Luxury cabs jump on 'app' wagon

KOLKATA: Rampant refusals, tampered meters and rogue behaviour of cabbies, coupled with the meteoric rise in demand for app-cabs, have suddenly changed the dynamics of the cab market in Kolkata. If the current trend is anything to go by, numbers speak for themselves how drastic and abrupt the shift has been. From April to August, the state transport authority has been flooded with as many as 18,000 applications for luxury taxis. On the other hand, there is hardly any taker for conventional ones (yellow and blue-and-white). Till August this year, the public vehicles department has issued just 349 offer letters for conventional cabs. Even last year, the department had issued 1,499 yellow-taxi permits while there were not more 30 odd applications for luxury cabs. Every day, there is a serpentine queue at Paribahan Bhawan on R N Mukherjee Road-Mangoe Lane crossing, where the transport authority is receiving the forms and documents.
"We are now having a harrowing time in processing the papers. We have already issued 4,500 permits and 7,000 offer letters. It's very difficult to verifying the so many documents," said a transport department official. According to a traffic sergeant manning the area, the queue is getting unmanageable by the day. Some times, it is occupying the entire length of Mangoe Lane. Consequently, traffic is getting affected, he said. Some of the applicants TOI spoke to said they were all in the process of buying sedan just to go for app-cabs - either Ola, Uber or Meru. Majority of the applicants, in fact, want to use the both Uber and Ola, two main aggregators in the city, both of which promise each cabbie a monthly earning of Rs 80,000. "Uber and Ola remained very exclusive cab service till January-February, 2015. Since March 2015, we started feeling the real surge in applications for Uber and Ola cabs," said another transport department officer. A survey revealed that refusals played a key role to force commuters shift to the new-age service.
"I used to wonder where these taxis want to go. I used to name three-four destinations just to board a cab. But none of them appealed to them. It became a disease. Now yellow cabbies have to pay the price. Commuters prefer Uber or Ola since all of them are in good condition, air-conditioned and you can track their routes. I often book it for my teenage girl and can track it whether it takes the right route or not," said Gaurav Sinha, a banker. Kallol Mukherjee, a marketing expert associated with a liquor company, said, "I don't mind paying Rs 20-30 extra to avoid a smelly, non-AC yellow cab with an extremely ill-behaved cabby. Moreover, it's a door-step service. I know when my cab is coming to pick me up."