[TusharK]

According to a media report, the Government of Delhi is planning to launch a new scheme, through which it aims to regulate the taxis plying on the roads of the national capital. The City Taxi Scheme will cover taxis including those operated by cab aggregators like Ola and Uber, but not the black & yellow vehicles.



The plan is still in its initial stage. Before being finalised, the draft will be examined by a government panel comprising of the transport minister of Delhi and other senior officials.

All cabs, which are mostly white in colour, will have to be registered once the scheme is introduced following which, the transport department plans to assign them a distinct colour. According to the department, this will help in differentiating them from other vehicles on the road and make them easy for passengers to spot. While the new colour scheme is yet to be finalised, it is reported that the yellow and light green livery used on autorickshaws is being considered.

The black & yellow liveried cabs will be left untouched. There are around 40,000 of these taxis plying in Delhi. The Delhi Taxi Tourist Transporters Association had requested the transport department to retain the existing colours for these vehicles as they are believed to be iconic and popular with tourists.

Source: The Economic Times

Link to Team-BHP News

[libranof1987]

This will do more harm than good as cabs running on app-based platforms will be easy to spot and be targeted.

Uber/Ola cabs continue to be harassed at specific spots in Pune by rickshaw-wallahs and such a distinction will only make things difficult for cabs to ply on such routes. Assigning a common color to cabs makes sense (as it is now a practice in Pune for school buses); why differentiate them based on their operating model.

Originally Posted by TusharK

The Delhi Taxi Tourist Transporters Association had requested the transport department to retain the existing colours for these vehicles as they are believed to be iconic and popular with tourists.

How delusional are these guys?!

[arunphilip]

When justifications like these are provided, I really wish the respective bodies provide the evidence behind it.

this will help in differentiating them from other vehicles on the road

And what is the need behind this? I'm pretty sure that when I'm waiting for my white Uber Indica, I'm not going to mistakenly get into some goon's white Fortuner!

Besides, we have distinctive yellow plates to differentiate taxis from POVs (privately owned vehicles). If they could just ensure and enforce that the yellow boards are the RTO-approved yellow (and not some faded shade of pale yellow), that would suffice.

make them easy for passengers to spot

Again, where's the evidence that this is a problem? Citizen surveys, or feedback?

To me, this just seems like doing something for the sake of being seen to do something.

[Dry Ice]

Without going too much into the politics, suffice to say, a major support group of the elected Delhi govt. are the auto rickshaw unions. And it is not unknown how happy the auto unions are everywhere with cab aggregators. The next elections in Delhi are just 2 years away.

I think after a different color, there may be caps put on the number of cabs, and then on the shared/single rides. To revitalize the autos. Let's see what they eventually come up with.

[dark.knight]

I implore all state governments to keep away from a perfectly running, relatively union-free transport service in the form of cab aggregation. Let this brainchild of an American man remain pristine in our lands, god knows we don't ask for much.

Uber was formed with an idea that almost anyone (who fulfills basic criterion such as owning a country specific driving license, is medically fit to drive and can provide his/her taxation ID etc) can start driving and start earning in order to support his or her family either by this being the sole income or as an additional income.

While I'm not the biggest fan of Uber, fact remains that travel has been simplified by such aggregation.. it brought in a hell of a lot of dignity, ease and safety to transport in a country where otherwise we used to wonder how to go out before 8 a.m in the morning and after 9 p.m at night, I certainly had enough of the third-class treatment meted out to me by autorickshaws and all for paying twice the actual meter charge. The best part of these cabs is that they can be of any colour and I imagine them to be my own car until the ride is over.. silver, white, grey, blue, red, I've sat in them all and each time it satisfied a desire to experience different colours in cars.

Painting them all in the same colour is absolutely unnecessary.. UBER and OLA clearly inform me in advance as to what vehicle is coming by and I recognize them from a mile away.. the registration number is painted on the sides apart from the usual front and back number plates and on top of that almost every cab is stickered UBER & OLA on the windshield. We can identify those cab just fine.

Also since pollution is such a hot-topic in Delhi, I suppose there is no harm in revealing a fact that of all the processes in making a car - the welding, the hot-stamping and assembly.. just about 50% of the ecological damage comes from 1 process = painting!!

Individuals who paint cars often complain to doctors about respiratory problems. Car painters are exposed to isocyanates, especially hexamethylendiisocyanate (HDI), and biuret modified HDI (HDI-BT). The mean exposure to HDI-BT was 115 micrograms/m3 in the air (range 10-385 micrograms/m3), which exceeds the time-weighted Swedish threshold level of 90 micrograms/m3. Exposure to HDI was about 1.0 microgram/m3 with brief peaks.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3439815

There is an on-going effort even today by manufacturers on how to make the painting process ecologically sound and yet make the paint last longer without all the toxins mixed into it. Re-painting a car not only renders the factory paint-job as a waste but it also doubles the ecological impact for a single car. Let it be, we need attention in about 50,000 other spheres of life first.

[GTO]

I think this step is less about the colour, and more about bringing Uber & Ola under the 'taxi' umbrella. Then, they'll have to play by the same rules as everyone else.