It was an idea whose time seemed to have arrived. The capital's harried public could dial a number and, hey presto, a taxi appeared at the doorstep. Sure, they charged Rs 2 more per km than black and yellow taxis.
But unlike run-of-the-mill cabs, these taxis were equipped with public mobile radio trunk service handsets and mobile phones. They were tracked by a 24-hour control room with a global positioning system.
The drivers were polite too -- after all, they had undergone three days of training in traffic rules, etiquette and personal hygiene.
So women, children and the elderly didn't have to fear sexual or other harassment. All said and done, Delhi's 300-odd radio cabs promised uniform tariffs, reliability and security.
But three years after radio taxi services were introduced in Delhi in 2000 as a pilot project by the Sheila Dikshit-led government, radio taxis are crawling in the slow lane.
Exclaims one radio taxi operator: "The business is pathetic." Indeed, one of the capital's three operators, who does not wish to be identified, is about to shut.
Taxi operators took three years to get licences from the state government. They're now losing money hand over fist. Mukul Sharma, director of Dial -a -cab, says that the capital's three operators are collectively incurring a loss of Rs 7-8 cores (Rs 70-80 million) per annum as they have to pay for depreciation and interest on bank loans.
The Radio Taxi Service Association blames all this on business unfriendly regulations and rules. The operator who plans on shutting says that radio taxi services receive no support from the traffic department, the state government and the Airports Authority of India.
Taxi operators pin a large part of the blame on AAI, which refuses to allot parking space or counters to radio taxi operators at airport terminals. Notes Kunal Lalani, managing director of the 100-car Mega Cab: "The airport is a major source of income for us, say, 50 per cent. We can drop a customer at the terminal, but cannot pick up anybody from there. Besides, we have to pay a parking fee if we get a call to pick up anybody."
Lalani points out that similar services at Bangalore are also not flourishing because AAI doesn't allow radio cabs at the airport. In contrast, AAI allows this in Mumbai.
The AAI says that taxi services at the airport are managed by a private operator who won a bid to handle them for three years.
AAI is now in the process of calling for fresh bids. Says R V Narayanan, general manager (commercial) at the AAI: " In a short time from now, the authority will call tenders for providing taxi services at the terminals. Radio taxi service providers can participate in the bid as an association."
Radio taxi service companies also grouse that a good chunk of their revenue goes on rent for parking space. In Mumbai, radio cabs have parking bays across the city and so are flourishing, says Lalani. Sharma adds that the association has already applied for parking space at all Delhi Metro stations.
Argues Lalani, who launched Mega Cab after seeing a friend operate a similar service in Germany and seeing these in Hong Kong, Dubai and Singapore: "The business is viable only when there are numbers and that can be achieved by the spread of the service."
He says that the traffic in Delhi, which has more four-wheeled vehicles than the combined four-wheeler population of the three other metros, can be cut by 20 per cent if radio cabs catch on.
Right now, however, he gets just 500 customer calls a day. A manager at his taxi service's control room says that 25 per cent of the calls do not translate into actual demand.
But if the service had caught on, radio taxi services would have more than the current 4-5 hubs.
Says the manager: "If a customer at, say, Vikaspuri needs a cab in 15 minutes, we may not be able to send it from our nearest hub as the time is too short to cover the distance or owing to peak hour traffic."
Sharma makes an additional point: the public is not yet aware of radio cabs.
So the capital's radio taxi service companies have clearly been driven into a cul-de-sac.
They don't have the numbers or the revenue because of the AAI's unhelpfulness. And until they're ubiquitous, they won't get the large passenger traffic they require. Over to Shiela Dikshit, for some solutions.
