CAIRO: Hundreds of brand-new yellow taxis, armed with meters, telephones and air conditioning, took to the streets of Egypt on Wednesday, jostling for space with battered black-and-white relics mostly fit for the junkyard. Drivers, some dressed in suits and ties, drove sparkling Hyundai Elantras and Volkswagen Paratis away from a launching ceremony in central Cairo and melted into a bumper-to-bumper sea of cars, minibuses, pickup trucks and donkey carts. The new taxi service, which will initially supplement rather than replace the old system, has been a pet project of Egyptian Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif since he took office in July 2004 with a mandate to modernise and liberalise the economy. The old taxis, many of them small Fiat clones dating back to the 1970s and 1980s, are cheap and plentiful, but Cairenes compete to tell tales of their most horrendous taxi rides. Some have no working lights, or swerve to one side when the driver brakes. Many have seats covered with decades of grime. Handles to open the windows often fell off years ago. For strangers who do not know the system or the unwritten fare scale, taking a taxi can be a daunting adventure. At the ceremony, Cairo Governor Abdel Azim Wazir thanked the drivers of Cairo s 55,000 existing cabs for their work but said the time had come for Cairo to catch up with other capitals by offering clean, comfortable and air-conditioned vehicles. One of the main innovations for Egypt is the smart meters, which accept credit cards, provide printed receipts and relay information electronically to company headquarters. The old taxis have meters frozen in the 1970s at a starting fare of 60 piasters (10 U.S. cents) but few of them are in working order and in practice an offer of less than two pounds ($0.25) for the shortest trip is likely to lead to an argument. Fares in the new taxis start at 3.50 pounds for the first kilometre, plus one pound for every extra kilometre. Three companies won by tender the right to operate the new taxis, initially 500 cars each, and all the drivers are company employees rather than owners. Assem Ahmed, a former black-and-white cab driver, said he would receive a basic salary of 180 pounds a month plus commissions equivalent to 15 percent of all his fares. It s a great project. You have the company behind you and I expect to earn more than I did before, he said. Ibrahim Mohamed, another driver who has moved to the new system, said his company, City Cabs, insisted on suits and ties for drivers. They want to present a smart image, he said. Medhat Etriby, an official of the company which provided the electronic system, said the authorities were looking at ways to expand the system by bringing in owner-drivers. Reuters
