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Tag Archives: ride-hailing
Green GSM taxi first impressions
These past months, I have been alternately using Grab and In Drive vehicles for my commutes. If I had another choice, it would have been Green GSM taxi. I have used their taxis traveling between Quezon City Pasig City and within Quezon City. So far, it’s been a good experience including in terms of the fares I’ve paid. Green GSM boasts of an all electric vehicle fleet. They are also a big company compared to the current taxi operators in Metro Manila. I think what may be comparable in terms of fleet size would be the taxi companies in Cebu, Iloilo and Davao. The difference, however, is in terms of their business models. The usual taxis are still basically rental vehicles for the drivers. The latter pay the owners/operators a fee (i.e., boundary) and usually the drivers have to cover fuel and other operating and maintenance costs.
The Green GSM taxi drivers I’ve talked to say they receive a regular salary and have benefits very much like regular employees. They also had accredited stations where they can charge their vehicles or conduct maintenance such as change tires. You can also hail them on the street much like the conventional taxis. You don’t need an app to book a ride but it is more convenient to use their app. The limitation though is that currently you can only book a ride using their app for trips within Metro Manila. If you’re heading out like to Antipolo City, the app will display an error in terms of coverage area. If you happen to hail one of their taxis though, you can use them to go outside Metro Manila. I’ve seen them in Antipolo, Cainta and Taytay so I guess you can also hail them instead of being dependent on the app.
I have a couple of students whose research topic is on Green GSM Taxis characteristics. We’ll soon find out more of their operating characteristics and how their attributes compare with those of TNVS or ride-hailing services like Grab and In Drive.
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First impressions of In Drive
There’s another TNVS service operating and competing with Grab. I heard about In-Drive from friends who regularly take Grab when they are in a hurry and opt out of their usual public transport options. They relate that In-Drive was cheaper than Grab based on their most recent bookings. They also said it was easy to book a ride with In-Drive.
And so I downloaded the app and finally had an opportunity to try them as I traveled between UP Diliman and Ortigas Center. I was able to book a ride immediately and it was less expensive compared to Grab. But that was just one booking so I had to try it another time. On my return trip, the same happened and I was able to get the same result with a cheaper booking than Grab.
One time I had to travel home from my office in UP after my evening class, I decided to try this again. Here are the screenshots for my evening ride. The first image is for Grab and the second for In Drive. The routes indicated in the maps are the same. Noticeably different are the estimated travel times (73 minutes for Grab vs. 64 minutes for In Drive) and fares (at least 556 pesos for Grab vs. 472 pesos for In Drive). The choice here was easy – In Drive.
My experiences so far indicate that In Drive was indeed cheaper than Grab. For the last example, it also indicated a shorter travel time. But that’s just me and a few bookings. It is worth studying or exploring further if indeed In Drive, in general, provides for less expensive travel. Other circumstances or conditions can be considered including the origins and destinations for the bookings, the time of day or day of the week, and so on. These are necessary to really have an objective and conclusive comparison of the two.
There’s another option that’s been getting some buzz recently among my friends and students. A taxi company with a full electric car fleet is also now available and competing with the TNVS companies. I will write about Green GSM very soon!
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inDrive- A cheaper alternative to Grab?
Friends have been sharing that a new player in the TNVS business is less expensive than Grab. And yet they have comparable vehicles and drivers. They are also supposed to be easier to book. I’ve tried them a few times so far but forget to get screencaps to show the difference between the new players and Grab.
Of course, I ended up booking inDrive as it was cheaper by about 60 pesos for a standard car. I will continue taking screen caps for succeeding rides I will be taking in the future.
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Competition for Grab?
Friends have been talking about the two new options that they say should rival and compete with Grab. These are another ride hail company and, interestingly, a taxi company. That ride hail company is In Drive and the taxi company is Green GSM.
Green GSM vehicle dashboard showing the taxi meter details
The observation and consensus are that either is cheaper than Grab. My personal experience is that they are cheaper than Grab and substantially so. What does this mean? Probably that more people will eventually discover and experience the same and Grab’s ridership will decline. By how much? We don’t know that yet. What we know is that Grab’s most significant competition now are the motorcycle taxis like Angkas and Joyride. Move It is Grab’s response to the other two after it was prevented by government to compete directly with the two. More details in future posts this September.
