Taxi drivers will stop receiving new orders from aggregators after they have worked 12 hours. A new application will be available to them only after the completion of the previous trip. The Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation came up with such initiatives. Izvestia found out what the new rules for receiving orders will give to taxi drivers and how this will affect passengers.
Tired – rest!
The Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation has prepared a draft resolution “On approval of the requirements for the period of transfer of an order for a passenger taxi to carriers by services for ordering a passenger taxi.” The document posted on the federal portal of draft regulatory legal acts, provides limiting the working hours of taxi drivers and determines the rules by which aggregators will transfer orders to taxi drivers.
After the driver has worked 12 hours, he will not be able to receive a new order from the aggregator. The Ministry of Transport believes that this will minimize the risks of accidents and harm to the health of citizens.
At the same time, the taxi driver will not be able to work without a break for all 12 hours: no later than five hours after the start of the shift, he will have to take a break. Otherwise, according to the draft resolution, the receipt of orders by him will be temporarily suspended. The number and duration of such breaks will be determined by the taxi driver himself. At the same time, the document establishes that the total time of suspension of the transfer of the order cannot exceed five hours.
It is assumed that aggregators that operate via the Internet should calculate the time after which they will suspend or stop the transmission of orders, based on data on the start of work coming to them from the drivers themselves. Companies that operate offline must conduct these calculations “based on the data of the order log of the taxi order service.”
You won’t get orders
The document prepared by the Ministry of Transport also introduces a procedure in which the driver will not be able to receive a new order until he completes the previous trip. “It is not allowed to transfer the next order to the carrier by the service of ordering a passenger taxi <…> until the moment of receipt of information about the time of completion of this order and readiness to fulfill the next order, ”the text of the draft resolution says.
The Ministry of Transport of the Russian Federation could not promptly respond to Izvestia’s request regarding new rules for receiving orders and limiting the working hours of taxi drivers.
Difficulties in control
Taxi experts and aggregators note that the initiative of the Ministry of Transport, related to limiting the working hours of taxi drivers, is aimed at the safety of both carriers and passengers. However, they acknowledge that the technical side of this issue needs to be improved.
We can transfer orders to one carrier within no more than 12 hours. However, in practice, the mechanisms for monitoring the total duration of a driver’s shift are imperfect, as partners transfer orders to drivers from different aggregators, the PR director of People & People (provides PR support for Citymobil, Gruzovichkof, Taxovichkof) told Izvestia ) Ekaterina Zubenina. Yandex Taxi refused to comment on the initiative of the Ministry of Transport.
Vice-President of the National Automobile Union Anton Shaparin notes that many taxi drivers are connected to different aggregators, therefore, having exhausted the time limit for one ordering service, the taxi driver can simply switch to another. According to him, the KIS “ART” system, introduced in Moscow a year and a half ago, designed, among other things, to monitor compliance with the work and rest regime of taxi drivers, has not justified itself yet.
Taxi drivers, if they wish, will find ways to circumvent these prohibitions and restrictions. The most striking example of this is an episode from the movie “Taxi” with a driver getting out of the trunk. Another thing is that the majority of taxi drivers still do not drive around for days on end, but take breaks for lunch and rest, he noted.
Passengers win, drivers lose
The ban on a taxi driver from receiving a new order, provided for by the draft resolution, while the previous one has not been completed, was perceived by specialists ambiguously. On the one hand, a significant number of complaints from passengers are connected precisely with the fact that they have to wait until the driver finishes the previous trip, says Andrey Popkov, deputy chairman of the Taxi Driver interregional trade union of public transport workers.
Many do not want to wait for the driver to complete the previous order and come to them. The proposals of the Ministry of Transport, perhaps, will reduce the number of complaints about this, he believes.
However, in this case, taxi drivers will not be able to predict further trips and plan routes, Popkov emphasized. Drivers are interested in minimizing idling as much as possible and knowing in advance where to go next, he added.
The ability to accept new orders during the current order is implemented by the application’s algorithms in order to assign the nearest car to the order and eliminate the driver’s downtime on the line, Citymobil notes. More than 82% of carriers using this service prefer to accept orders without making a significant break between them, the aggregator emphasizes.
“If this initiative is adopted, we will inevitably face user negativity due to a longer wait for a car to be assigned and negative feedback from drivers due to a decrease in order density,” Citymobil representative Yekaterina Zubenina told Izvestia.
Refusal of “seamless” receipt of orders will lead to overrun of taxi cars, and will also contribute to traffic violations by taxi drivers, primarily related to improper parking, Anton Shaparin believes.
In some cases, especially in the center of large cities, the driver simply has nowhere to stop while waiting for a new order. As a result, taxi drivers will either have to drive idle or park under prohibition signs, risking a fine,” the vice-president of the National Automobile Union said in an interview with Izvestia.
In his opinion, a scheme would be more logical, in which the driver completing the order would receive a new application in such a way that the time of approaching a new passenger would not exceed 3-5 minutes. This is quite enough for the client not to lose patience while waiting for the car, the expert believes.
