This taxi app by Singapore’s transport agency is stunningly pointless

The Singapore government is known for its remarkable efficiency. But it’s also known for being incredibly meddlesome. Case in point: fresh after announcing a new set of regulations governing taxi apps, the Land Transport Authority (LTA) told the world that it too wants to launch a taxi app.

Except that the app, called Taxi-Taxi@SG, won’t actually allow you to book a cab. Instead, what it purports to do is tell commuters who are hailing for a ride where all the taxis are. “With this information, commuters can better decide whether to continue waiting for a taxi on the street, walk to a location with more available taxis, book a taxi instead, or make alternate transport arrangements,” said LTA in a statement. Users can also broadcast their current location to some 28,000 taxis registered in Singapore.

The stupidity of the app is apparent once you start trying to download it. Finding it on the app store is really hard. I searched “taxi taxi” on iTunes and it came out ninth on the search results page – after Grabtaxi, Easy Taxi, the taxi apps by Comfort and SMRT, and a bunch of taxi games. Android user? You’re gonna have an even harder time finding it. This is the results page when I typed “taxi-taxi@SG” on Google Play: