Taxi boom blamed for traffic jams in HCM City

The city was home to around 300 app-based taxis of less than nine seats in 2015. But the figure grew to 2,437 by the early 2016 and 22,000 by late April this year.

Giao attempted to blame Uber and Grab for being partially responsible for HCM City’s traffic jams.

Meanwhile, the city has more than 11,000 traditional taxis, raising the city’s total taxi number to over 33,000 against the set taxi number target of just no more than 12,700 by 2020. The mushrooming taxi development has worsened the city’s traffic jams.

Nguyen Van Tam, deputy head of the HCM City Transport Department, suggested that app-based taxi boom has become a new problem for the city, so, the city has considered halting the transportation license for cars of below nine seats to operate under the form of app-based taxi service.

The re-licensing will be carried out after the city finishes a plan on app-based taxi operation, Tam said.

A representative from the Southern Airport Authority claimed the severe traffic congestion around Tan Son Nhat International Airport is also partially caused by Grab and Uber cars, many of which cruise around to wait for customers.

Earlier, traditional taxi enterprises urged management agencies to take appropriate steps against foreign ride-hailing firms like Uber and Grab in order because they were proving far more competitive that traditional taxi services.