LTA wants to regulate third-party taxi booking apps

Four major third-party taxi booking apps — Easy Taxi, GrabTaxi, Uber and Hailo — have already made landfall here, and so far it's been pretty awesome for us commuters. The Government however, in all their paranoiac wisdom, have decided that something must be done to regulate them.  Senior Minister of State for Finance and Transport Josephine Teo mentioned in Parliament yesterday that the Land Transport Authority (LTA) are looking into ways to impose basic regulations on such apps to protect the safety and interests of commuters.  She emphasises that although the number of third-party taxi booking enterprises may be rising, it does not increase the supply of taxis per se, and they will not help the situation during peak hours and bad weather.  Teo insists that the taxi availability framework introduced last year will still be necessary — the mandatory stipulation that a certain percentage of the operator’s taxi fleet must be on the roads during peak hours and a minimum daily mileage for all cab drivers.  Photo: Presence Inc via Flickr