Editorial
Expected arrival of new cabs
Has the homework been done?
ON the very face of it, the talk of importing 6,740 new taxi cabs for the capital by this year looks like a classic case of misplaced emphasis. It smacks of a sense of desperation, too. The causes for such pessimistic remarks are not far to seek. In the first place, there are severe constraints in road space that is already overflowing with traffic causing ever increasing levels of congestion, leave aside the excruciating hardship for the commuters, loss of man hours and damage wreaked on the economy. Where, for god's sake, is the room for nearly 7,000 new transports in addition to the new buses being planned to ply?
We are given to understand that a new policy is under preparation with inputs from all stakeholders so that we deem it fit to proffer our own suggestion in the light of the failed earlier taxi service of which 80 percent vehicles have gone kaput. For a time, a lot of enthusiasm marked the launching of the taxi service in 1999. Then flawed financing, arbitrary daily deposit rate, uncontrolled fares, lack of security, overuse of transports and dearth of parking and servicing facilities made the experiment a failure. However, one sees the potential for efficiently run, easily available, non-refusing taxi service that is at the same time affordable as an alternative to private cars which are put to road at a rate of 200 new vehicles per day.
We wonder why we get our basics wrong and our emphasis pattern flawed? First and foremost, we need to recover one-third of our total parking space in the city currently lost to illegal occupation through setting up of shops and various crafts. We know of land shown as parking space attached approved designs for building but which were leased out to shop owners to set up their business. These are legally actionable offences. Some time back these were identified and effort made, only half-heartedly though, to recover the land parcels meant for parking vehicles lost to illegal occupation. This is a doable option provided the authorities are serious and determined to restore the spaces to parking. Simultaneously, multi-tier high-rise parking levels will have to be built up in the private sector through bank financing.
The overarching need is for building a mass transport system without which a capital city cannot simply function.
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