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GPS, uniform colour for taxis
GPS, Uniform Colour For Taxis. Swetha, an IT employee, took a cab after her shift back home. It was almost midnight and on the way, the taxi driver briefly made a halt and took a few male passengers on board, who started misbehaving with her.
Even drivers will have white uniform
Police to track movement of vehicles
- Public and private transport to be equipped with GPS
- This is a joint initiative by the RTA and police
All cabs would be white in colour and sport a blue band. They would carry the words, ‘Taxi/Cab’ in bold letters
Swetha, an IT employee, took a cab after her shift back home. It was almost midnight and on the way, the taxi driver briefly made a halt and took a few male passengers on board, who started misbehaving with her. All it took was one call and within minutes a patrolling van stopped the cab and reprimanded the driver and the culprits, as they tracked the movement of the cab through GPS.
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This might sound like a fantasy but it would soon be a reality. The government has taken a giant leap forward to ensure the safety of not only women passengers but all passengers as a whole. The police and the road transport department officials are planning to make installation of GPS (Global Positioning System) devices mandatory for all cabs and public transport vehicles.
RTA officials say that retrofitting the cabs with GPS enabled devices will help track the movement of these vehicles 24x7 from the control room.
As of now, a few cabs are running on GPS, which are controlled by the company operating them and other cabs depend on call centres. According to this initiative, all cabs will be linked to the control room via GPS. There are about 25,000 registered cabs, which will have to be linked. Apart from cabs, even public transport will be monitored. APSRTC has started the initiative of linking GPS with buses.
“The GPS-GPRS technology will help authorities run buses as per schedule and help maintain punctuality of services. A trial run was conducted in over 50 buses on the Koti-Jubilee Hills and Koti-Patancheru routes. There are plans to introduce the service in 2,000 city buses,” said A Koteswara Rao, RTC’s executive director of the Greater Hyderabad zone.
As of now, cabs sport different colours. But there are plans to sync all the cabs in a single colour to make them easily identifiable. “All cabs would be white in colour and sport a blue band. They would carry the words, ‘Taxi Cab’ in bold letters on the doors and front window. Drivers will adorn white uniforms. These are the proposed new changes along with GPS linkage. We have to make changes in motor vehicles rules to incorporate these rules,” said an official with the RTA.
However, a few things aren’t clear such as who will bear the cost of installation of the GPS devices and will the private cab owners agree to run their cabs in uniform colour.
The RTA and police though say that these plans are in line with CM KCR’s vision to make city safe and better. It also looks like the initiative might take time before it was completely put into practice.
