Commuters will take Uber, Grab or taxis as long as they get there alive

Survey essentially finds commuters will use any mode of transport that works.

Belmont Lay | February 13, 2017, 05:58 PM

The Public Transport Council (PTC) has released the findings of a new survey that makes a startling discovery.

The Point-to-Point Transport Services Customer Satisfaction Survey found that commuters in Singapore have no qualms taking private hire cars or taxis, as long as they get to where they want to go in one piece.

The survey revealed that out of all rides taken by respondents over a seven-day period, about half were private hire car rides while the other half were taxi rides.

Given that taxi ridership has only fallen marginally over the past few years, this implies that the majority of the private hire car trips are likely to be catering to new or unmet demand.

Taxi ridership has fallen from an average daily ridership of 967,000 in 2013 to 954,000 in 2016.

Survey results and surprises

A total of 1,526 taxi and private-hire car users aged 15 years and above were interviewed from Aug. 13 to 28, 2016, at 30 locations in Singapore.

The survey found that commuters are marginally more satisfied with private-hire car services than taxis.

ptc-survey-2016

This was after respondents were surveyed on seven key attributes of taxi and private-hire car services:

Waiting Time,

Ease of Booking,

Information,

Ride Comfort,

Driver’s Knowledge of Route,

Service Provided by the Driver and

Safety

Surprise number one: Private-hire services fared better than taxis in all comparable categories.

Users of both taxi and private hire car services placed the highest importance on three attributes: Driver’s Knowledge of Route, Safety and Waiting Time.

Taxi users were most satisfied with these same three attributes: Driver’s Knowledge of Route, Safety and Waiting Time.

Surprise number two: On the other hand, private hire car users were most satisfied with Driver’s Knowledge of Route, Safety and Ease of Booking.

Yes, commuters regard private hire car services as safe.

Besides satisfaction, the survey participants were also required to rate how important each of the attributes were.

This created a weightage to each of the satisfaction ratings, to derive the overall mean satisfaction score.

This score was in turn weighted by the estimated usage proportion.

ptc-survey-2016-table-01

ptc-survey-2016-table-02

Public Transport Council (PTC) survey results here.

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