Taxi giants ComfortDelGro said it wanted to simplify tickets. This can only be good news. In Singapore there are nearly 10 different rates of landing, three different billing structures, more than 10 surcharges and eight types of telephone booking fees.
The government tried to unravel the toll complexity of some of the commuters driving into private leasing operators such as Uber and Grab. But it did not make progress. The government decides to ball in the operator’s court.
ComfortDelGro is one of the largest and it has the key to the new fare structure. Others are too small to have an impact. But ComfortDelGro has never seen the need to change. It was recently threatened by the rise of private leasing companies.
A new survey commissioned by the Public Transportation Commission showed that passengers were more satisfied with private rental providers than with traditional taxis. If the sampling is truly reflective of ground emotions, it is ruined. This means that, since Uber and Grab came only three years now, they have been more satisfied than the taxi, which has been around for nearly a century.
As the most populous country in the industry, there should be no room for a private rental boom. However, since 2013, the size of the private rental fleet has tripled, and competitors.
The seemingly endless sources of funding and the know-how to identify taxi service gaps allow private leasing companies to increase their presence.
A simpler fare system can help taxi change the tide. The first should be the surcharge, which leads to yield maximization behavior. Taxis that disappear before midnight are a classic example. We can not blame the behavior of a convertible as a businessman.
In Hong Kong, there is only one objective: to the customer’s place where there is no surcharge for taxi fares. In Singapore, their whereabouts are greatly affected by the surcharge.
ComfortDelGro and, of course, have to realize that this is a drawback and fix it.
This article was first published on Feb 14, 2017.
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