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Mayor calls for more `foreigner-friendly' taxi drivers

"Foreigner-friendly" taxies are in short supply in Taipei, Mayor Hau Lung-bin (郝龍斌) said yesterday.

Hau said the Taipei City Government had for some time pushed for taxi drivers to be trained to offer convenient service to foreign visitors, but that the number of approved drivers stood at only 163.

He said he had instructed the city's Department of Transportation to consider inviting taxi drivers who provided contract services to international hotels to join the city's tourist-friendly fleet.

Hau said the city government must make the best of scarce resources to solve the problem.

He also asked for increased publicity of the service, particularly in places frequented by foreign visitors -- such as airports and MRT stations.

City transportation officials said they would continue to promote the taxi service and that Japanese-speaking taxi drivers would soon join their English-speaking counterparts in the special fleet.

Officials said that 44 taxi drivers recently passed a Japanese-proficiency test.

They said they were working with taxi companies to provide tourism-specific English courses. Further taxi drivers would be added to the fleet once they had passed an English-proficiency test, they said.

However, they said that too few taxi drivers were passing the test.

Officials said the city's international hotels had been presented with a list of approved tourist taxi drivers and that all capable taxi drivers were invited to publicize their linguistic skills.
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