We share motorcycles, we borrow an electric bike that allows us to explore the city, we reserve a car from a private individual to use it during the weekend. And all, through the mobile phone. But we continue to raise our hands to ask for a taxi, although, it is true, much less than before.
The sector has survived the pressure of the VTC (for the moment) thanks to the different legislations that have been favorable to it, and it is trying to modernize itself with how difficult it is to agree and mobilize nearly 10,000 small entrepreneurs, self-employed owners of licenses that they are originally publicly owned, of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB). With the gasoline through the roof and the traffic in pre-pandemic registers, less and less goes out to empty circular account.
Remember: Barcelona taxis travel 300 million kilometers each year without a ticket every year. That is where stops and technology play a fundamental role. As EL PERIÓDICO has learned, The Catalan capital will have 462 taxi stops in 2023 (now there are about 320) if everything goes according to plan. And the public ‘app’ to request a service (picmi) is about to leave the kitchen.
A taxi driver who goes out to work on any given Monday spends almost half of his time alone in the vehicle. circulation timean unsustainable situation from all points of view: economically, because the driver maintains fares but his fuel cost; environmental, because although the fleet transits towards hybrid modelsthe pollution generated unnecessarily is tremendous, and of congestion, because about 8,400 taxis circulate from Monday to Friday (they have one day off a week, which takes about 2,100 off the street each day of the 10,523 with a license).
The melon could be opened prohibit taxis from circulating with greenbut the politician who dares to put this on the table has not been born, given the combative spirit of this guild, which in Barcelona has managed to break companies such as Uber.
small format
If the roadmap is fulfilled, Barcelona will have 462 taxi stops in 2023, between the 322 existing and the 142 planned for next year. Of all of them, 193 will be microstops, so that there are more places (these small-format ones will have between two and four spaces) scattered around the city where you can go to catch a taxi and thus discourage drivers from circulating with green on the roof.
Everything, hand in hand new public app, named Picmi, which arrives two years late and will allow you to request a taxi as other private ‘apps’ already do. In this case, and to avoid competition problems, no option to pay over the phone. According to sources from the Metropolitan Institute of Taxi (Imet), the development process of the application “progresses on the forecast of being available to citizens this same autumn, that is, before December 21. It will not have its own application, but will be included in the AMB Mobilitat service palette, available for Android and iOS.
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To the public initiative we must add the dozen radio stations that already operate in the metropolitan area and that allow you to request the services of a taxi with a phone call or through an application. With the difference that, in these cases, it is normal to also allow payment through the ‘app’, thing that ‘Picmi’ will not allow because being a WBA project could generate complaints from the authorities responsible for competition, as has already happened with the anti-Uber decrees, which generated loud complaints from the Catalan Competition Authority.
Until when empty?
To those 300 million kilometers per year without passage indicated by the AMB (48% of the traffic in the taxi sector) we must add another piece of information that helps to understand the situation. According to municipal calculations, each taxi driver travels about 200 kilometers per day and 60% make them vacuum. In 2002, Barcelona had 192 stops. In 2022 it already has 322 and in a year there will be 462. Does it make sense then that taxis, unless we are talking about night hours or holidayscontinue to circulate with the green on the roof hunting for customers?