One of the most interesting recent developments in Colombo is the boom of Meter Tuk Tuk (aka Meter Taxi). There was a time only very few Tuk Tuk had meters attached with but recently many Three wheel owners venturing into Meter Tuk. Most of the meter tuk/taxi charges 50LKR for 1st Kilometer and 30 LKR for each additional Kilometer. Also there will be waiting charges. This waiting charge can go up when you travel during a traffic time.
Initially the companies offered meter tuk tuk service was mobbed by some three wheel thugs. But nothing happened. Few more companies started metered tuk service around Colombo along with Nano cabs.
It is such a relief for people like me who doesn’t do well in bargaining. I hate to bargain with three wheel guys. Most of them tend to cheat you and rip you off by saying so many things like “one way sir watten enna one” blah blah! I’m sure it’ll help most of the tourist too. When our three wheel guys see a white skin they go behind that person and will try their best to give him a ride. Once he get down, he’ll be ripped off by good number of drivers. I’ve heard from many foreigners the same complain.
Now all we have to do is just get into the Tuk and ask him to switch on the meter. I usually wait for a meter taxi and allow all the normal tuks to pass me. You can clearly see the anger in meter-less three wheel guys face. But who gives a damn? 🙂
But there can be few consequences with meter tuk too. There is a good possibility they’ll tweak the meter to show the wrong calculation or mileage, which I have noticed in Indian meter tuk tuk when I was in Hyderabad. I’m not blaming all the three wheel guys. But most of them tend to cheat on someone they find easy to cheat.
All in all, I love the change going around Tuk Tuk in Colombo. Hope it’ll spread out to other parts of the country too. Especially North. In Point-Pedro, if a three wheel guy to take his tuk tuk out you need to pay minimum of 200 LKR. WTF!!! yeah that’s what I said too when I heard it first.
Change is part of human history. If you don’t change with time, you won’t survive!
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நிரூஜா says
Hehe! Same blood. I thought i was da only happy person abt these meter taxis. I have lot of bad experiences. One of that is, One taxi guy asked me 350 rs to go to near dehiwala pizza hut from near IFS. lol he thought im strange to colombo. well, i asked can u come for 20 ruppes 😛
After this meter taxi, bargaining has gone off. but, there are other problems, if u really dont kno the route, they might cheat you n giv a rite n make more money 😉
mayooresan says
Exactly 😀 Thanks for the comment.
Sundar says
Nice. And if they start tweaking the meters, you should try our app: http://ideophone.in/products/suruk to find out. 🙂
Rakhitha says
About cheating
If you have a smart phone you could easily use the GPS to track the distance. And a little math will give you the distance to cost conversion.
But the hard part will be arguing with the driver if you find a diff.
Sundar says
Rakhitha, in fact, our app http://ideophone.in/products/suruk computes distance and fare. It also gives the route as well as allows you to rate the driver/taxi. If someone finds that the meter is tampered with, they can at least get down midway and take another taxi. That saves some money for them.
mayooresan says
@Rakitha
Hell yeah I hate to argue but sundar got a point, if we can figure out its going wrong we can get down mid way.
@Sundar
I checked the application it looks awesome. yet to test it on real time. It’ll be nice if you can add support for Colombo too. I’ll soon write a post on how to use your application in Colombo with custom settings.
Sundar says
Mayooresan, thanks a lot for the appreciation. Please do test and let us know how the app work. If you give us the tariff in Colombo, we can even add it to the app, by default.
sameera says
I want to
sameera from induruwa says
I want to fine
sameera from induruwa says
I want to find some informations about safety of trishaws,please be kind en
sameera from induruwa says
en=electronic
NPP says
Sundar – strange coincidence, i just downloaded it today and it seems great. One thing missing is the waiting time though. good if that too is included
Sundar says
Good to know that you liked Suruk, NPP. 🙂
We thought that waiting time rules will be very different in different places. That’s why we didn’t include that. How much are the waiting charges in Colombo? I think the difference in fare may not be much.
NPP says
yes it’s great.
The tuk tuk waiting charges are normally 1.50/min
This is kind of important when traveling in heavy traffic. Once i paid a fare of 200 out of which around 15 was for waiting in traffic 🙂
Sundar says
Thanks for the information, NPP. We’ll take this into account for our next release.
mayooresan says
@sundar
Charges in Colombo revised after the fuel hike. Please update for us in next release thanks 🙂
http://www.dailymirror.lk/news/16882-metre-taxis-to-charge-rs2-more-from-2nd-km-onwards.html