Rs10 hike for prepaid cabs at 3 stations on CR

With railway officials standing firm on their decision to charge prepaid taxi drivers for parking inside Central Railway stations, passengers may have to pay Rs10 more, so that drivers can afford the extra charge.

With railway officials standing firm on their decision to charge prepaid taxi drivers for parking inside Central Railway stations, passengers may have to pay Rs10 more, so that drivers can afford the extra charge.

If prepaid taxi drivers do not pay for parking, the service – considered reliable by most – may be scrapped. To stop this from happening, Tardeo and Wadala Regional Transport Offices (RTO) plan to send a proposal to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Transport Authority (MMRTA), to allow drivers to recover the charges from passengers at CST, LTT and Dadar, and pay the CR.

“We know passengers will have to pay more, but this is the only way out,” said a senior transport official, requesting anonymity.

HT had reported on March 13 that both the Western Railway (WR) and the CR are looking to commercially exploit the parking space – the WR has issued tenders to select an operator who pays the most for using its space, while the CR proposed to charge Rs10 as parking charges.

However, taxi unions said they will neither participate in the tendering process, nor pay parking charges and have not renewed their agreement with RTOs to run the service. Transport officials met railway authorities, but to no avail. “They [railway officials] told us the board has fixed the policy on commercial exploitation of railway land and that local officials have no authority to change that,” the official said.