Instead of hailing taxis on the street, consumers can save time, money and an amount of carbon dioxide equivalent to 4,859 Da-an Forest Parks (大安森林公園) annually by calling for taxis by phone or on the Internet, a group of environmentalists and the taxi driver association said yesterday.
“If taxi drivers use an electronic system to learn exactly what time and where a customer wants to board their cabs, they can stop circling around the city aimlessly, wasting fuel and polluting the air along the way,” said Dominic Tsai (蔡承家), the founding chair of Hi Taxi, a network that puts “taxi teams” on the Internet so that their services can be ordered online.
“This is a win-win situation — while the working conditions of taxi drivers are improved because they can rest in call stations when they are not driving, customers can get 10 percent to 20 percent off their fares … We also donate NT$1 to environmental groups with each booking,” he said.
PHOTO: CNA
As the transportation sector contributes 15 percent to 17 percent of the nation’s carbon emissions, the public should begin to implement ways to curb unnecessary waste in this area, said Pan Han-shen (潘翰聲), secretary-general of Green Party Taiwan.
“This is especially true in the face of global warming and recent rises in gas prices. While an average taxi driver spends about NT$1,000 per day on fuel, 60 percent to 70 percent of his or her time on the road, the car isn’t hired,” said Chen Deng (陳燈), head of the Taiwan Taxi Transportation Federation.
In terms of fuel, Pan said, the excess translates to 1.1 million liters of fuel a day, as there are almost 90,000 taxis nationwide.
Staying at call stations until being hired instead of circling the streets is also good for taxi drivers in terms of their health and income, Chen said.
“With fuel prices deducted, a taxi driver makes about NT$1,000 a day, while a taxi driver who joins a taxi team makes NT$1,500 a day,” he said. “Roaming drivers end up driving at least 250km to make a sustainable income and have to work 10 to 12 hours a day.”
“The world is modernizing … From cruising the streets, to being hired by phone, then by satellite [phone], I am calling on all taxi drivers to join this online network,” he said. “Carbon reduction is our goal.”
And the online system may be on the way, as the veteran marketer — who has never driven a taxi — founded Hi Taxi in March, and already his network includes 3,000 taxis, 1,500 of which are in Greater Taipei, making it the second largest taxi team nationwide, he said.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching