Driving the Taxi Industry

I don't often hire taxis in Singapore. Still, I have had my fair share of experience with taxis and not just as a passenger either. Sometime in the early noughties - that's the early 2000s - I worked on a project involving mobile payments in taxis. We worked closely with CityCabs which was at that time still distinct an entity from Comfort. It was a great project which allowed me to interact with taxi drivers and gain an insight into who they are and what makes them tick.

Backtrack some 15 years before that into the decade of big hair, big shoulders and the best music since the 60s and you will find me working shift hours in a credit card company in Sydney, Australia. Our shifts meant the company provided transport to us in the form of taxi vouchers so two weeks out of three when I travelled around midnight I would have a taxi ride home or to work. These rides again gave me a glimpse into the lives of these hardworking Australians and some of my rides and the conversations during them were memorable ones.

I think we tend to look at taxi drivers in Singapore as a homogenous group of semi-crazed lowly-educated foul-mouthed cretins who whine too much and drive too fast. They're often the subject of abuse, ridicule and vitriol.

I have a different view.

The Cabbie throws some shrimps on the barbie
Sometime ago there was a series on Discovery Channel called City Cabs and there was an episode where the host, Michael Krass, visited Sydney. The episode took me back in time to when I was a frequent taxi passenger.

At one point in the episode, the taxi driver invited Michael to his home for a BBQ. How much more Australian could you get right? The amazing thing was 'home' turned out to a be a sprawling suburban house with a large well kept garden where they had the barbie.

Expressing surprise, Michael asked then learnt that the taxi driver started with a single cab he bought and owned outright. He paid one of the taxi companies a fee for the radio service and livery which his taxi sported. When he'd earned enough, he bought a second cab and leased that to a couple of other blokes. Over time, he'd grown that business to a third (or more) taxis and earned a little from those too.

Thats when it hit me - this could never happen in Singapore. Taxis now are almost all owned by large companies. There are few private taxis - identified by their black & yellow livery - around now. It wasn't always like this of course. In the old days taxis were privately owned and operated. Under the guise of improving service standards and reducing cheating and so on, the large taxi companies began to cover the market. And the small-business owner, the taxi driver, got relegated to a bit part in the play.

Now the norm is that taxi drivers hire their taxis from a company, pay for the fuel and other daily costs such as ERP but nothing more. In return the companies service and maintain the taxis to ensure they work well.

What hit me was the realisation that a taxi driver's profession is the single most dead-end job in all of Singapore.

Taxi driver drives down a dead-end
Consider this: in any other job, if you did well, maybe took some course or other, and generally was liked by your boss, you would have a chance at being promoted and thus getting a higher salary. Doesn't matter what job it is - even a rubbish collector could be the driver of the truck one day. Or the supervisor.

A retail sales assistant could be a supervisor then a manager. A petrol pump attendant could work his way up to be a shift senior or more. A mechanic starts as an apprentice and could end up owning his own workshop. Heck, even a barber at the Sri Dewa chain could one day set up his own shop.

But not a taxi driver. His income is dependent 100% on the fares he picks up which are in turn dictated wholly by the amount of time he spends on the road.  It doesn't take a rocket psychologist to work out that this can lead to driver fatigue which in turn can lead to mistakes which cause irritation at the best of times and accidents at the worst.

In no other job are you faced with the same boundaries. Professionals whose fees are determined by their billable hourly rates don't face the me limits - lawyers charge for more than just their fees including photocopies and affixing their stamps on template documents, doctors dispense medication, heck even photographers can do bigger jobs and thus charge more.

Taxi drivers can't take 'bigger fares' as no such thing exists.

Or do they? What about that extra fee you pay when you call for a taxi? Or when you hail one at a certain time or place such as the airport? These 'surcharges' were supposed to make less-desirable routes or destinations more palatable to taxi drivers. Changi Airport was once deemed so far that taxi drivers needed to be enticed there hence this surcharge. With all the new towns now bordering the airport, I would wager this is no longer necessary. My 12-year old apartment is now only 10-15 minutes away from the airport, for example.

