Guide: Finding the PHV Waiting / Resting points - Familiarizing with the Pick-up / Drop-off Points *Updated 12 Nov 2024

Main Guide: https://charleskokycw.wixsite.com/charleskok/post/guide-to-becoming-a-phv-driver-in-singapore-updated-10-nov-2024

A quick step by step walkthrough for people who wish to become a PHV driver in Singapore; hope it helps you :)

Finding the waiting point/resting points:

Where you can rest and wait for bookings / go for a toilet break:

• No gantry carpark

• Outside of gantry of HDB car parks (most carparks have gantry but only some have a lot of space outside the gantry where you can wait and rest far away from the gantry point, not blocking the roads in the carpark)

• Examples of some roads where there are no lines drawn or with single white line (including but not limited to):

• 1 Rodyk Street

• Birch Road (Along Serangoon Rd)

• Robert Lane (Along Serangoon Rd)

• Stretch of landed properties along Trevose Cres

• Geylang Lor 21, 23, 25 etc.

• Petrol stations’ toilets

• Community Centers' toilets (*Drive to the carpark nearest to the CC and with the 15 minutes grace period, you can go to the toilet free-of-charge)

• Shopping malls’ toilets

• Sentosa Palawan’ beach / East Coast / West Coast beaches’ free toilets

• Mount Faber toilet (free parking available nearby)

*Personally, I usually choose to use the petrol stations & community centers' toilets nearby where I am, at the specific point in time.

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Familiarizing with the pickup point/drop-off points:

• The focus here is to familiarize yourself with most of the common pickup points in Singapore as you start out OR before starting out, as a PHV driver.

This should be done before progressing onto the ride hailing platform that you choose for the long term, so as to achieve the new joiner incentives because if you are not familiarized with the pickup points, you will take too long to find the pick-up point.

This will then make the customer wait too long and in turn, it is very likely to affect your customer service ratings negatively; which is why you should familiarize yourself first if you are new and first starting out as a PHV driver.

List of pick-up points, including but not limited to:

• HDB, Condo, Landed property area

• Schools (Polytechnics, Universities NUS / NTU / SMU/SIM, ITE College West, East),

• Shopping Malls (Vivocity, Great World City, Suntec City, Century Square, Tampiness Mall, White Sands, Waterway Point, Nex, IMM, Westgate, JEM, Great World City (3 pickup point), Causeway Point, City Square Mall, Bugis Junction (2 pickup point), Raffles City, Golden Mile Complex, Tekka Centre, Sim Lim Square, Jurong Point etc.)

• Temple / Masjids

• Hospitals (SGH, CGH, NUH, Alexandra Hospital, Gleneagles Hospital, Novena Hospital, Raffles Hospital, KK Women & Children Hospital, Mount Alvernia hospital, Ng Teng Fong Hospital, IMH, National Heart Centre Singapore, Sengkang Hospital, Khoo Teck Puat Hospital)

• Factory / industrial areas (Woodlands, Tuas, Changi Business Park, AMK Midview City)

• Central Business District (CBD) / MBS (Conventional Center, Tower 1 2 3) / Esplanade / MBFC Tower 1 & 2, Asia Square Tower, One Raffles Quay

• Government Buildings (ICA etc.)

• Tourist location (Zoo, Bird Park, Botanic Gardens, SG flyer, Gardens by the Bay)

• Changi Airport / Jewel (4 terminals drop off area + Jewel drop-off)

• Sentosa

*Highlighted ones are the pickup points that you should at least familiarize yourself with :)

• West / East Coast beaches

• Singapore Discovery Centre

• Harbourfront Centre (got 2 pickup points, one is the shopping mall roundabout, the other is near the ferry terminal and you need to enter through the 1 lane right entry entrance, the one entry point entrance instead of the 1 exit 1 entry entrance)

• Orchard Road / Hotel / Malls  (Paragon, Lucky Plaza, ION Orchard, Far East Plaza, CentrePoint, Four Seasons Hotel, Tangs, Pullsman Singapore Hotel, Ngee Ann City (TAKA), The Heerens, Cineleisure, Forum The Shipping Mall, Pan Pacific, Orchards Towers, Concorde Hotel, Plaza Singapura, Marina Square, Millenia Walk, 313 Somerset)

• National Stadium (Stadium Dr)

• Embassies (Vietnam, Indonesia, China etc.)

