make both our lives, a whole lot better.