With Singapore being so built-up why do we even need to pay to call for a taxi now? By calling we are assuring the taxi company and driver of a fare. He doesn't need to circle, looking for a fare to pick up. He goes where the call was made from and there is a ready fare waiting for him. The companies say the fee defrays the cost of the system. I say with the system they remain competitive and they should view it as a necessary business investment and stop passing these costs onto consumers.

CBD ERP fees are the most unnecessary fees of all. By not making taxis exempt from this charge, the government in one fell swoop went against the grain of all the other incentives. After all, if I were a taxi driver, I too would not spend $3 (or whatever) to go in to the CBD hoping to pick up a passenger who might just make a $4 trip. The fee they have to pay to go in disincentivises drives who are outside the CBD area from entering to pick up passengers who are, really, in abundant numbers.

More and more taxis - except when you need them
Some years ago, in response to complaints there were never enough taxis in the CBD at peak hours, the government through its relevant authority, ministry or commission decided the answer was to issue more taxi company licences. There were two ideas at play here - the idea that increased competition would lead to better quantity and quality of supply and more amazingly, the simplistic conclusion that not being able to hail a taxi at that time = not enough taxis on the road.

There is an idea in management theory which essentially explains that the solution is not always related to the problem. In this one instance, the problem itself is not related to the problem, as it were.
I’ve already said above what would really help match taxis to passengers at key times so I won’t belabour the point. I will however remind you that the very same people who subscribed to the simplistic equation above also came up with the ill-conceived  idea of restricting taxis in the CBD to picking up and dropping off passengers only at driveways and taxi stands. Apparently taxis stopping along the road were a hindrance to the smooth flow of other vehicles such as buses. They back-tracked soon enough to include minor roads. And now that policy seems to have taken a back seat. Thankfully. For it was the single most short-sighted and blinkered idea to come out of the LTA’s brain in a long time.

While I’m going on about the LTA, I remain confused as to why, when it suits them, they and the Ministry of Transport regard taxis as part of the public transport network. And when it doesn’t such as when declining to exempt taxis from the CBD ERP fees, taxis are suddenly termed 'private hire vehicles'. At least this is the answer I got when I wrote in to the papers some years ago to suggest taxis be exempt from ERP charges. Yet when detailing public transport infrastructure, taxis are clearly deemed part of the public transport network.

Is it fair? Or is it just about fares?
I just read that 4 taxi operators have announced they will raise their fares as well - in line with Comfort Delgro’s and SMRT’s move. We all saw it coming and the initial response was for some to boycott Comfort Delgro and SMRT taxis. I feel this merely hurts the guys who have no choice or say in the matter, and doesn't do a thing to resolve the issues.

So what’s the road ahead? Firstly, let's be consistent and recognise taxis as a form of public transport - and let's do away with ERP for taxis. No, we don't have to do so for buses too as they ply fixed routes.

We can continue by cutting out all the other crap - stop all this business of surcharges. It serves no purpose, confuses passengers, and ultimately does nothing for the bottom line of cabbies.

In a country which often defers to ‘market forces’ I’m surprised we have to meddle so much and so I would also do away with the extra fees for taxi rides after midnight. The demand for taxis tapers off late at night as well so the expected reduction in taxi numbers will probably have no impact. Ready customers = ready supply. If need be, encourage the supply by offering rebates on rental or other fees (maybe through a credits scheme) for taxis running a minimum number of past-midnight-hours.

Next, find some way to cap or reduce taxi rentals, perhaps through reducing road tax for taxis - in fact for all Euro IV-compliant diesel vehicles. The taxi companies then simply pass the savings on to the cabbies.

I'm also for bringing back privately-owned taxis. Let individuals own more than one taxi, and manage their service delivery through the methods we already have in place including vehicle inspections.

Lastly, I’m all for doing away with service taxes and bringing back tipping. I believe this is the thing that will finally make our courtesy campaigns work. It will start with some service providers coming across McDonald’s and fake but over time, people will respond firstly by tipping good service then by reciprocating in kind too and notoriously grouchy and rude Singaporeans may just be motivated to change.

