Tips on getting a taxi during Peak hours and rainy days

Have you wonder why you always have difficulties in getting a taxi during peak hour especially Monday morning, Friday Evening and Rainy Days?

Before I touch on the tips on getting a taxi, let me highlight how Comfort and SMRT booking system work.

Comfort/City Taxi – 6552 1111

1) There are two system that the taxi driver have.

I. Scheme 1 – Those taxi driver are not allowed to reject call booking for more than 3 times otherwise they will be penalised and suspened for an hour. Once suspended, they will be directed to scheme 2. generally, taxi driver in scheme 1 will get priority in their booking.

II. Scheme 2 – Many taxi driver are in these scheme as they are allowed to take booking as and when they want. In this scheme, those booking that have no taker will be channel to this scheme for the taxi drivers.

2) The bookings are made to the taxi drivers by assignment only. This is means that the booking will be assigned to one taxi driver (no bidding for it). If the taxi driver rejects, then the system will jump to assign to the next taxi driver and so on.

3) Generally, the assignment of the booking are being made to taxi driver that have some distance away for the location (about 1Km away or more).

4) Advance booking can be accepted by the Iphone or through the system by the taxi drivers.

5) Currently they have about 16,000 Taxi available

SMRT – 6555 8888

1) Generally, booking to the driver are prompt to the nearest available taxis in the vicinity with the faster finger gets (bidding system).

2) Advance booking can only be accepted through the system.

3) Currently they have about 3,300 taxi available.

Getting those information aligned, I will proceed on with the Do’s and Don’t when booking a taxi.

Morning Peak Hours

Do’s

1) Try to state the location you are going especially you are going to residential areas.

2) Give mobile number. These will enable the taxi drivers to contact you when they arrives. Not to worry on this as only those taxi driver that confirm your booking able to know your contact number.

3) Inform the taxi company to ask the taxi driver to contact you when they arrived. Generally this show that you will be expecting to wait for the taxi.

4) Indicated pick-up area. Eg Lobby, Carpark

Don’t

1) If you are going to Tuas, Loyang area, do not indicate it to the operators.

2) Do not indicate pick-up area at main road, bus stop. Generally taxi driver will not pick up the booking as it seem that you will hopped on the next available taxi approaching thus wasting their trip.

Evening Peak

Do’s

1）Indicate where you are going especially you are going to town or nearby residential areas like, Tiong Bahru, Outram, River Valley. If you are going within town, eg. Shenton Way to Marina Bay Sands, it’s  a die die must indicate.

2) Give mobile numbers. It’s especially important in the town area as there are thousands of people waiting for the taxi.

Don’t

1) Indicate that you are going to Yishun, Jurong as generally taxi driver would not want to take up the call if you are heading towards there.

2) Indicate only Office number. This will save you time and ensure that the taxi driver picks up the correct person.

3) Let the taxi driver to wait for you in the single lane driveway. For example, Great Eastern Building, 6 Battery Road, UOB Plaza, UOB Center etc. Due to heavy traffic during the time, taxi are not allowed to wait for so long as it will hog up the drive way. Thus taxi driver will cancel the booking if the person is not there as they are going to made a very big detour to comes back to the location.

When it rains or you are not able confirm a taxi, there is a little trick that you can used on the SMRT taxi (Cannot confirm if it’s works on Comfort/Citycabs as I’m not driving theirs).

The trick is, call SMRT by phone to 6555 8888 to connect to the operator. Indicate that you want an advance booking (If you don’t mind paying extra $4.70 – [$8 – $3.30]）.  For example, if now is 8am, the earliest advance booking is 8.30am. Inform them to put the remarks that the taxi driver can come anytime and call you once they arrives.

This trick can work as the prompting of the advance booking is different from  the current booking and not many people are using the advance booking. Thus priority is being given to the advance booking. These will show up in the taxi driver system even they have passenger inside the taxi. The worst scenario is that you had to wait for half an hour for the taxi to arrives (better than no taxi right?)

I will only touch on these two taxi companies as generally people are calling these two companies for taxi. I hoped that the tips I have given will help you to lessen the waiting time calling for a taxi.