Street taxis struggle to adopt mobile-based meters

Street taxis struggle to adopt mobile-based meters

While the Sultanate of Oman has made rapid strides in streamlining the public transport facilities, especially taxi services in the past decade, there seems to be some work to do so on this front.The app-based on-demand taxi services have taken off well and seem to have established themselves to some extent and the efforts to regulate street taxis seem to have hit a roadblock.Speaking to Observer, Mohammed, a taxi operator based, said, “I am associated with one of the taxi companies and use metre with our users. But, when it comes to picking up passengers from the roads, we do not use the mobile-based metre (Aber) to determine fares and still follow the traditional system based on negotiations with passengers.”He added, “The obvious reason is that the taxi owners have not agreed to operate under a company as mandated by the Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology.”A top official at Otaxi, one of the licenced companies and the market leader, confirmed to Observer that the situation has not changed regarding the Orange and White Street taxis.”While app-based taxis offer reliable service and even offer card payments, getting a street taxi for the right fare is still a challenge.“Firstly,