Tuesday, August 04, 2009
Improving Taxi Ridership
Recently, there had been a couple of articles on the taxi companies having campaigns to encourage people to take taxis more often. This seems rather odd to me since they had raised fares dramatically back in 2007. One would naturally assume that with increased fares, there would be lesser people willing to take taxis. Now they are spending money on campaigns to encourage taxi ridership?
I think that it is worth encouraging people to take taxis, because I am assuming that people who are likely to take taxis are the ones who are likely to buy cars. Assuming that these people found that taking taxis are no longer economical as compared to buying their own car, they would rather go buy their own car. This means that there would be one more car on the road.
A taxi is different, assuming that 20% (rough estimate based on the 80/20 rule) of the people who take taxis are likely to buy their own car and further assuming that a taxi has 10 passengers a day... then we have 2 people per taxi who would otherwise have bought a car.
So how do we encourage people to take taxis? Lucky Draws? Loyalty points? Lower fares? I think that lowering fares is the most direct way to do it. In fact, if we use the 80/20 rule again... assuming that fares are reduced substantially, we would possibly see a 20% reduction in the number of private vehicles on the road.
However, I would not know if this result is desired in the big picture of the people who plan such things.
Also, if taxi fares were to be reduced, it goes without saying that taxi rental for the taxi drivers should be reduced as well.
I say, cut the campaigns and cut the fares.
0 Adorations
Recently, there had been a couple of articles on the taxi companies having campaigns to encourage people to take taxis more often. This seems rather odd to me since they had raised fares dramatically back in 2007. One would naturally assume that with increased fares, there would be lesser people willing to take taxis. Now they are spending money on campaigns to encourage taxi ridership?
I think that it is worth encouraging people to take taxis, because I am assuming that people who are likely to take taxis are the ones who are likely to buy cars. Assuming that these people found that taking taxis are no longer economical as compared to buying their own car, they would rather go buy their own car. This means that there would be one more car on the road.
A taxi is different, assuming that 20% (rough estimate based on the 80/20 rule) of the people who take taxis are likely to buy their own car and further assuming that a taxi has 10 passengers a day... then we have 2 people per taxi who would otherwise have bought a car.
So how do we encourage people to take taxis? Lucky Draws? Loyalty points? Lower fares? I think that lowering fares is the most direct way to do it. In fact, if we use the 80/20 rule again... assuming that fares are reduced substantially, we would possibly see a 20% reduction in the number of private vehicles on the road.
However, I would not know if this result is desired in the big picture of the people who plan such things.
Also, if taxi fares were to be reduced, it goes without saying that taxi rental for the taxi drivers should be reduced as well.
I say, cut the campaigns and cut the fares.
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