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| People try to catch a taxi late at night in Seoul. Newsis |
By Lee Yeon-woo
The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport unveiled a set of measures on Tuesday intended to ease the acute taxis shortage late at night.
Among them, the fares for calling and reserving a late-night cab will be hiked from the current 3,000 won ($2.10) to 5,000 won ($3.50) for taxis from franchised platform operators such as Kakao, and 4,000 won ($2.80) for general cabs called through a broker agency. The ministry hiked late-night cab call fares with the aim of giving taxi drivers an incentive to work late at night.
The shortage of late-night taxis became more pronounced after the pandemic began in 2020. Taxis operating late at night decreased by 5,000 in July this year compared to December 2019. In the early days of the pandemic, many cab drivers changed jobs to delivery or courier services, as they found it tough to make a living as cab drivers. The average monthly income for cab drivers ranges from 2 million to 2.3 million won, whereas for those working in delivery services, it ranges from 3.5 million to 5 million won.
The transport ministry's measures are not the first attempt by a government agency to guarantee that a larger portion of taxi fares go directly to the drivers.
Earlier, the Seoul Metropolitan Government announced its plans to increase the basic taxi fare from 3,800 won ($2.66) to 4,800 won ($3.36). Seoul will also lengthen the current window for late-night fares, which runs from midnight to 4 a.m. currently, to begin two hours earlier at 10 p.m. Incheon and Gyeonggi Province are preparing similar measures.
With this number of price hikes for late-night call taxis, other taxi fares could go up as well.
"Unless I call and reserve a taxi through Kakao Blue (which charges an additional fee to call and reserve a taxi), I cannot get one nowadays," a Seoul office worker surnamed Choi, 31, told The Korea Times. "Where are all the general cabs? Paying additional fees has become normal. I'm worried that all taxi drivers will demand additional fees in the future, now that the government has come up with this measure. The base fare has gone up, and now there's a fee to call and reserve a taxi, which will be on top of that. It's just too much to pay for a single taxi ride."
One problem is that the local government and the ministry are implementing policies separately. If both types of policies are applied at the same time, the accumulated fare hikes will become excessive.
"Base fares fall under the Seoul Metropolitan Government's discretion. Fees for calling and reserving taxis fall under the transport ministry's discretion," Kwon Yong-joo, a member of Seoul City's taxi policy committee, said Tuesday on local news channel YTN. "If both types of fees go up at the same time, customers cannot help but think the total fees to get a taxi have been increased too much."
Kwon pointed out that economic pressure from customers could lead more taxi drivers to quit.
"The public will avoid using taxis initially due to all the fee hikes. Then taxi drivers will stop working late at night because there are few customers at that time, even though fees have been raised. The problems will continue like this. Hiking fees is only a patchwork solution to the problem," he said.
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| Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Won Hee-ryong talks about the ministry's measures to resolve the late-night taxi shortage during a briefing held at the Government Complex Seoul, Tuesday. Newsis |
Regarding these criticisms, Land, Infrastructure and Transport Minister Won Hee-ryong said that he will first implement the fee hikes and gauge the public response, before making a final decision.
"The ministry is planning to relieve the lack of supply by allowing call flexibility and various services. Base fares will be raised separately. Then, as to whether taxis' increased base fare is acceptable to the public, or whether it is better to apply a fee for calling and reserving taxis only according to supply and demand, we will decide that based on the results of implementing this policy by December or February," he said Tuesday during the briefing.