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On a ride-hailing apps algorithm and surge pricing
I am sharing this very informative article on ride-hailing based on an investigation conducted by investigative journalists:
Ilagan, K. and Rainis, F.A. (December 10, 2024) “How we investigated the algorithm behind the Philippines’ largest ride-hailing app,” ijnet.org, https://ijnet.org/en/story/how-we-investigated-algorithm-behind-philippines-largest-ride-hailing-app?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR2azviuNxdh5gSbrJKl8lsViL5YRO5k33QHFc24EAFkIi4HTo-Ew4H7LO4_aem_NnVHOD8B1PERNOQYSjVHdg [Last accessed: 12/27/2024]
To quote from the article:
“Once all the fares were broken down, we found that a surge fee was always present. With the help of statisticians from two local universities, we conducted a statistical analysis to scientifically determine whether the waiting time for a ride decreases when the surge fee is higher.
The results didn’t show a significant correlation between the surge rate and waiting times. This contradicts the assumption that a higher rate attracts more cars to the street and lowers waiting times.”
I leave it up to my readers to make their own assessment of what the conclusions to this report state or imply. The bottomline is that the ride-hailing company is making a lot of profit from their surge pricing scheme that really doesn’t make it easier for people to get a ride from their app.
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On ride hailing replacing more sustainable options for transport
We’ve long suspected that ride hailing or ride sharing is not as sustainable as their proponents and companies would project them to be. Here is more evidence showing how ride hailing has diminished other more sustainable transport options.
Kerlin, K. (August 28, 2024) “Half of Uber, Lyft Trips Replace More Sustainable Options,” UC Davis News, https://www.ucdavis.edu/news/half-uber-lyft-trips-replace-more-sustainable-options [Last accessed: 9/8/2024]
Quoting from the article:
“About 47% of the trips replaced a public transit, carpool, walking or cycling trip. An additional 5.8% of trips represented “induced travel,” meaning the person would not have made the trip were an Uber or Lyft unavailable. This suggests ride-hailing often tends to replace most sustainable transportation modes and leads to additional vehicle miles traveled. “
The article and the study by UC Davis is limited to their experiences with Uber and Lyft and perhaps others that employ cars. In our case, we have in addition motorcycle taxis or habal-habal that further takes away passengers from public and active transportation. Motorcycle taxis provide a very attractive alternative to conventional public transport modes as these are perceived to reduce travel times among other advantages they provide to users.
I will share some information later about the current mode shares in Metro Manila and how drastically public transport mode shares have been eroded post pandemic.
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On micro transit and transportation gaps
I’ve written and shared articles before on how Paratransit, bicycles and micro transit helps alleviate the transport demand problems we are experiencing especially in highly urbanized cities. I think we should have as many options as possible for transport while also working towards the reduction of dependence on cars. Here’s an article that relates about experiences in the US:
Zukowski, D. (September 13, 2022) “Cities turn to microtransit to fill gaps in public transportation,” Smart Cities Dive, https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/news/microtransit-public-transportation-gaps-jersey-city-via/631592/ [Last accessed: 9/15/2022]
To quote from the article:
“Microtransit options are also helping to reduce the reliance on personal cars. “We’ve received feedback from people who say that because of Via they are now more consistently leaving their personal vehicle at home and using Via instead to travel within the city, which is exactly the kind of thing we want to see happen,” said Jersey City’s Patel.”
This final statement or paragraph in the article sums it up very well. Of course, we have to note that the experience in Asia is quite different especially in Southeast Asia where motorcycles are very popular and still on the rise in terms of their mode shares. While these may be considered micromobilities in western countries, they are definitely motorized private vehicles that, depending on how they are used and how the rider behaves, may be beneficial but at the same time also very dangerous for people.
