PTI

Mumbai, Jun 8: Next time you travel in a taxi in Mumbai, you need not pay the fare in cash but can use credit card.

Besides, the taxis would have electronic meters and passengers would be given a printed receipt for the fare paid.

These are some of the features in Maharashtra government's proposed "Fleet Taxi sceheme" to be implemented later this year.

The scheme, based on taxi service in Singapore and New York, is expected to take off in four months, according to state government's Principal Secretary (Transport), G S Gill.

"We have already received proposals from two firms for participating in the fleet taxi scheme", he told PTI.

A fleet operator having between a minimum 500 and a maximum 10,000 taxis would be given an operating license, Gill said. However, none of the existing taxi drivers would lose his job as they would be absorbed by the fleet operators, he said.

Almost 98 per cent of the about 55,000 taxis in Mumbai are Premier Padmini models whose average age is between 15 to 18 years, Gill said.

The new taxis would be bigger, with a minimum 1000 cc capacity and offer features like global positioning system (GPS) which would make it possible to track the position of a taxi on Mumbai roads, he said.