The Straits Times’ Post

Yesterday we visited our new 🔋⛽️🚕 PRO Stations construction site with a few logistics customers, to see how Helsinki Airport taxi charging site is evolving. Site where Plugit Finland is building public and secure PRO Charging station (or a park) dedicated only for taxis. 🔥Burning issue is that taxis are using B2C public chargers. This has caused bad blood between company drivers and consumers. Also one can not rely if the stall is vacant or how long it takes to charge. 💚As a solution to fix the issue and to give a pease for taxi drivers to charge. Charging station has 40 stalls where we guarantee min. 90 kW to 180 kW Power per gun, even when all stalls are populated. Place is just a few hundred of meters from airport taxi lanes. Taxi cab can charge a same time and wait its turn in a virtual queue before called to airports customer pick-up area. This means that ⏰️time and 🔋energy nearly not💶wasted to transition once taxi can pick up a customer. 💡As a conclusion of the visit. For logistic companies and their suppliers like small transportation companies, this is also a service they would like to see near Logistics hubs and retail areas for vans and trucks. 🌍Having parks like this, bigger companies could much faster convert and convince their suppliers to change ICE trucks and vans to BEVs! #evtrucks #fastcharging #taxis #logistics #charginginfrastructure #helsinki #vantaa

Starting April 2023, the Japanese government will allow #ridehailing services in specific areas and times to address the shortage of #taxi drivers. Under the new arrangement, taxi companies will supervise the gig driver, who will likely be allowed to operate in tourist destinations and some #urban areas. The return of international visitors to Japan has exposed the severe shortage of transportation services in tourist areas. There has been a longtime opposition to a full-scale deregulation that would allow private vehicles for hire, like services offered overseas by Uber, Lyft, China's DiDi, and Singapore-based Grab. The fares for limited ride-hailing will be set at the same level as conventional taxis and will not adopt dynamic pricing, where rates rise and fall with demand. The ride-hailing drivers will operate in areas and times where there are shortages of taxis based on data from vehicle dispatch apps. The Japanese taxi industry has long pushed back against ride-hailing, and it remains to be seen how eager it will be to embrace the limited service. #Japan #sharedservices #taxiapp #smartcity #smartcities https://lnkd.in/dVaa55j9

My feedback via REACH SG to Land Transport Authority (LTA) Singapore As we move towards a car-lite society, affordability of public transport is utmost importance. Taxis and PHVs are an important part. It caters particularly so for families with young children and elderlies, the segment who may have challenges taking bus or MRT. However the fares of taxis and PHVs have more than doubled in a short period of 3 years. From an average of about $10 for a short trip to about $20 for that same trip. The fares have risen faster than any period of time in the past 30 years! Eg. During one rainy Sunday after a church service, it would cost me over $60 to book a 6 seater to ferry my two elderly parents, daughter, wife and myself from Ubi to Bedok Blk 85 Market! The fundamental driving factor of higher fares are the record breaking COEs, and the record breaking COEs are due to ride hailing platforms wrestling for marketshare. The drivers are not making more money, neither are the ride hailing platforms (Grab is still making losses). The high fares are to pay for the high COEs. This is unsustainable. I have a simple suggestion for the government to consider: Why not nationalized the taxi fleet, like what was done with MRT and bus fleets, and then let operators bid to operate the fleet? There are a few advantages with this approach: 1. It will be easier to plan for fleet sizes based on the data from transport needs of Singaporeans . Fleet sizes will become well controlled (just like in the past with taxis before ride hailing apps). 2. Nationalized fleet will not have to bid for COEs and the fares will be set and reviewed by LTA, just like MRT and bus fares. 3. The nationalized taxi fleet will control price inflation of other non-nationalized PHV fleets, just like how Fairprice maintains price stability of groceries. With competition, ride hailing platforms won't be able to run up the COE bids or they will lose monies. 4. COE prices will become more reflective of demand for private vehicles, rather than reflective of the degree of competition between taxi companies and ride hailing apps. As we are fast becoming an advanced silver hair society, the point to point service of taxis is likely to become more important. I sincerely hope the government will look into this matter of high cab fares. https://lnkd.in/gpEMfBCf