How will this impact taxis? Well, if you tipped a cabbie for helping you with your baggage or your child’s stroller rather than staying seated in his cab, it will only encourage cabbies to behave better and this can only be a good thing.

Fire the lot of them

I’ve wanted to write a bit about how I think the Singapore Police Force has gotten just that little bit useless but just haven’t found the time to until today. A few events I’ve witnessed or personally experienced in the last few years have given me this impression and I will certainly describe them soon.
Right now however, I will relate the events of this afternoon.

Travelling along the PIE on our way back to the office, Joe and I saw a plume of smoke some distance ahead just about the same time cars started slowing down. Thinking it might be a fire, I pulled to the left lane and when Joe confirmed it was a car on fire, I got onto the emergency lane and drove up to a little less than 100 metres from a burning Volvo. A truck had stopped ahead of it and two people - who later turned out to be the driver and her son - were standing on the road shoulder looking on. I grabbed the two fire extinguishers I had in the boot, passed one to Joe and we ran up to the car.

As we passed the lady I ascertained no one was trapped in the car and that the fire services had been called.

I recall seeing one or two people, probably from the truck, in front of the car and I think they had an extinguisher with them. The flames were licking around the cracked grill and the gaps around the bonnet and the smoke was thick and a little acrid. I emptied my smaller extinguisher down low and at the base of the fire around the radiator grill but did nothing to stem the rapidly increasing inferno. Joe’s extinguisher, a little larger, was similarly emptied in seconds but the fire was by now raging under the bonnet.

About a minute or so had passed and with nothing but empty extinguishers in the car I ran back to see if there was anything else I could use in my boot.

A police patrol car arrived just then, crawling along the line separating the slow lane and the emergency lane. They must have been doing about 10 km/h and I waved frantically at them. As they drew abreast, I noticed the front passenger was on his walkie-talkie. I was screaming at them at this stage - obscenities were used liberally, loudly and with some gusto. I couldn’t believe these two cops were proceeding as if it was a Sunday School Parade. No sense of urgency, no rush, no apparent appreciation of the need for immediate action.

I ran past them back to the burning car just to see what else could be done. I left them rummaging in their boot… I have welder’s gloves in my car but I thought it best not to try and open anything up lest I unleash a hitherto oxygen-deprived beast.

At this point the cop who had been on the walkie talkie came up with a larger extinguisher and when he saw how large the flames had become, much to my astonishment he lay the extinguisher on the side of the road and proceeded to do other mysterious police duties. Like ask meaningless questions, talk more on his walkie talkie and walk up and down.

Around this time a motorbike-riding fire response officer came up, dismounted and began unravelling some strange contraption. This turned out to be a great device which seemed to shoot jets of compressed air out in order to starve the fire of oxygen.

As the evidently-trained authorities had arrived I took out my iPhone and started videotaping the next few minutes. Now watch the video and see for yourself why I would fire the lot of the police force.

At about 10 seconds, you see a couple of guys come up with yellow jackets and bearing extinguishers. No, not police nor firefighters. These two were from the official tow truck. They were obviously very panicky and tentative and discharged their extinguisher waaaayyy too far form the fire - someone should train these chaps I think. Whoever was in charge of training them should be fired too come to think of it.

Note how these guys are on the slow lane. Now, at this point, the traffic has not been blocked from this lane! Some idiotic driver in a world of his own and wondering why the left lane was so free and empty (and don’t we know there must be hundreds of drivers like this around?) could have barrelled along and run down these two Samaritans. Not to mention the one guy in uniform who seemed to know what he was doing.

The flames were way too big by this time of course and you can hear me say so in the video.
At this point what do you think the cops were doing? Directing traffic perhaps? Setting up warning signs? Well, from about 00:38 you can see for yourself.

And you can hear me incredulously suggesting they do something useful like ensuring traffic moves around smoothly and safely, and maybe ensuring there is space for the next lot of emergency vehicles to come in.

