Cabbies off road in tricity, woes surge, so does fare

Tribune News Service
Chandigarh, February 7

Passengers are at the receiving end of the ongoing strike by drivers of Ola and Uber in the tricity. The strike over a stalemate between the drivers and the management of the mobile app-based taxi operators over the settlement of pending tax and hike in minimum fare entered its eight day today.

With a majority of the taxis remained off the road, passengers were forced to shell out more due to surge pricing of cabs.

The strike has hit students, women, the aged, IT professions and people visiting the city from other places hard.

Aman Grover, a businessman, said he had to travel to different parts of the tricity every day for his business meetings. For the past one week, he was paying 50 to 70 per cent more per trip for the same distance. “My travel expenses have increased tremendously due to the strike. Sometimes, I have to wait longer and also pay extra for travelling the same distance,” he rued.

Sanjay Juneja, a resident of Sector 11, Panchkula, said, “Cab operators are looting customers in the tricity nowadays. Surge pricing is being resorted to in the name of high demand. The government should fix the fare so that passengers are not fleeced by these taxi operators.”

Harvinder Singh, president, Cab Operators Social Welfare Association, said they would call off their strike only if the cab aggregators paid the remaining tax of the year or increased their minimum fare.

As per the policy of the Administration, all commercial vehicles registered in the other states have to pay a fixed entry tax of Rs 1,000 per vehicle quarterly to the State Transport Authority (STA) while entering the city.

Harjeet Singh Sandhu, Secretary, State Transport Authority, said the UT Administration had given relaxation to the Ola and Uber managements to make payment of entry tax for the first two quarters of the current financial year by February 15, while the remaining payment could be cleared by March 31.

He said there was no issue with the STA, Chandigarh, and they were protesting in Mohali. All cabs registered in Chandigarh were operating as usual and more and more cab drivers were coming forward to pay the entry tax, he said.

On surge pricing, he said the UT Administration had fixed the maximum fare at Rs 23 per km in the territory of the city. Due to competition, the operations were earlier operating their cabs at Rs 8-9 per km, he added.

In a letter to UT Administrator VP Singh Badnore, Harman Singh Sidhu, founder president of NGO ArriveSAFE, which works on road safety, said commuters, mostly working women, students and senior citizens, were facing hardships due to the ongoing strike.

“The objective of our urban transport policy is to ensure safe, affordable, quick, comfortable, reliable and sustainable access for the growing number of city residents to jobs, education, recreation and such other needs within our cities. The cab owners are drivers mostly coming from marginal families who are contributing to the above objectives by providing safe and reliable transport to residents of the tricity, mainly Chandigarh,” he said.

What is surge pricing

Surge pricing comes into effect when the cab demand is higher than drivers around the passenger. The pricing mechanism starts when demand surpasses supply. The hiked fare acts as an incentive for taxi drivers to stay on the road and helps in balancing the demand and supply.