New: You can now listen to articles.. After waiting at the mall for some time, she finally got a taxi on the Comfort app. No point waiting at the taxi stand, the driver told her laughingly, there would be no taxis.
The same goes for the whole industry: The more it contracts, the more it would tend to continue contracting – hence my speculation of a death spiral.If the only way to get a taxi is through an app, taxi services would be just one tap away from ride-hail services. From the customer viewpoint, taxis would lose the competitive advantage of immediate, convenient availability on the street without any booking.Availability is a challenge as the pool of taxis dwindles.
By statute, taxi drivers must retire at the age of 75 . On the other hand, LTA statistics show no sign of any obvious increase of new drivers. Absent fresh blood, the supply of taxi services will surely decline with the passage of time. The Mass Rapid Transit is the backbone of our public transport network, the optimal mode of transport in a land-scarce nation. But it is not cost effective to provide train service to everyone’s doorstep. To serve the so-called “last mile”, we rely on buses, bicycles and walking.
But not if there are no taxis at the stand and we must book through an app. Then the old bugbear of taxi drivers avoiding short trips re-emerges.