Call taxis spoil tourists’ party

Call taxis spoil tourists’ party
Reluctant To Use Meter, Drivers Leave Bad Impression
The Times of India

Bangalore: The city may have become a tourist hub and a major transit point but one cog in the wheel often plays truant — the call taxi.
People can seldom make time-bound plans based on the surety of getting local transportation. “I waited for over an hour for the promised arrival of my city taxi. I was to join my friends leaving for Mysore from their place in RT Nagar at 10.30 am on Tuesday. I had called for a taxi at 9.30 am to Koramangala where I was staying and in spite of repeated assurances, the taxi never came. I finally had to take a rickshaw at 10.15 am and reached RT Nagar only by 11 am. If it was a train I had to catch, I certainly would have missed it,” says Sanchita Agarwal, a visitor from Delhi.

Yet another complainant Shoba Mathew said that she was to catch a train to Chennai at the Cantonment Railway Station and neither did the call taxis appear on time nor were autorickshaws ready to ply there. Verifying the claim, this reporter had to hail 13 autos on MG road before one was ready to come to the Cantonment Railway Station.

Says Alfred Jeyaraj, from Tamil Nadu, “When we alight from a bus at either Madiwala or Kalasipalayam, we are mobbed by auto drivers who refuse to use the meter. On Monday, I decided to call a cab. I got one at Madiwala. I had to go to ISRO Layout. After a few minutes, I saw Vidhana Soudha on my right. I asked the driver where he was taking me and he said the regular roads were dug up. This I later knew was a lie. I also had to cough up a huge sum at the end of the ‘sight-seeing’ trip.”

During Dasara a lot of visitors who used Bangalore as a stopover to Mysore, were put to a lot of hardship with call taxis failing to show up. Tourism officials are perturbed by the poor state of the call taxi service. According to them, “First impressions matter a lot for tourism to thrive. If this is the kind of welcome they get, it’s going to leave a bad taste in the mouth.”

Local users of city taxis too often face delays. Following up on a complaint from one of our readers, one call taxi service provider Qasim admitted to delays caused by traffic and rains. “We have had severe rains and that has caused some delays. But if a taxi has not showed up it is a mistake and we will look into it.” According to additional commissioner traffic, M N Reddi, “Call taxis and autorickshaws come under the motor vehicles act, but while we can book an individual vehicle for refusing to ply to a certain destination, we cannot book a service provider for a vehicle not showing up.”

O N T H E C A L L
Errant call taxis and autorickshaws will soon have to come around with the transport department going all out to institute a call centre. Transport Commissioner Om Prakash said, “We get about 10 to 15 complaints a day on errant taxis and autorickshaws, but since we work only between 10 am and 5 pm, we are working towards a call centre facility that will take complaints 24/7 apart from handling other RTO-related queries.”