are you going my way? let's share a cab.
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GoMyWay launches to allow Singaporeans to share taxi rides. Is sharing natural for local taxi riders?
GoMyWay is Singapore’s dedicated taxi sharing app that provides taxi riders a secure way to share fares, save time and meet new people.
A new app in Singapore aims to change the whole taxi experience in Singapore. GoMyWay, an iPhone app that allows you to share taxis with other people, has officially launched and is now available for download from the Apple App Store. While the idea of taxi sharing is not a new one, the potential of the market is enormous. According to the GoMyWay team, there are more than 26,000 taxis in Singapore, making an average of 900,000 trips per day.
Factors supporting the launch of the app
In Singapore, because of the fear of traffic congestion problem, the Land Transport Authority is capping the taxi growth at 2 percent per year, but the population of Singapore is growing at a far higher rate. This promotes the need for more car pooling and taxi sharing in Singapore to meet the rising demand for more taxis. Another interesting fact that was shared by the GoMyWay team was that, most taxis in Singapore are actually underutilized, with an average of 1.1 passengers per trip. With the high smartphone penetration in Singapore, it makes sense for GoMyWay to come in and capitalize on this opportunity.
Security a huge concern
Of course, one of the major concern for most of the app users revolves around the security issue. Female passengers might not be comfortable sharing a taxi with a total stranger. To solve this problem, GoMyWay allows one to select his or her taxi sharing buddy. When you list where you are going, you can choose to only share the taxi ride with your preferred gender. On top of that, every profile is completely anonymous until both parties decide to share the taxi together. There will also be an built in chat system for you to chat with your taxi partner. All GoMyWay users also need to register and verify their mobile number, so the identity of all users is easily traceable.
Do I have to pay for the app?
GoMyWay is a free app. When you sign up for the app, you are given 20 taxi tokens. The taxi tokens will be deducted once every successful taxi sharing. Once you finish using them, you can then purchase more tokens through the in app purchase feature. The additional tokens will cost you US$0.19 to US$0.30 depending on the package you buy. To avoid complicated fare split arrangements, GoMyWay also provides users with the following simple guideline – the first alighting passenger pays 60 percent of the fare due at the point of alighting (including all surcharges) to the second passenger. The rationale for the 60 percent split is that it’s likely the second passenger had to make a detour to drop off the first passenger, and also a fixed starting fare means the first kilometre of the taxi trip is significantly more expensive than subsequent kilometres.
Future plans
As the team does not have a technical cofounder, most of the technical works are outsourced to BuUuk. Moving forward after the launch of its iPhone app, the team is working on pushing out an Android app in the coming few months.The team is also exploring possible expansion to other countries like Malaysia and Australia. Several app feature enhancements that may come out from its future iteration includes smart banner ads as well as partnerships with food and beverages outlets, merchants, as well as the government agencies.
Possible challenges ahead
Although the idea of taxi sharing would seem appealing at first glance, I had a couple of concerns:
1) Critical mass. To help taxi riders find the right match, GoMyWay will have to achieve a critical mass. The GoMyWay team has a couple of marketing campaigns lined up to attract more users to use the app. The concern is that early adopters may find themselves logging in to an empty app and leave. An upcoming competitor app, Split-It, plays on a different strategy by only deciding to launch their app once they have hit 10,000 sign ups.
2) Consumer behaviour. The GoMyWay has addressed the adoption of their app from the perspective of rising demand for taxis, underutilization of taxis and high smartphone penetration. The bigger question would be the consumer’s acceptance to the idea of sharing taxis with complete strangers, something that comes more from a cultural approach rather than just on the opportunity to save cost. Sharing taxis when the opportunity presents itself is one, but actively looking for a taxi partner could be something that has higher barriers of acceptance.
It will be interesting to see what strategies the GoMyWay team has to tackle these challenges and help Singaporeans reduce their transportation costs.