Why ITA says Checkered Stripes coming to Jamaican Taxis by March 2016

I'm not particularly fond of the JUTC (Jamaica Urban Transit Company) buses, especially as they are so expensive.

Worse now that news has surfaced suggesting that the JUTC is planning to raise fares back to JA$120 for adults by January 2016 as noted in the article “JUTC fare returns to $120 in January”, published Friday, November 20, 2015, The Jamaica Observer.

 

So I’m quite pleased to announce that order is coming to my main travel alternative in Kingston, the Route Taxi. The ITA (Island Transport Authority) has decided that they all need to get stripes as reported in the article “New Colour-Code System Coming For Taxis”, Published Thursday December 10, 2015, The Jamaica Gleaner.

The stripes, which are 4 inches wide (what no metric??) is a new colour code that's set to come into effect at the end of March 2016. There will be no grace period and any Route or Hackney Taxi that doesn’t have the stripes will not be allowed to renew their licenses during the 2016 licensing period, which runs from Monday February 15^th 2016 to Thursday March 31^st 2016.

Specifically, the following stripes will apply to the following Taxis:

1.      Black and White checkered stripes for Route Taxis

2.      Black and Yellow checkered stripes for Hackney Taxis

Good to note here that Hackney Taxis are chartered Taxis; these stripes will make it super easy to differentiate the two types of taxis, instead of flagging down vehicles and wondering why they don’t wanna stop.

I'm assuming that these stripes will also glow iridescently in the dark, allowing anyone to identify them at night!! Best of all, it’ll prevent Taxis from running as either route or Chartered; they have to choose one and stick to it.

Any vehicle without stripes is an instant JA$30,000 fine as per the article “Transport Ministry Clarifies New Road Traffic Fines”, published June 23, 2014 By Chris Patterson, The Jamaica Gleaner.

Finally some order is coming to the chaos that is Jamaica's Taxi system. Now if they could also stipulate that they have built in GPS so that we can track their location on Google Maps that would be great as well!!