THE COOL RIDE

The air-conditioned cabs were introduced in March 1997. Known as cool cabs, they were given the blue-and-silver colour for easy identification and were allowed to charge 25% more than the kaali-peeli. Ten years later, the government got the fleet taxi scheme and introduced call-centre based radio taxis. In 2010, the state got another scheme, Phone Fleet Taxi scheme, and gave 4,000 permits to a taxi company