Beijing Municipal Government Blames Uber, Car Booking Services for Congestion

Steven Schwankert | Jul 25, 2015 9:00 am | 2 comments | 3693 reads

In the latest edition of the blame game, the Beijing Municipal Government is pointing at the finger at car booking services Uber and Didi Zhuanche for Beijing's congestion.

Of course, this is nonsensical. Beijing only allows 20,000 new cars per month to hit the road, and since neither Uber nor Didi Zhuanche own the cars in which their customer ride, they are not adding new cars to the road, although it could be argued that these cars spend more time on the road than personal use of private cars.

What's interesting is that New York City's moronic mayor Bill Di Blasio just tried the same thing, but to no avail. Di Blasio tried to cap the growth of Uber cars in New York, and failed. Passengers are funny that way, how they want clean cars at the time they want them where they want them, instead of unhailable taxis with rude drivers that stink.

Instead of cracking down on these car services, maybe the Beijing municipal government should try to deal with local taxi drivers, which are an embarrassment to the city and have been for years. Did you know that every Beijing taxi once (and maybe still does) had the capacity to accept payment via the city's public transportation card? Taxi drivers just started telling everyone the machine was broken or that they couldn't accept it.

Uber may not be perfect (when was the last time your Uber driver wasn't 100 percent reliant on GPS to find anywhere) but the car shows up, the drivers are nice, and there's no need to have change. Isn't that what a taxi is supposed to do?

Geez, Uber even served ice cream on Friday. Ever get ice cream from your local taxi driver?

Photo: Uber

Comments

New comments are displayed first.

Comments

mapleleafman's picture mapleleafman Submitted by Guest on Sun, 07/26/2015 - 10:07

I've been using Uber for about 4 months now. The only downside I can see is that the cars (using People's Uber) seem to be getting smaller month by month, although they still remain so much cleaner and more pleasant than the average Beijing taxi that the difference is staggering. And cheaper. I don't use any other apps besides Uber becuase I can't read Chinese, but just imagine if Uber had been a Chinese company (like WeChat) instead of a foreign one? I am actually surprised that the Chinese government hasn't shut down Uber yet like Facebook etc, to allow the Chinese apps to capture the market. I bet this will still happen! Taxi service as we know it is dying all over the world. It may be the one thing that takes longer to change in CHina, however.

Mapleafman

PatrickLi's picture PatrickLi Submitted by Guest on Sat, 07/25/2015 - 13:35

Quote:
Did you know that every Beijing taxi once (and maybe still does) had the capacity to accept payment via the city's public transportation card? Taxi drivers just started telling everyone the machine was broken or that they couldn't accept it. 

That's very true. My mother gave me a city transportation card when I was in high school with 100 kuai when a single bus ride costs 0.2 kuai. I never used up the money in the card because taxi drivers always told me the machine was broken. That was about 6-7 years ago. 

 

Validate your mobile phone number to post comments.