Smartphone apps that book taxis have been growing in popularity across many Chinese cities thanks to their convenience, ease of use and promotional offers… But if you are in Suzhou, a major city in Jiangsu province, you might be stuck waiting, after the local government has recently banned all private-sector taxi booking apps within the city.
Suzhou’s transportation department has outlawed all private-sector taxi booking apps such as Tencent-backed Didi Dache, the most popular one in China. The only option for passengers now is to use an app approved by the municipal government. Although it’s not as flashy and popular as private developer apps, it still does the job.
The municipal government first introduced a taxi calling platform in 2004, and started to incorporate requests made by smart phone taxi apps into the same municipal transport platform starting in 2012.
An average of 5,700 online location-based requests are pushed to as many as 4,000 cabbies in the city everyday. Despite being highly popular among its users, the private taxi calling apps have come under criticism from some government departments and the public. The arguments state that the apps distort the market and artificially inflate prices, by sending cabs to the highest bidder.
Some experts have expressed concerns about the government interfering too much in the market. Prior to Suzhou’s ban, Beijing had briefly banned all such apps, before app developers changed their policy of the additional pick-up incentive fee that the app charges users and gives to drivers. More recently, authorities in Shanghai imposed curbs on taxi-booking apps during peak traffic hours due to increasing complaints from regular passengers who say taxi drivers are refusing to pick up people not using the app.
