SINGAPORE — After a couple of aborted tries, taxi-sharing will be attempting another comeback. On Tuesday (May 9), Grab announced that it is adding the fleets of four taxi operators — SMRT Taxis, Premier Taxis, Trans-Cab and HDT Singapore Taxi — to its GrabShare platform. 

From next Tuesday, users who book a ride via the commercial car-pooling service will be assigned either a private-hire car or a taxi.  

The move comes less than two months after a dynamic-pricing option became open to some cab-drivers, giving them an extra avenue to snag fares. 

Apart from the four operators, Grab told TODAY it was in discussion with Prime Taxi, the country’s smallest operator, to have their drivers join GrabShare. 

Under the service, GrabShare accepts a maximum of two bookings with similar routes, in which passengers share rides and split the fare. Passengers can save up to 30 per cent on fares, compared with individual rides. 

The ride-hailing platform said GrabShare would offer an extra stream of income for cab drivers, who can opt in or out of the service. It is expected to bump up their earnings by up to 40 per cent, Grab added.

In late March, Grab launched the fixed-fare service JustGrab, allowing five operators — SMRT, Prime, Premier, Trans-Cab and HDT — to tap dynamic pricing, which allows for fares to fluctuate based on commuter demand. 

Just a month after its launch, the service had drawn more than five million bookings, the ride-hailing platform said last month. 

Commenting on the latest move, Mr James Ng, managing director of HDT’s parent company HDT Singapore Holding, said some time was needed to monitor factors such as whether GrabShare would raise drivers’ earnings. He said that, theoretically, taxi-sharing made “good sense” for drivers. 

But he added: “We’ll need to (look at) the actual implementation to see if there are any hiccups that we need to iron out later on.” 

A Premier spokesman said some taxi drivers looked forward to providing “service differentiation” to commuters, such as cab-sharing. “Both the commuters and the taxi drivers will have an additional choice,” he added. 

SMRT and Trans-Cab did not respond to TODAY’s queries. 

Taxi-sharing made its foray here with the Land Transport Authority’s (LTA) Share-a-Cab initiative in 1997, which allowed commuters to request shared taxis, using information panels located at selected taxi stands. However, it failed to take off then due to insufficient demand. 

In 2015, the Pair Taxi mobile application also tried to introduce taxi-sharing for commuters in the Central Business District, but its registration application was rejected by the LTA as its fare model failed to meet the fare-charging conditions set out in the regulatory framework.

Cab drivers who spoke to TODAY had reservations about Grab’s latest initiative. Mrs Rani Krishnasamy, 51, an SMRT cabbie of four years, said detouring to pick up another passenger would waste time on the road and fuel, especially when there are traffic snarls. 

She felt it was “definitely not going to help” boost her earnings, unless shared bookings are fulfilled from a single pick-up point. 

Trans-Cab driver Desmond Lee, 56, said: “Doing multiple stops is a waste of time, unless you (are) running on a meter … the fare is too low.” 

Mr Wong Hui Fong, 34, who has driven with HDT for three months, noted that drivers are not guaranteed a shared ride. 

“What’s the point of (using) GrabShare when we don’t even have the assurance that every trip you pick up, you’ll definitely get another shared customer?” he said. 

In response, Grab said it understood the drivers’ concerns but it reiterated that taxi-sharing was “an important and complementary avenue to grow (taxi drivers’) incomes and serve more commuters efficiently”. 

It added that ride-sharing technology was key to the success of taxi-pooling. 

Rather than matching passengers at taxi stands, Grab pointed out that its booking platform scans all incoming requests via GrabShare islandwide to “find passengers the closest match for more efficient travel”.