Teerayut Prasert, the director of the Phuket Transport Department, said in a meeting in Provincial Hall this morning, “We already have a plan that involves medium-sized buses of 30 to 32 seats on all three routes, with six to eight serving Rawai and Patong-Kata-Karon, and four to six serving Kamala way.
“The standard fare would not be more than B120 one-way. We would try to make the timetable fit as closely as possible with flight times, like the current airport-Phuket City service.
Now we are open for bids from any company that wants to operate these three routes.”
Turning to taxis, Mr Teerayut said that many of the “black” taxi drivers who want to convert to legal green plates have a problem: because they registered their vehicles as private cars. Banks and finance companies from whom the drivers have received loans make it “really hard” for them to change status.
He explained that the banks wanted payment of a fee of B30,000 to B50,000 before they would allow the change of status. Drivers could not afford such fees.
Mr Teerayut said the department would try to find a way to reduce the fee. If this proves impossible the department “have another plan for adjustment”, he said. He said optimistically that he thought all the conversions to green could be completed by the end of October.
He added, “We already had designs for taxi uniforms. And we already have a structure for fares between seven areas – Kata, Karon, Kamala, Patong, Rawai, Phuket Town and the airport. Of course, all the drivers must now get public vehicle driving licenses.”
Mr Teerayut pointed out that converting black taxis to green would also protect the drivers from competition in the form of interlopers from other provinces who usually head for Phuket during the high season, “because we will know which are the legitimate taxis”.
“Meter taxis are the base for all the changes,” he explained. Now that the next layer, the black-to-green conversions, is well under way, the next layer to tackle will be motorbike taxis, then finally tuk-tuks.
Finally, he stressed that the customer call centre number, 1578 – which is on the side of every newly converted taxi – is now operational “and we will be pleased receive all comments or complaints from passengers. Our aim is to solve every case in no more than three days.”