THE city’s public transport commission has probed six green cabs that were named by a CCTV news program for using rigged meters to rip off passengers, according to sznews.com.

    The commission has ordered taxi companies to investigate the named cabbies and submit the results of the investigations within three work days. Drivers who have installed rigged meters in their taxies will be dismissed and their dishonest acts will be put on file.

    According to the commission, a total of 1,934 taxi irregularities were found by authorities over the past year, including 280 cases involving rigged meters, and 115 cases have already been found this year. The commission has promised to upgrade intelligent terminals, so that taxi drivers will be less likely to use rigged meters, and to monitor the traveling distances of taxis with GPS devices.

    The six green cabbies from five different taxi companies allegedly installed devices in their taxies that let them add distance to their meters by clicking a small remote, the TV program reported Monday.

    A reporter from the news program took a green taxi from Xingye Road in Bao’an to Shenzhen International Airport on Feb. 13. The taxi’s meter showed a distance of 18.96 kilometers and charged 52.6 yuan (US$7.62), but the reporter’s navigation app showed the distance of the trip was 13.5 kilometers.

    Then the reporter took another green taxi to return to Xingye Road from the airport, and its meter recorded a distance of 27.21 kilometers, twice the distance shown on the navigation app. When the reporter took a third green cab back to the airport, the reporter noticed that the meter continued ticking rapidly when the taxi was stopped for traffic lights.

    According to several taxi drivers, many taxis in Shenzhen, mostly green cabs, have installed the special device so they can remotely add distance. They call the rigged meters “bombs.” The cost of a rigged meter has been raised from 280 yuan to 380 yuan, one cabbie said.

    When the driver clicks the remote, digits in the last two decimal places on the meter will jump rapidly, so most drivers will cover these digits with black tape to make the difference unnoticeable to passengers.

    The reporter took another green cab with a rigged meter from Shenzhen North Railway Station to Xingye Road on Feb. 13. The meter displayed a distance of 31.2 kilometers even though the navigation app showed the distance was 23.3 kilometers.

    The reporter went to the taxi company of the driver, surnamed Yuan. After the reporter and the taxi team’s head, surnamed Lan, checked Yuan’s taxi, Yuan finally confessed that he had been using the “bomb” to rip off the reporter, and that he had removed the “bomb” from the taxi.

    Another taxi company’s deputy general manager, surnamed Ren, said that the company had fired 16 taxi drivers for installing rigged meters over the past two months. He said that the records of these drivers’ dishonesty had been submitted to the authorities as well, making it unlikely that they would work as taxi drivers again in the future.

    According to the report, passengers are advised to check if there is black tape covering a taxi’s meter, and to report complaints to authorities if taxi meters record a distance that is longer than the actual distance.

    (Zhang Yang)