Is the demand so high that the supply cannot deal with it? Or could it have been the result of the scenario below?

No wonder more people wants to own a car. * sigh *

Some civil serpents in the LTA ivory tower seem to believe (and would have us do the same), that this is true market forces at work. Is it really? Or just the supply refusing to meet the demand? It reminds me of countries dumping food into the sea instead of giving to starving African nations just to keep the prices high. The only difference is that the starving people can’t pay for the food, while in our case, we are willing to pay for a cab and yet we still won’t get it!

In fact, I vaguely recalled a Forum letter on the papers about Singapore having a higher cab per capita than Hong Kong. In spite of that, our cab services can’t hold a candle to Hong Kong. It seems Hong Kong really has a cab service that is really world class, because there were no usual articles by Singaporeans with the knee-jerk action to ‘set the record straight’.

Anyway, while taking a cab home some time ago, I spoke with a Comfort-Delgro cabbie, and was told that the device – which they called the ‘satellite’ – automatically assigns bookings to the drivers. They simply just press the buttons indicating how long it would take them to arrive at the pick-up location to confirm they will take up the job.

Refusing a call booking results in a penalty – i.e. they will not be able to pick up anymore bookings for the next few minutes. In fact, once they had refused three consecutive bookings, the device ‘is disabled’ for the next 30 minutes (or was it an hour?) as a kind of punishment. The device does not come free and costs several dollars in daily rental.

It is almost as if the priority is given to call booking. But of course, every call booking earns Comfort Delgro 50 cents, according to the cabbie. Now, I can’t help but feel that is the reason why cab companies drag their feet in dealing with the situation and the endless complaints. There’s no money to earn if it is easy for flag downs. And cabbies become their unwary accomplices because they are enticed by the extra earnings from each booking.

Sadly, passengers end up caught in between the proverbial rock and a hard place, and it is even sadder that some actually write in to suggest everyone pay more for call bookings. Talk about being brain dead or lacking in imagination.

Now, some cabbies wrote to complain they couldn’t get any passengers when they are out of the ‘town area’ (aka CBD). But isn’t it dumb to spend more than half an hour circling in a neighbourhood town trying to find the ever elusive passenger when they know where ready passengers are? Everyone knows it wouldn’t take more than 30 mins to get to town from any part of Singapore. These blasted cabbies should just calculate just how much fuel it would take to drive a empty cab back to town and decide for themselves if that cost in fuel would be more than wasting time looking for non-existent passengers.

Just how they continue to lament that life is difficult while real passengers try in vain to get through the blasted call-booking hotline, or languish in a queue in the heat somewhere is beyond me! And just pity the tourists who have no clue about call-booking! Uniquely Singapore, indeed!

How do I feel sorry for a cabbie that the company charges them $80+ – $100+ a day in rental in this case? Life is also hard for most of us so is it logical to expect others to make their lives easier for them? As a Michael Gleissner aptly wrote: ‘Why should I pay more for telling the taxi where his business is? I should get a rebate for that.’

And Mr Gleissner is being kind because I know someone who will say this: “L*N CHEOW!! You mean I should ‘reward’ the bastards for creating the situation in the first place?!”

Have a nice weekend!