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On the future of Uber and other ridesharing/ridehailing companies
A few years ago, Uber was the darling of transportation. It and others like it were considered disruptors. They were but then eventually unraveled as their business model and practices were challenged and exposed. Here’s an article that does not mince words in describing what and how Uber is:
Doctorow, C. (August 11, 2021) “End of the line for Uber,” Medium, https://marker.medium.com/end-of-the-line-for-uber-901e3077bbbc [Last accessed: 8/21/2021]
There’s a wealth of references (links provided) in the article provided to support the arguments of the author. It is not anecdotal but an accumulation of facts from various experiences as well as a documentation of the company’s efforts to hide its flaws.
I co-authored several papers analyzing what was seen as a phenomenon. It was clear that people preferred Uber or Grab over regular taxis because of the higher quality of service they got. Similar results were obtained elsewhere and spelled the doom of many taxi drivers. Those that survived were the better serving ones like taxis in Japan and Singapore. However, the more recent of those papers have shown that what are called TNVS or transport network vehicle service have basically been deceiving and took advantage of their drivers (whom they do not want to refer to as employees). Did they help reduce congestion? They did not, and even added more cars to traffic.
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Afterthoughts on ridesharing
Ridesharing/ride-hailing companies like to claim that they are helping solve transport problems. However, their disruptions seem too good to be true in a growing number of cases including those in London and California where studies have shown anomalous practices of companies particularly Uber. Grab is now the dominant company in the Philippines after Uber sold its business to Grab. Other upstarts have had little impact on Grab’s market share. The only ones perhaps that have had some success taking business from Grab are the motorcycle taxi app companies like Angkas and Joyride. Motorcycle taxis are actually quite popular though they have been informal (and illegal). Habal-habal operations though have been tolerated in many cities and towns with authorities usually turning a blind eye to their operations.
They have thrived in large cities and have practically displaced taxi companies in these cities. I would not go deep into the social impacts but there are already a lot of negatives including the growing evidence that they are taking people away from public transport in general. Their operations seem promising at the start as the original concept was to use underutilized vehicles that otherwise would have been parked for most of the day, and offering work and income opportunities to people who had the free time (e.g., home-based people who may have a few hours to spare to drive/transport other people to their destinations). The latter were assumed to be part-timers with their vehicles available for providing transport services on demand. The vehicle used might be a spare one. And I use the word ‘spare’ here as it is assumed there might be another ‘main’ vehicle that is used by another person in the family who is a full-time job who drives to work. I don’t buy that romanticized claim that one main objective of these rideshare companies is to break the monopoly of taxi companies. They ended up being the taxis with all those cars now roaming city streets for passengers (and fares).
I mention here a very recent article citing an MIT study:
Green Car Congress (February 2021) “MIT study finds Uber & Lyft increase congestion, decrease transit ridership and don’t affect vehicle ownership,” Green Car Congress, https://www.greencarcongress.com/2021/02/20210204-tncs.html [Last accessed: 2/5/2021]
There is also a published paper in 2019 that is from the perspective of TNVS drivers in Metro Manila:
Mirandilla, C.S. and Regidor, J.R.F. (2019) “Assessment of Transportation Network Vehicle Services from the Drivers’ Perspective,” Journal of the Eastern Asia Society for Transportation Studies, Volume 13, Pages 2369-2389, https://doi.org/10.11175/easts.13.2369
In the paper, their findings include the following:
“It was found that TNVS have greater impact in traffic flow compared to other modes of transportation while delivering inferior productivity. The study also found that full-time driver-operators have very high risks of financial losses, and they have lower than minimum wage income when depreciation costs and maintenance costs are considered.”
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Unraveling ridesharing/ridesourcing
I have been writing about ridesharing/ridesourcing/ridehailing for some time now. I have also researched on its characteristics particularly in my country where it was initially hailed (no pun intended) as a solution to transport woes in highly urbanized areas. We’ve done our research with or without the cooperation of these companies. It does not surprise me that their operations have unraveled and many are exposed to be abusive. So much for being the ‘disruptive’ initiative that was praised by many before…
Emerson, S. (2019) “Uber Drivers Protest ‘Corporate Greed’ as Billionaires Cash In”, https://onezero.medium.com/uber-drivers-protest-corporate-greed-as-billionaires-cash-in-df65a7e470a7 [Last accessed: 11/18/2019]
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Caught (up) in traffic 