Improving taxi fleet efficiency in Singapore

Taxi service and availability is a perennial bugbear with commuters in Singapore.  It is not uncommon to hear of people complaining about the difficulty in getting a taxi, especially during peak hours and rainy days, even though Singapore has the highest taxi population per head among developed cities.

Relevant government agencies have been working with taxi companies to formulate and implement measures to improve taxi service, but clearly more can and needs to be done to raise the level of taxi service and efficiency.

Associate Professor Cheng Shih-Fen of SMU School of Information Systems is the Deputy Director at the Fujitsu-SMU Urban Computing & Engineering Corp Lab.  He has been researching on the issue of dynamic supply and demand of taxis in Singapore.  In this podcast, Assoc Prof Cheng shares with us his research and offers possible solutions to the problem of taxi availability in Singapore.