But no….. taking notes and checking with someone on the walkie talkie is a muuuuucccchhhhh better thing to do in an emergency.

As I am very pointed in my comments, I’ve thought it best to try and cover their identities hence the funny square in the video.

Yes, yes, at 1:00 I was making a note of the cop car number…. Incidentally you can see my car parked behind, with the boot lid up and the hazards flashing.

At about 1:10 you can hear the sirens of other response vehicles approaching. But no, they will have no cops to direct them in….

Instead they have a Land Transport Authority Officer (a Certis Cisco Officer you will note) pull up on his little Gilera 3-wheeler. A Rhino pulls up too - I presume the Rhino was travelling at the speed of the Gilera seeing as it appeared to have been escorted there by it. The firefighters spill out and although we later discover they pulled up too short, I think they did a decent job.

The second Rhino did better though I think.

Then a strange thing happens - at 2:13 the sirens get switched off. Is this standard procedure?

Considering this is a highway and there is traffic going past, and our two cops are still busy taking notes and talking on the walkie talkie, shouldn’t one siren be left on to alert cars? You hear me voice as much on 2:18.

The first Rhino is manoeuvred closer, the big engine begins to do what it does best, the LTA officer stands around relying the flashing lights of his Gilera to guide traffic along… At 2:35 you hear Joe hypothesising that the cops were waiting for the LTA officer or a Traffic Cop to direct traffic and you hear too my exasperated response saying the cops should have the training to do this.

At about 2:50 the mother of the driver and I start chatting. She too was puzzled why the first cop had not used his extinguisher or done more and had opined as much.

At 3:10 you see the LTA officer eschewing his more-visible and safer (considering the circumstances) helmet for a presumably comfier cap. Then at 3:15 you see there are now traffic cones laid out and cars are thus avoiding the area. What isn’t on the video is what I discovered later - the cones were not, as I had originally thought, placed by the cops, but by the tow truck guys. They also eventually moved their tow truck across the first two lanes to act as a stop and buffer in case someone came blindly barreling along.

What is also not shown on the video is our conversation with the LTA officer who came over to us and asked why we were there. Duh… I wished the lady all the best - she wanted my name but I thought that was not necessary and when she thanked us profusely I just told her to please help someone else if she were in our shoes and saw someone in need.

As for our two cops, I didn’t see them after one wandered off in the direction of the traffic cones.
I’m still both astounded and pissed off. It occurs to me now too that I’d heard neither of the cops ask the first question I’d asked the lady ‘Is there anybody trapped inside?’

Here Lies Greatness

What makes a man great? And what makes a great man?

I guess we could say the answer to the first would be his words, his thoughts, his deeds, the effect he had on the people around him and more. The answer to the second could encompass background, education, mentors, faith… the list goes on.

I could think and write a little about all these but I would prefer to write a little instead about a great man I knew. One whose life embraced all of the above. And then some.

He would understand too that I now choose not so much to write investigatively, but to write anecdotally instead. For here was a man whose life was a rich tapestry of stories. And if the measure of a man were the stories he left behind on the lips, in the minds and in the hearts of those whose paths crossed his own, then Mr Sebastian Vincent would be a giant among men.

Indeed to us, he seemed that way - a towering personality who struck terror and humour into our souls at the very same moment. A no-nonsense Physics teacher who took his work seriously and would just as readily take the mickey out of his students. There were those who made fun of him just as he made fun of us. In either direction the gentle mocking remained just that - good humour that never even so much as glanced in the direction of aggression, vitriol, or anger.

In the great play of life that was the lot of the Physics student in La Salle PJ, Mr Vincent was the murder prop - a glinting shining axe that looked menacing and added an edge of fear while being just that little bit incongruously comical. An axe that bound the play together, gave it direction and purpose.

My mother, who made up for lacking the better judgement not to stop at 6 children in the first place, decided that I needed to attend tuition at Mr Vincent’s in preparation for my Form 5 exams. One bad decision balanced out by one brilliant one and so I found myself cramped into this rickety add-on room in No 1 Jalan 5/9B. A room we all thought was partly a stubborn personal DIY project at best (for certainly a qualified carpenter/builder worth his salt would dare not leave this job in this parlous state!), and a physics experiment gone seriously awry at worst.