Yellow-top taxis have existed in Singapore since colonial times. Today, only 32 of them are left. Characterised by their recognisable yellow roofs and black bodies, yellow-top taxis were brought into Singapore in the 1930s by Wearne Brothers, the predecessor of Wearnes Automotive Singapore. Unlike other taxi drivers, the drivers behind the wheels of these yellow-tops hold their taxi licences individually under a now-defunct scheme. They also own their vehicles, unlike drivers of modern taxis who rent from taxi operators like ComfortDelGro. This means that each time a driver retires, it's one less yellow-top on the road. As of 2017, there were only 100 yellow-top taxis in Singapore. That number plunged to 32 in 2023, no doubt exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic. It is estimated that the last yellow-top taxi will be gone from our roads in 2032. That's when the youngest yellow-top taxi driver in Singapore hits the age of 75, the age ceiling for taxi drivers to work. Read more: https://lnkd.in/gKWtMDBx

Hmm. Not exactly the response that the government (and a certain US ride-sharing giant) was expecting. Perhaps it is not so surprising that a risk-averse culture like Japan would be slow to warm up to ride-sharing, with some 72% citing safety-related factors. Given the unfortunate increase in financial scams and the widespread awareness campaigns about them, people may not be as fully informed as expected. Even though fares are equivalent to regular taxis, some 21% think ride-sharing is cheaper. As is often the case in Japan, it seems that the government underestimated how much communication would be needed to ensure people felt comfortable with ride-sharing. It would be interesting to know what the supply side of ride-sharing looks like, how many people have actively registered to pick up fares?

"#Jakarta, I will never complain about traffic again. I have been humbled" Those were the words of Ryan Tedder, vocalist of OneRepublic, when he visited the Big Durian last year. Having been in the Indonesian capital for just over a week, I share his sentiment. 1. Yesterday, I spent more than an hour traveling by car from my meeting near the Langham to the World Trade Centre. WTC was only 2km away, as the crow flies, but our car traversed just over 6km in bumper-to-bumper traffic, occasionally meandering through narrow alleys known as 'jalan tikus' (lit. rat lanes) to avoid the worst of the city's snarling congestion. 2. In 2015, Jakarta was named the worst city in the world for traffic jams, according to an index created by motor oil multinational Castrol, which found the average driver starting and stopping more than 33,000 times in a year. An estimated 70% of the city’s air pollution comes from vehicles. But #Indonesia has taken great efforts to improve traffic in its capital over the years. 3. Jakarta started a Bus Rapid Transit or BRT in 2004, inspired by visits from former Bogotá mayor Enrique Peñalosa. Called the Transjakarta, it was the first BRT system in #SoutheastAsia. Today, Transjakarta operates 4,300 buses along a network of dedicated bus lanes 251.2km in length, making it the longest BRT system in the world. 4. Over the past decade, super-app operators Gojek and Grab have proliferated the streets with motorcycle taxis which are a much more efficient way of getting around. Motorcycles travel twice as fast as a car, consume a tenth of the fuel, and take up far less space. Besides getting passengers from A to B, these motorcycle taxis also act as couriers and food deliverymen. 5. The city's first Mass Rapid Transit system commenced operations in 2019, and PT. MRT Jakarta plans to expand its network from the current 13 stations to 109 stations. The MRT is safe, convenient, comfortable, and runs on time. In fact, I took the MRT back to the Langham after my meeting at WTC, and spent less than 20 minutes door-to-door. 6. Indonesia's efforts have been paying off. Jakarta slipped to 10th place in the TomTom Traffic Index in 2019, 31st place in 2021, and 29th place in 2023. Detractors often criticise the Indonesian government's infrastructure development agenda by saying that Indonesians "can't eat infrastructure" but this is a clear example of how better infrastructure has improved the lives and livelihoods of ordinary Indonesians. Indonesian novelist Seno Gumira Ajidarma once wrote that the average Jakartan spends ten years of their life in traffic. Hopefully future Jakartans can aspire to a better life with public transport. I have included, in the comments, links to a selection of relevant articles by The Diplomat, The Guardian, The Jakarta Post, Kompas.com, and TIME All comments welcome Cyclo-Parade, a digital composite by Jean-Francois Rauzier, photographed by me. Traffic in Jakarta yesterday was only slightly better

