The private city driving has never been more painful with pavements occupied by hawkers and people walking on the roads. The movement for vehicles gets a much narrower part, with vehicles parked on one or both the sides of the roads. Lack of parking spaces, in most part of the city, has made self-driving the last option and private drivers, happier to work as App-cab drivers, or as car-pool drivers for IT companies, who pay better.
The App cab companies thus have mushroomed in all cities, Uber with 240000 weekly active drivers and Ola with million-plus partner drivers have made city commuting a bit easier, in the wake of recalcitrant auto-drivers and often refusing yellow cabs. Uber has not revealed the number of cabs running in India under their banner.
An App-cab has to normally do 14 calls a shift and the driver, after meeting all related outgo like the principal and interest on the vehicle, car maintenance, repair and fuel about 15 to 18K per month. One cab could offset 3 to 4 private vehicles, as most vehicles in the city do not do more than two round-trips on an average, one to the workplace and two, for a school drop and pick-up.
The increased reliance of App-cab is necessitated by an increase in the maintenance costs, stricter road safety rules and unavailability of good drivers at an affordable price. The value of any mid-sized car costing 7-8 lacs has a running and maintenance of minimum Rs.25-30K per month and changing over to an App Cab could reduce the cost by 50% or more.
Strong rooting of App cabs could also be a reason in the slowdown of car sales, particularly small segment and sedans. On the contrary, SUVs are continuing to make better sales, which could be because of better affordability from suburban customers and rural. The hard fact is, vehicles on the road must be in proportion to the available road area, to minimize congestion, resultant pollution and health hazards.
“A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.” A lovely quote from the mayor of Bogotá, Gustavo Petro
Sampath Kumar
Intrépide Voix
