New Taxi "Operators" on the Road

Other than Uber, Grab Taxi, and other taxi app services, there appears to be a new class of operators on the road.  We call them "Zippies".

No fear of competition, however, since these cabs have the Green Light on, i.e. no passengers, yet choose not to stop.  No matter how we hail, they simply zip by blatantly, thus we call them "Zippies".

We hope this is not a new tactic to beat the authorities at their game, because ever since the Land Transport Authority (LTA) impose taxi availability standards for the major operators (Comfort, CitiCab, TransCab and Premier), we are experiencing an increase of taxis driving around with Green Light on and not picking up passengers, where prior to this, they would have the Red "Hired" sign on to indicate that they are not available.

The current taxi availability mileage counters that monitor the minimum daily mileage of 250 km that the cabbies have to log in, may not be sufficient to curb some cabbies' habit of using their cabs for private use.