Suwon e-Taxi Wins Incentive Award in Gyeonggi Province's '2021 Proactive Administration Excellence Competition'

[Suwon Ilbo=Reporter Jeong Jun-sung] Suwon City received an incentive award at the '2021 Proactive Administration Excellence Competition,' held for the first time this year by Gyeonggi Province.

At the final review of the '2021 Proactive Administration Excellence Competition' held on the 14th at Gyeonggi Province's Upcycle Plaza (Seo-dun Road, Gwonseon-gu), Suwon City was highly evaluated for its submission titled 'Korea's First: Suwon e-Taxi—Overcoming COVID-19 Together, Enhancing Citizen Convenience and Taxi Industry Competitiveness through a Success Model.'

The judging on that day selected the best (1st place), excellent (2nd place), and incentive (3rd place) cities and counties, as well as public institutions (provincial and city/county), based on a combination of judges' assessments and public opinion surveys.

Suwon e-Taxi, launched by Suwon City on April 15, is a Suwon-exclusive taxi-hailing app with no call fees or brokerage commissions. It is a 'public-private partnership platform' built and led by the taxi industry, with support from Suwon City.

It provides automatic payment and mileage services, and when passengers opt into automatic payment, 2% of the fare is accumulated as points.

It has become a major force in strengthening the competitiveness of independent taxis against existing mobile taxi-hailing companies and revitalizing the taxi industry. It is establishing itself as a leading nationwide success story in preventing the monopolistic ills of large taxi-hailing platform operators.

The number of users and call frequency continue to grow. As of September 10, five months after launch, 54,659 passengers had registered with Suwon e-Taxi, and the cumulative number of calls reached 509,613.

Additionally, 4,143 out of 4,707 Suwon taxi workers (88.02%) registered with Suwon e-Taxi. Among general (corporate) taxi workers, 1,424 out of 1,615 (88.17%) registered, and among individual taxi operators, 2,719 out of 3,092 (87.94%) registered.

Suwon e-Taxi also features 'passenger driving preference options,' which allow passengers to communicate requests to drivers such as 'I'd like a quiet ride,' 'Please follow navigation instructions,' and 'I dislike sudden stops and acceleration.' By applying a method based on nearby dispatch as standard, it provides passengers with fast dispatch service.

The Suwon e-Taxi app can be downloaded by searching for 'Suwon e-Taxi' on the Play Store or App Store.