Taxi centre promises better service

Matthew Chung

• Last Updated: November 03. 2009 9:36PM UAE / November 3. 2009 5:36PM GMT

ABU DHABI // Tired of booking cabs that never arrived, Cherin Natout finally gave up and rented a car.

Ms Natout, 26, had been using Abu Dhabi’s taxi call centre, launched a year ago today, since June but said she spent at least an hour every day waiting for a cab to pick her up.

A risk consultant from Lebanon who works mostly in Abu Dhabi, Ms Natout said she moved out of her hotel in the Tourist Club area after a week during which she was late for every meeting because the cab she booked failed to arrive promptly.

And she moved to Dubai.

“I would call one hour before and the thing I struggle with is, I order the cab, they register it somewhere and tell me the taxi is on the way,” she said.

“I call, they say, ‘Sorry, we will order it again’.”

TransAD, the emirate’s taxi regulator, hopes stories like Ms Natout’s will soon be few and far between as 3,000 more of the newer, silver taxis are rolled out and linked to the call centre before the end of the year.

Then, they say, there should be more satisfied customers, such as Charlotte Fleury, 16, who said she has had no trouble when booking a cab to shopping centres from her home behind Al Wahda Mall.

“It’s faster than waiting on the street,” she and her schoolmate Laura Younes, 16, from Lycée Louis Massignon said in unison.

The dial-a-taxi service’s popularity has grown rapidly since its launch, according to TransAD, with the number of cabs dispatched to passengers per week rising to more than 4,000 in August from around 300 in November last year.

In September there were more than 35,000 calls to the dispatch centre, TransAD said.

The regulator expects this growth to continue, especially once it has reached its original target of having 7,021 silver taxis on the road. There were about 3,000 on the roads at the start of this year and there are 4,200 today.

It is quite an achievement for TransAD, said Jameela al Hameli, the person in charge of the booking service, considering that it was only two years ago that the first of the silver taxis took to the streets.

“We started from scratch, from nothing, and we reached a level where we have an excellent condition of taxis, the driver is fine and they are getting better in the service,” she said.

“I think we are really proud in what we have accomplished the past two years.”

More customers could have been served through the call centre if there were enough cabs available to meet the demand, Ms al Hameli said. Some residents said yesterday that they had not heard of the service and were eager to try it.

Others continue to rely on calling taxi drivers they have befriended.

Ms al Hameli said a media campaign for the call centre was planned for next year, once all of the new cabs are on the road.

A tender for two more taxi companies will result in the provision of more than 2,000 additional cabs linked to the call centre by 2010, taking the total to more than 9,000.



mchung@thenational.ae