New taxi fleets to hit the streets within a year
Five new taxi fleets are expected to hit the streets within a year after beating several other applicants to win licences.  Transport authorities on Wednesday said they received 15 applications in total, but three did not meet the requirements.  Of the chosen fleets, three will operate only urban taxis, while the other two will cover urban areas as well as the New Territories.  The firms have a year to complete their preparations and will operate a total of 3,500 cabs, accounting for a fifth of the taxis in Hong Kong.  Transport Commissioner Angela Lee said fleet operators will provide training for drivers and monitor their performance.  She also said they have to offer a number of electronic payment methods as well as online car-hailing services with no cap on booking fees.  "Individual applicants may engage different partners for developing the online platform for them. There will be quite a room for development, taking into account their own market strategies and the clientele they are targeting. We do not stipulate the hard-and-fast rule on how the online services will have to be done," Lee said.  "For trips booked in advance, we will allow the flexibility for the taxi drivers to charge at a pre-agreed rate, or to charge according to the meter, plus an additional amount as the pre-booking fees."  Passengers will be able to rate their taxi drivers with a complaint mechanism in place, the transport official said, adding that serious breaches could result in the termination of licence.  Lee said car parks in Tsing Yi and Tai Po are in the pipeline for the taxis, and the authorities will look into whether to expand the scheme to grant more licences in future. One of the fleet operators, Sino Development, said it will operate taxis across the city, including on Lantau.  "We hope to make good use of our resources and operate all 1,000 taxis to provide quality services to citizens," said fleet operations manager Wong Tai-hoi.  "For full-time cabbies, we will need 2,000 of them, on top of 1,000 part-time, substitute drivers."  Eric Cheung from another operator, Big Boss Taxi Company, said the group already has a number of taxis in line with the requirement that vehicles in the fleets must not be more than three years old.  "Coming from the taxi industry, we already have on hand almost 200 taxis. They are ready to be deployed anytime. But we do want to have a more diverse fleet, which includes the premium taxis as well as the ones for wheelchairs," Cheung said.  "Likely we will do a soft launch at the end of this year, maybe perhaps early next year."  Fleet operator SynCab Service, for its part, said it will bring in over 120 new cabs before the end of the year, including six-seater, electric taxis.  It said reserving a journey in a six-seater is expected to cost 10 to 25 percent more than a taxi meter charge.