Still, we trusted the man and figured if the whole shebang collapsed, we would at least get some free Physics lessons while we awaited extrication.

And this would have been, despite the stories we can all tell, a pleasure and a great help.

I had, of course, known Mr Vincent for some years as our families were friends, his wife was my mother’s colleague, friend and church-mate (and my Standard 4 class teacher) and his children were part of my limited social circle every Sunday when we had the SFX Church Children’s Group gathering and mass.

He had never taught me, however, until that moment I stepped into that re-creation of a Black Hole. The immense gravitational pull of his knowledge, personality and sheer presence sucked us all helplessly in. Either that or we had paid good money and there was air-conditioning.

Mr Vincent was a teacher like no other I have ever met. He seemed always to be thinking of something else. A mathematics problem perhaps. Or the mystery of faster-than-light travel. Even maybe when my ancestors actually came down from the trees. This last one was quite likely as really, I sometimes displayed a particularly painful disinclination to comprehending Physics.

When talking to me, I noticed he often failed to make eye contact, preferring instead to look at a point just below my left knee, or a little off my right shoulder. I took this to be a result of being preoccupied with my ancestry of course and never once doubted that though his eyes may not have been fixed on mine, his mind was always probing my own severely lacking version of the same.

And when I opened my mouth to answer a question (usually rather badly) I think now his mind was in hyperdrive, thinking of ways to accelerate to light speed my evolution from chimp to Champ.

One day when the reason I was not making eye contact with him was simply because I was facing the wrong direction and clearly not paying attention in class, I heard my name being called ‘John Cheong’ with the chilling follow-through ‘answer the question’…

I turned to where the voice had emanated and mumbled ‘Me, Sir?’ I had of course just the tiniest idea what the question was, and probably an infinitesimally smaller idea of the correct answer. I think I felt at that moment like a moth caught in a flame… Still, I had to plunge headlong and so when he said ‘Yes - you’ I rattled off a 20-second answer ‘bla bla bla bla bla….’

At the end of which Mr Vincent went ‘Good.’ and I beamed a little crazily at all who had doubted me. Until I heard his voice go ‘More.’
‘More, Sir?’ I stammered amidst the chuckles of the others in class.
‘Yes, more.’
So I plunged further into the abyss… ‘bla bla bla bla…’ I went on for another 30 seconds.
‘Good!’ My relief must surely have been visible despite the almost maniacal edge to my smile then.
‘More.’
My relief fell to earth like a meteor in all its flaming glory, arcing across the night sky. Roarrrrr, boom, crash, pow….
I sucked in a deep breath and ‘bla bla bla bla bla…’ 20 more seconds of sheer agony, fear, imagination, make-believe, prayer, and utter undeniable plain-for-all-to-see complete nonsense and bullshit.
‘Ah.’ he went.
‘Ah? I thought.
‘Good!’ he went.
‘Good?’ I thought incredulously.
….
‘But all wrong’ he added as his final masterstroke, the last nail on my cross of suffering, hammered in with particular glee right smack OUCH! in the middle of my uhm… intellect. It had been wrong from the very first second and he knew it. He knew I would have no hope in hell of rescuing myself in the 3 opportunities he gave me. He was cunning, devious, wicked.

Wickedly funny that is. We laughed. I laughed.

And now, almost 30 years later, I still laugh.

And the funniest thing is that I did learn. And I actually did rather well. For a student not predisposed to the Sciences (well, OK to studies in general) and one who eventually only barely scraped through with passes in Chemistry and Biology, I got the highest Credit pass for Physics - a C3 - and I still wonder about the gravitational pull of Black Holes.

I did Arts in Form 6 and thus missed him. I didn’t miss the stories though and I’d like to recount another here which involves my cousin, Carol Rozario. She attended La Salle for Form 6 and did Physics and it seems Mr Vincent chose to widen his aim to include my extended family too for he wickedly (and deliciously) took the mickey out of her too.

