The better way to get there

FOR A CITY where you can get just about anything you need 24 hours a day (the current curfew notwithstanding), it is sometimes surprisingly hard to get a taxi in Bangkok.
On those occasions, you don’t need to lose your temper or your valuable time getting a cab – or convincing the driver to take you where you want to go. The end is at hand to all those excuses about them running low on gas or about to change shift or just rudely refusing. The free application for smartphones called Grab Taxi lets you set up the ride in advance.
Grab Taxi comes with guarantees of a safe, smooth ride, a far cry from the horror stories about cab drivers being drunk or shutting off the meter mid-journey and demanding more money or, Heaven forbid, assaulting their passengers.
The app detects your location and relays your intended destination to all cabs available nearby (these drivers have been vetted). Once one is found whose driver is prepared to take you, Grab Taxi lets you know a cab’s on the way and provides the driver’s name, photo and registration and phone numbers. It estimates the distance and fare on the meter. A Bt25 surcharge is added to the fare for the app service.
You can view your current location and destination on Google Maps on your phone and call the driver directly to discuss the route and estimated time it will take. And you can share all this information via Facebook and Twitter with fretting friends and family who might want to track your progress via GPS. If passengers do have any complaints, they can alert Grab Taxi’s 24-hour, seven-day-a-week call centre.
“I find the app very fast and convenient,” says office worker Chutima, who asked that her surname be withheld. “You know within a minute if you’ll get a driver or not, and if you don’t you can keep trying until you find one.
“I used to rely on the taxi radio system, calling the dispatch centre, but that usually meant waiting up to half an hour for them to get back to you and then another half hour for a taxi to be found. Altogether it could 45 minutes or an hour, on top of the 10 or 15 minutes getting through on the phone to begin with.”
Grab Taxi has been a great success in Malaysia since 2012. If you’ve been to Kuala Lumpur and other cities there, you might have noticed there are no people hailing taxis on the street. That’s because of Grab Taxi. The app next appeared in Manila and Cebu in the Philippines and then Singapore, arriving in Bangkok late last year. The same downloaded application works across the region.
“We’re here in Thailand to revolutionise the taxi industry,” says Nina Teng, in charge of business development for the firm behind the app, also called Grab Taxi.
“We want taking a taxi to be convenient and safe. One of our directors is from Thailand and her parents always told her not to take taxis because it wasn’t safe for a woman. I once had a drunken taxi driver here who took me off the route – when we stopped at a red light I got out and ran. We already had Grab Taxi in Malaysia at the time, and I realised we really needed it in Thailand!”
Vee Charununsiri, deputy general manager of Grab Taxi Thailand, adds that Thais often have to put up with discrimination even in their homeland because some cab drivers prefer to carry only foreigners. This happens even as foreigners are being routinely “extorted by being made to pay silly amounts” because the driver refuses to use the meter.
“You hear all these stories about tourists being cheated and drivers who take you to dodgy, horrible places to get a commission. What I like about Grab Taxi is that it solves all these problems. The taxi industry in Thailand needs a revamp. Grab Taxi in a way helps Thai society in general to progress. It helps everybody.”
The country’s cab drivers needn’t feel threatened by this “revolution”. As long as they have a smartphone with an Internet connection, they can be part of it. They must first be vetted to make sure they’re Thai citizens and legitimately licensed and their cars meet all legal requirements.
“We also prep the drivers to have the ‘service mind’, to up the standard,” Vee says. “For example, we encourage them to greet the customers when they meet, help them with their bags and to switch on the meter only when they start driving, not while waiting for the passenger. We tell them these little things can make a difference, and they do.”
A recent survey by the firm found that participating cab drivers in Thailand have enjoyed income hikes of 30 to 300 per cent, mainly because they don’t waste time and gas prowling for passengers. The app brings clients directly to them, and they still have the luxury of choosing which assignments they want to take.
“It’s very convenient for me,” says one of the participating drivers, Jaran Cheepnurat. “I turn on the app and it shows the locations of passengers who want a taxi and I just go get them.
“It’s been quieter lately with the curfew and fewer tourists, but I can always rely on just Grab Taxi to get jobs and maintain a decent income. Unless I’m feeling lazy, I can take 10 or 12 jobs a day from Grab Taxi, and that’s a good day’s work.”
More than 1,000 drivers are registered with Grab Taxi in Thailand and the number is growing. Across the region there are more than 20,000, with bookings coming in every two seconds on average. And the Grab Taxi app itself has been downloaded to more than 1.2 million phones.

OFF YOU GO

Download the application at www.GrabTaxi.com.
If there’s a problem with the app or the service, call (092) 403 4354 or (080) 551 4873.