Taxi Driver Online

Empty cabs waste fuel, cause pollution

IT seems that much of a cabbie's work is not profitable, as up to 40 percent of their daily mileage is spent with no passengers onboard.

The figure is higher than during the World Expo period when the demand for taxis was huge, the traffic management authority said yesterday.

The situation is causing concerns about wasted fuel and pollution, which worsened after the Expo.

Each cabbie drives 400 kilometers a day on average - this means that 13 liters of fuel are used while driving 120 kilometers with no passengers.

For a city with about 50,000 taxis, that can cost 4.6 million yuan (US$698,000) in wasted fuel every day and nearly 1.7 billion yuan a year, according to the city's taxi association.

"The best way (to solve the problem) so far is to increase the efficiency of the telephone dispatch system," said Hong Tianling, the director of the taxi association.

Shanghai Qiangsheng Taxi Co, the city's biggest taxi operator, echoed that sentiment.

Cheng Lin, a Qiangsheng -official, said the operator can -guarantee that a passenger who had ordered a cab would be collected within five minutes.

The operator has city's lowest empty riding rate at 33 percent, mainly due to its growing dispatch system -- which can handle up to 60,000 phone calls a day, said Cheng.

http://www.shanghaidaily.com/article/?i ... type=Metro

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

It's funny, I woke up this morning and I was wondering about all the dead mileage in Shanghai

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if you cannot be yourself, then who can you be.

40% dead mileage, is that all?

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Caledonian Cabbie

This could be dead milage anywhere tho

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

They won't waste as much fuel as our empty buses do!

Difference being we subsidise our buses to drive around empty

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

Thats cos its a cosy friendly environmental thing to do...