It was just after the first Physics exams of Form 6 and he came in to class with the results. He declared that he would announce all the results out loud by calling each student’s name and their mark out of 100 and should any student not wish to have their marks revealed publicly, they should raise their hands, come up to him and he would whisper it in their ear instead.

Now, I do believe that Carol had her challenges when it came to Physics too - perhaps it had something to do with our common ancestors having only been recently enticed down from trees and introduced to walking upright. Whatever, Carol knew she had done badly so when her name was called out, she waved frantically and rushed up to have her mark quietly revealed in her ear.

Mr Vincent was true to his word and whispered her mark to her, then as she sheepishly made her way back to her seat, he turned to the class and announced in a booming voice ‘Carol Rozario got 29 upon 100 for Physics.’

I wasn’t there but I can just see and hear it in my mind. Utterly, completely, uncompromisingly devilish. And 100% Mr Vincent.

I recently reconnected with an old schoolmate whom I have not seen since 1982 nor communicated with since the late 80s. As early as our second email to each other we wrote about Mr Vincent. We had both attended his tuition class and both felt he had been such a big part of our 16-17 year old lives that now, three decades later, the memory lived on.

When he retired from teaching in our school, we organised a farewell like no other. He arrived in school flanked by schoolboy outriders, in a car with dragging cans and a sign that read ‘Just Retired’, rode in an open jeep through the school field trailed by pretty girls bearing Bunga Manggar and was even garlanded. It was a grand affair befitting of a grand man.

A little later in the year another much-loved teacher retired with much less of an event to which a younger student remarked it didn’t seem fair.

He didn’t know, you see. Didn’t know the enlightenment a truly inspired teacher can bring to even the dimmest minds. Didn’t know that sarcasm could be wielded so effectively and efficaciously. Didn’t know that love can take many forms including patient and dedicated nurturing. Didn’t know that when you’ve endured 2 years of tuition in a ramshackle construction that could also be your tomb, you’d be so glad to see the last of the man who taught there that you’d send him off in the grandest possible style.
He didn’t know.

And I didn’t really know something else too. I didn’t know what Mr Vincent’s life was like these last few years. Well, not directly at any rate.

Some years ago he suffered a stroke while returning from India and eventually came down to Singapore where I live. My brother, Tony, and I went to visit him at the hospital. Tony went up first to his former Physics teacher, now lying in a hospital bed flanked by some of his family. Tony looked down and said ‘Hello, Mr Vincent, it’s Anthony Cheong.’

And Mr Vincent reached out and grabbed Tony’s arm tight. He tried to pull himself up and to say something. The words didn’t come out. They couldn’t. The stroke had taken that from him. As he struggled to tell Tony something, it was instead tears that came. Tears of frustration and struggle.
This man who’d communicated so effortlessly, clearly, lovingly, effectively now couldn’t get a few words out. And cried not from the effort but the failure.

I’m ashamed to say I hung back. I couldn’t. This wasn’t the Mr Vincent I knew. I didn’t want him to struggle for words and to cry. I just couldn’t bring myself to cause him more tears. And I’m ashamed to say that in the following years I failed to make the gesture of a visit to No 1 Jalan 5/9B. I thought of him and asked after him often but at the end I didn’t want to see how he had changed. I wanted to remember him as he had been in the 80s.

I was stupid.

He hadn’t changed at all. Sure he couldn’t talk, or walk or swallow even. But that wasn’t the point you see. The measure of a great man is not just what he is in the present, but also what he was in the past, and more importantly, what he brings to the future. Above and beyond the wonderful stories we all have of him, we have something else too. A mark, a standard, a guide which says ‘Here lies the point at which we know we are on the right track. Here lies dedication and commitment beyond which we discover excellence. Here lies greatness.’

Thank you Mr Vincent for helping me understand Newton’s 3 laws of motion for which I received a C3; and for so many other life lessons for which the rewards are far greater.

RIP Mr Sebastian Vincent (1929 - 2011)

cross posted on http://john-budakkampung.blogspot.com/