• Famous locations / buildings (IKEA Alexandra, IKEA Tampiness, Courts Tampiness, Giant Tampiness), Mapletree Business City, Mount Faber. Grand Copthorne Waterfront, Singapore Buddhist Lodge, Bras Basah, Biopolis, Metropolis, One North, Singapore Island Country Club (SICC), Singapore EXPO, Changi City Point, Mustafa Centre, Fort Canning

• For pickup points, if you never go before, you don’t know where it is, especially for locations with more than one pickup/drop off point.

Therefore, there is a need to familiarize yourself with them. You can choose to do so by working and taking bookings from your app slowly OR take some time to drive to these places/locations and familiarize yourself with the pickup/drop off points at some common locations (shopping malls, hospitals, CBD/MBS, Orchard area etc.) first.

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Finding the pickup points

• Pickup points in terms of difficulty and some explanations -

• Difficulty is based on 3 main things, including but not limited to:

• (1) The difficulty in locating the pickup point –

• A pickup point may be difficult to locate if the place that it is located in, is very hard to memorize / familiarize yourself with.

For example – Condo pick-up points where there are so many condos and pickup points in a condo carpark/basement and it is almost impossible to memorize them all; so every time when you go inside, you need to be careful & slowly find the condo pickup point again

• (2) The number of pickup points at a pickup location because sometimes the customer doesn’t state which pickup point he/she is at clearly and not well stated on the GPS. For example –

• Schools such as polytechnics (Singapore poly, Ngee Ann poly etc), universities NUS / NTU etc.

• Raffles City w/ multiple pickup points

• (3) Pickup points that doesn’t show well on GPS app like google map:

• HDB Carpark, the key is finding the right carpark; most passengers with HDB pickup points usually wait inside the carpark nearest to their HDB blocks and rarely by the roadside unless stated/contacted you.

• Condo, the difficulty is finding the location of the block (Carribean, Reflections at Keppel Bay etc) and need to check the signs, especially when it’s dark in the morning or night, in the carpark)

• Schools (Polytechnics, Universities NUS / NTU / SMU, ITE College West, East), usually quite straightforward for primary/secondary schools, but can be difficult to locate passenger in polytechnics/universities etc.

• Chalet (Changi, SAFRA, Chevron, CSC, Kranji Sanctuary Resort, East Coast Chalet), because you need to take time to find the right chalet number/alphabet and it may be quite time-consuming

• Hospital (SGH, Raffles Hospital, IMH) (multiple pickup points at hospitals)

• Alongside roads / shophouses, probably one of the hardest, because you don’t know where the passenger is and need to slow down and locate them, common roadside locations are near Sims Ave, Mountbatten Rd, Changi Rd, Tiong Bahru area

• Famous locations / buildings (Mapletree Business City (multiple pickup/drop off points), Bras Basah (pickup/drop off point that doesn’t work well with GPS like google maps), Singapore EXPO (multiple pickup/drop off points),, Mustafa Centre (multiple pickup/drop off points))

• Rider not at pickup point, finding the rider/passenger:

• Possible reasons:

• App issues (pickup point shown in app is wrong)

• Passenger choose wrong pickup point and waiting at another pickup point

• GPS issues

• Call the rider and go to the rider / passenger location

• Wait patiently until a certain time limit, cancel the trip / booking

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Finding the drop off points:

• To find the drop off points, below is what PHV drivers commonly do, including but not limited to:

• #1 Using your GPS + experience/memory

*if you have familiarized yourself with the pick-up points, the pick-up points can be also be the drop off points which you would have become familiar with :)

• #2 Asking / Verifying with the Customer / Passenger

• If the passenger doesn’t know his/her drop off location due to various possible reasons, such as her first time to the location and never been there before and your GPS not showing the right location, you can choose to:

• Stop your car and ask people around the vicinity if they know where is the destination location / address and continue to try to get the passenger to his/her location

• Tell the passenger that you are unable to find the drop-off point and ask if he/she wants to alight and cancel the ride

And if the passenger refuses, you can cancel the booking/ride yourself to avoid potential conflict with the passenger & take it as giving a charity ride :)

• Besides finding the drop off point, a good way to maintain your customer service app ratings is to drop off your customer at a comfortable drop off location for them or based on their instructions.

Additionally, maintain a positive attitude and say nice things to them like, “Goodbye and have a nice day!” etc. :)