Continuing with the steps being taken to overhaul the public transport system in the city, the government has introduced the first batch of new Radio taxis in the capital on Friday. The dial-a-cab service is part of the government’s plan to reduce dependence on personal cars in the run up to the Commonwealth Games 2010.

Under this service, people would be able to call the taxis over the telephone and would be charged only for the distance actually traveled by them. The round-the-clock service would be operated from a centralized control room that would coordinate between the passengers and the taxis, thereby ensuring that the taxi closest to a passenger reaches him or her quickly. For this purpose all the taxis had been fitted with two way radio communication devices, hence the name - Radio Cabs. The centralized control room would be manned round the clock by trained personnel.

However, the charges for this new service would be rather steep. In fact, at Rs. 15 per kilometer, it will be almost double that of the regular black-and-yellow cabs plying on the roads. But, with the extra money, will come extra facilities like air-conditioning, bigger and better cars, luxurious and comfortable interiors, etc. For the convenience of the commuters, credit card swipe machine and online reservations system would also be introduced through the website.

According to the Delhi Transport Minister, the radio cab service would also make travel safer for passengers, especially women, since all these taxis would come equipped with a panic button which would be connected to the police control room and trigger an alarm over there in case it was pressed by a commuter, thereby providing for quick help.

This new state-of-the-art service would run on the global positioning system and had been launched keeping the present and future needs of the city in mind. The plan was to have 10,000 such taxis on the city roads by 2010, when the Commonwealth Games take place.

The license for providing this service had been issued to three companies – Metro Radio Cab, Carzenent and Mega Corporation – who would be running a modern fleet of Global Positioning System (GPS) fitted AC taxis. To begin with, Metro Cab has introduced Tata Indigo Marina vehicles for the service and it intends to increase the number of vehicles on the service to 500 by March 2007 and 3,000 by 2010.

Metro Radio Cabs has been allotted a short digit number 123 and 011-29222000. The commuters can call this number to hire the taxis.