Taxis to accept electronic payments - 2026

[PLamHK]

I rarely take taxi in HK as they are super expensive.

Er, what? Have you ever tried taking a taxi anywhere else in the developed world?

[newhkpr]

Er, what? Have you ever tried taking a taxi anywhere else in the developed world?

So this. I feel like people lost perspective. Is a taxi in Munich or Tokyo going to be better than in Hong Kong? Yes. But at several X the price.
On the other hand as much as people love to bitch about grumpy horrible uncle drivers, I've never felt as unsafe in Hong Kong as I did when I was in a (cheaper!) Bangkok taxi. I legit thought I'd die on the way from Suvarnabhumi to the city as the driver was clearly high on Yaba, swerved around, accelerated into inches away from another car and behaved terribly erratically.

[mmbiker]

Er, what? Have you ever tried taking a taxi anywhere else in the developed world?

First thing off my recent trip to US I took a Uber. Cost me $5X USD....

I am familiar with HK so I dont need to take taxi.

But I believe your response is to make fun of my response. Ok, you got me!

[PLamHK]

The key element of the proposal from the commies' point of view is that not only must all taxis have cameras, they must stream in real-time to government servers. In combination with facial recognition software, this will enable them to track us all much more efficiently.

Actually, to be fair, this was in the original government proposals some months ago. But RTHK is reporting

The information would only be transferred to a planned Transport Department central platform when complaints arise or if there was an accident.

And would otherwise be deleted in 30 days.

Which I'm much more comfortable with - obviously there was quite a lot of pushback (not least I suspect from the Privacy Commissioner, who does seem to actually make a decent fist of their job).

https://news.rthk.hk/rthk/en/compone...4-20241209.htm

[jabalong]

I rarely take taxi in HK as they are super expensive.

Er, what? Have you ever tried taking a taxi anywhere else in the developed world?

Both can be true. Taxis in Hong Kong are indeed cheap relative to many other developed economies. But within the context of available transport options in Hong Kong, they can be expensive. I'd imagine that the OP was referring to the latter, not the former.

[PLamHK]

But within the context of available transport options in Hong Kong, they can be expensive. I'd imagine that the OP was referring to the latter, not the former.

Well isn't that just obviously true pretty much anywhere? Obviously a dedicated form of transport will be more expensive than a shared form!