🚗 Vietnam's Ride-Hailing Revival! 🌟 Vietnamese billionaire Pham Nhat Vuong introduces Green SM Taxi, an EV ride-hailing service, challenging Grab's dominance in Hanoi. ⚡️ Green SM Taxi, part of Green and Smart Mobility (95% owned by Vingroup), exclusively uses VinFast EVs for operations, leveraging the rise of electric mobility. 🌐 Green SM Taxi collaborates with Be Group, aiming for 100 million EV trips. Be drivers offered exclusive VinFast vehicle deals, expanding the partnership to delivery services. 🔋 Despite a push for EVs, challenges include market readiness, limited charging infrastructure, and regulatory gaps. VinFast's network of 150,000 charging ports aims to address this. 💼 Local Advantage: Green SM Taxi, with a focus on EVs and Vingroup's ecosystem, targets a sizable driver pool. The company aims for profitability by Q4 2023, offering competitive pricing and fixed salaries to drivers.

Isn't it time we got Hong Kong moving again with a modern ride-hailing solution, like Uber, if our taxi industry is stuck in the past? From haggling with drivers and being ignored to enduring old vehicles, feeling unsafe and getting out mid-trip, the daily woes of Hong Kong taxis are all too familiar. Despite these issues, drivers (or is it the owners?) seem determined to block any effective competition that could disrupt the status quo. From time to time you bump into an occasionally excellent driver who is polite and competent, possibly an owner-driver who has been in the field for decades, but it is rare and there appear to be very few young entrants; why would there be? The industry appears to use a large-scale rental model with taxis as investment properties and drivers operating long hours, hopefully able to break even after rent and fuel costs to pocket perhaps $1000 a day? The regulations are antiquated so you can’t travel from the new territories into the city (in a NT taxi) without changing at an inconvenient location; or get to the beaches of Lantau without similar complexity. Three zones of taxis is nonsensical now we can drive everywhere! So along comes a clean, safe, curated ride-hailing solution but the government now suggests it will harden up the approach to penalties for unlicensed ride hailing activity. The government must be aware the reason these services have been able to gain traction is an inadequate and inferior transport infrastructure when it comes to taxis. We need to get Hong Kong moving again after years of sliding backwards: but supporting an antiquated monopoly trade that’s often inefficient seems illogical. Uber and similar services are the future; if the taxi industry wants to survive, it will need to get a move on... #TaxiReform #FutureOfMobility #RideHailingRevolution #ModernTransport #UberInHongKong #TransportationInnovation #SafeTravel #TaxiIndustryReform #SmartCities #FutureOfTransport #UrbanMobility #HKTransportSolutions  

The Vietnamese government last year announced a strategy to ensure that all new and replacement taxis will use electric power or green energy from the end of the decade. However, industry insiders said that Vietnamese taxi companies will not limit themselves by using only one type of vehicle – such as battery EVs provided by VinFast. A diverse taxi fleet helps companies navigate uncertain business conditions, avoiding risks caused by over-reliance on a few suppliers that have full control of the country’s fast-charging infrastructure. Around 13,000 VinFast EVs were delivered to GSM in the past two quarters, accounting for two-thirds of the automaker's total EV deliveries from March to September. A part of this volume is leased to other local taxi fleet operators and transportation companies. #vietnam #vinfast #electricvehicle #taxi #southeastasia

Good Buisness Model from Aaveg . This will reduce the traffic , I hope this business model should work and spread all over country ..