SINGAPORE: Having been a taxi driver for 28 years, 63-year-old Anthony Oh was accustomed to the “traditional” means of picking up passengers - either by waiting at taxi stands, or by picking up riders hailing cabs on the street.
He was not comfortable with doing this at first, not because it meant learning a new skill but because he had an axe to grind with these ride-hailing companies. While he used to pick up only about seven passengers a day before using the application, he now picks up about 12 passengers a day.“Now I rarely do flag downs, maybe only one to two trips a day will be like that, nowadays 90 per cent of my jobs are from the ... it’s convenient for everybody, both the driver and the passenger.”
Although he has been getting more customers of late due to the increase in transport demand following further relaxation of COVID-19 measures, his income has yet to see an uptick, he said. Statistics from 2019 show that about 34 per cent of those with a TDVL are 60 and above. In contrast, only 8.5 per cent of those with a Private Hire Car Driver's Vocational Licence are above the age of 60, as of 2019.
British daily The Guardian reported in October last year that the tumultuous state of the medallion can be traced back to its artificial inflation. This trend was observed after Grab had entered the Malaysian market in 2012, while the decline was further exacerbated by the pandemic, with drivers leaving the profession as demand for rides fell.
And going by the statistics, it appears that the taxi industry is taking the brunt of this overall drop in demand. "Already, the taxi operators themselves recognise that the street hail market is a sunset part of the business and they have placed more emphasis on their app booking system." For PDVL holders, the proportion of those between 60 and 74 of age was 8.5 per cent, those between 40 to 59 was 47.1 per cent and those between 20 and 39 was 44.4 per cent.The peak fleet size for taxis was in 2014, the same year when ride-hailing company Grab joined the market, with Uber having entered earlier in 2013.
For taxis, the figure dropped from 18,542 in 2019, to 14,359 as of June 2022, about a 22 per cent decline.While vehicle numbers are falling, the number of total rides has remained relatively stable over the last one-and-a-half years. While there were an average of 129,000 daily street-hail trips in January 2021, this figure had steadily declined to 101,000 for February this year, before inching up slightly to 110,000 for June.
A driver with ComfortDelGro, who wanted to be known only as Mr Yeo, said that when he first started driving taxis about 12 years ago, the predominant mode of getting cabs was by flagging them down. While he could have signed up for these new apps, Mr Yeo said in Mandarin that he is already “very familiar” with the ComfortDelGro’s application, which he had only learnt to use just before the pandemic, and is thus not keen to learn using other apps.Though he could conceivably earn more by diversifying and using more applications, Mr Yeo said that he treats driving a taxi as a “retirement job” and does not mind the opportunity cost.
Mr Guan, who had been a taxi driver for eight years, left his job in May to become a food delivery rider instead. Mr Tan, a taxi driver for 32 years, said that he had initially resisted signing up with any ride-hailing firms and downloading their applications to get more passengers. “Before COVID-19, I had to queue up and wait at taxi stands. I would also have to search for people at the roadside, now I can just go where the application tells me to,” he said.
Over the past month, whenever he calls for a taxi, said Mr Loy, they are frequently redirected to an automatic telephone message telling him that there are no taxis available. He added that when he is unable to get a taxi, he will either take a bus to his destination, or if he is running late, he will call his friend to book a private-hire car ride for him.
“Sometimes there are just no taxis passing by, I will wait longer than one hour,” she said in Mandarin. “But I’m not concerned, I have nothing to do anyway and am not in a rush, so I can just wait.” “The problem of course is the pandemic has disrupted many of these commuting patterns, and for substantial periods, eliminated a lot of the street-hail business since people used to prefer, for health reasons, to minimise time spent out of the home,” he said.
Ms Tammy Tan, ComfortDelGro's group chief branding and communications officer, said that for drivers who may be unfamiliar with how to use the technology on the firms in-house CDG Zig application, the operator provides them with training at its headquarters on how to use it. "To retain existing drivers and attract new ones, ComfortDelGro Taxi has continued to extend rental rebates and introduced the prolonged medical leave insurance policy to help our drivers," she added.
"The experienced driver-partner will guide the new driver-partner on how to use the Grab driver app and accompany him or her for a full day while picking up passengers," the spokesman said. This initiative also applies to taxi drivers who join the Grab platform. Such customers can be those making “circuitous trips” with multiple destinations that exceed the quota of ride-hailing apps, as well as tourists with a set itinerary but who need a designated driver for the day, he said.
“As long as they are informed and have chosen not to try to increase their earnings, I don't think we can say that they must adopt new technology.”As its numbers shrink, what does the future hold for the P2P sector in Singapore? Analysts said that it is still too early to tell what the future holds for the P2P sector in Singapore, but this much is certain: The current demand for transport has not yet climbed back to pre-pandemic levels.
In other words, the willingness to pay higher prices will still not get a commuter a ride home in such a scenario.
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The Big Read in short: What a rapidly shrinking taxi industry means for older drivers, commutersSINGAPORE — Having been a taxi driver for 28 years, 63-year-old Anthony Oh was accustomed to the “traditional” means of picking up passengers — either by waiting at taxi stands, or by picking up riders hailing cabs on the street.
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The Big Read in short: What a rapidly shrinking taxi industry mean for older drivers, commutersSINGAPORE — Having been a taxi driver for 28 years, 63-year-old Anthony Oh was accustomed to the “traditional” means of picking up passengers — either by waiting at taxi stands, or by picking up riders hailing cabs on the street. 2 routes to highway from my place. A little longer straight to highway or shorter but lots of traffic lights and zebra crossings. My experience tells me taxi will choose multiple stopping route, private cars never fail to go longer with little stop. They have themselves to blame One will always remember how they turned on the “Busy” signal to wait for an “On-call”, and how they magically disappeared before the midnight surcharges kicked in. To them, too bad so sad.
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The Big Read: As the sun goes down on the taxi industry, some adapt while others risk being left behindSINGAPORE — Having been a taxi driver for 28 years, 63-year-old Anthony Oh was accustomed to the “traditional” means of picking up passengers — either by waiting at taxi stands, or by picking up riders hailing cabs on the street. One will always remember how they turned on the “Busy” signal to wait for an “On-call”, and how they magically disappeared before the midnight surcharges kicked in. To them, too bad so sad. The entrance of ride-hailing applications was met with derision by many taxi drivers who felt they had lost business to the new entrants.
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