Standing along Yung Kuang Road is Taman Jurong Radiophone Taxi Service—one of the few remaining taxi services that continue to use radiophone technology to connect riders with taxi drivers in Singapore.
Like its counterparts from Boon Lay Garden Radio Taxi Service and Lake View Radio Taxi Service in Sin Ming, Taman Jurong Radiophone Taxi Service works independently from the taxi companies in Singapore.
Humble beginnings
Taman Jurong Radiophone Taxi Service’s humble beginnings can be traced back to 1971, when a group of taxi drivers banded together with the belief that they could better serve the consumers in the Jurong area as a collective. Shortly after, in 1976, the company officially opened as the Taman Jurong Radiophone Taxi Service and was the first service to use radiophone communication in Singapore.
During the company’s opening ceremony on 24 July 1976, then Senior Minister of State for Communications Ong Teng Cheong, in his speech, hailed Taman Jurong Radiophone Taxi Service as an innovation in quicker responses to public requests for taxis so as to evolve with transportation and communication requirements that have become more sophisticated.
The service in its prime
In its prime, Taman Jurong Radiophone Taxi Service was believed to have had a pool of about 400 drivers serving 1,200 customers daily.
To support its services, a total of seven operators ran the taxi stand in three shifts that lasted for eight hours each. On weekdays, the service was the busiest from 5pm to 10pm, during which each operator would have to handle multiple calls at once.
Present day Taman Jurong Radiophone Taxi Service
At the time of writing, the taxi service remains housed in a single-storey rectangular-shaped utilitarian style taxi-service kiosk at Yung Kuang Road.
It is estimated that the kiosk receives about 300 calls from customers each day and operates with a pool of 140 drivers. Although this is a far cry from its heyday, the service continues to hold its own and serve the consumers in the Jurong area
Buildings and sites featured on Roots.SG are part of our efforts to raise awareness of our heritage; a listing on Roots.SG does not imply any form of preservation or conservation status, unless it is mentioned in the article. The information in this article is valid as of April 2021 and is not intended to be an exhaustive history of the site/building.
