Mike Rowse

Opinion | Hong Kong’s new taxi licensing scheme is old wine in new bottles

The licensing overhaul sounds worthy of praise, but won’t win over the public if it’s just to help vested interests and hold back Uber

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An employee of a taxi service cleans one of the company’s newest cars in To Kwa Wan on July 31. Hong Kong’s taxi licencing scheme will not allocate extra resources, but rather reshuffle those the city already has. Photo: May Tse

Mike Rowse

Published: 4:30pm, 11 Aug 2024

The Hong Kong government’s announcement last month that it would approve five new taxi fleet licences did not seem to have set many pulses racing. This is not surprising; the public has become pretty blase over the years about efforts to improve taxi services here. The new scheme is just the latest chapter in a very long book.

The failings of the present system are well known and have been debated for years: the driving skills of an elderly workforce, attempts at overcharging - particularly of visitors, refusing to pick up customers, vehicles in dilapidated or unpleasant condition and many cabs only accepting cash. It is no surprise there has been an explosion in the use of services like Uber, despite the ambiguity of their legal status.

Notwithstanding everyone’s familiarity with the topic, the old arguments were given a fresh airing on an RTHK podcast that I co-hosted last week. The podcast featured Transport constituency lawmaker Frankie Yick Chi-ming and Alok Jain, an expert from a private-sector consultancy. An associate professor from Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Tony Sze Nang-ngai, joined for part of the discussion.

The most startling point to emerge from the discussion, at least from my perspective, was the fact that not a single new taxi licence is being issued as part of the exercise. The current number of 18,163 taxis is being maintained, according to Yick. All 3,500 vehicles covered by the new fleet licences will come from cannibalising existing taxi licences.

So this is not provision of additional resources. It is a reshuffle of those we already have. Taking into account also that all selected five fleet operators are players in the existing market, it is plain to see that for all the talk of a new era in taxi matters, this is largely a case of old wine in new bottles.