Finding a taxi no more a torture

KOLKATA: You may soon get relief from your daily practice of running after cabs for a ride back home. The transport department has finally managed to transform the parking lots into permanent taxi stands.
These parking lots, transport department officers said, would reduce cases of taxi refusals as cabs would not have to ply empty in search of passengers and commuters, on the other hand, would find it easier to get cabs.
The state government-appointed committee, which was headed by Kolkata Police commissioner Surajit Kar Purkayastha, has decided that cabs will be allowed to park at both ends of on-road parking lots. Police have already earmarked the parking bays with guardrails.
The new arrangement brings to an end the long-standing demand of the taxi operators’ unions. They have been demanding permanent taxi stands to get rid of police harassment against halting in the middle of the road for picking up passengers. The operators claimed that the refusal rate would plummet if there are taxi stands. “Cabbies refuse passengers as they go on empty runs in search of passengers. The more they run empty, their craving for passenger of their choicest destination increases and they tend to refuse passengers of shorter distance, fearing the cost of empty run could not be realized,” explained Bimal Guha, general secretary of the Bengal Taxi Association.
Kolkata is only metropolitan city where there is no taxi stand except the ones at stations (Howrah, Sealdah and Kolkata) and the Dum Dum airport. “This is why taxis cannot wait on the road for passengers. They keep moving, contributing to both congestion and pollution. Taxi stands would thus serve multifold purposes. Passengers would find it easier to get taxi and cabbies would now know that they would get passenger at the bays,” said principal secretary (transport) Alapan Bandyopadhyay.
Police officers claimed that with the introduction of graded fine, there has been a slump in taxi refusals. Police have developed a software for tracking the first and subsequent offences. From now, the fine for each offence is Rs 100 till the fifth time. For the sixth offence, the fine jumps to is Rs 1000.
According to the plan, all four police commissionerates — Kolkata, Howrah, Bidhannagar and Barrackpore — would maintain and use a common digital database of registered taxis to decide the quantum of fine to be slapped on a cabby for refusing a passenger, depending on whether it is the first or the sixth instance. For the time being, traffic policemen on duty would get in touch with database handlers at the traffic control to know the list of offences against a particular registration number. Later on, the database can, of course, be made accessible over smartphones and tablets.