Seoul Taxi 'Citizen Satisfaction' Rises for 11 Consecutive Years... 'Reckless Driving' Tops Dissatisfaction List

'Fare Payment' and 'Operation Status' Sections Score Over 80 Points... 'Driver Service' Section Scores in the 79s
Taxi App Usage Rate Reaches 42%, Up 14 Percentage Points from Last Year

[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Lim Cheol-young] Seoul City announced on the 17th that the overall satisfaction score for taxi services increased by 1.4 points from the previous year to 82.1 points, marking an 11th consecutive year of improvement, according to a citizen satisfaction survey conducted last year. However, satisfaction with driver services remained the lowest due to reckless driving and ride refusals, indicating a need for improvement.

The overall taxi service satisfaction score is calculated by equally weighting satisfaction levels across dimensions such as driver service, vehicle condition, driving status, and fare payment, and the overall satisfaction of passengers with the taxi service used on the survey day.

Analysis showed that the 'fare payment' category, including unfair charges, change, and receipt issuance, scored 85.6 points, while the 'driving status' category, which evaluates safe driving, scored 82.2 points. In contrast, the driver service category scored the lowest at 79.5 points.

A Seoul City official explained, "Scores increased in almost all categories compared to the previous year, but the 'personal safety' item under 'driver service' dropped by 4.2 points due to the impact of COVID-19," adding, "Although proactive quarantine measures such as frequent vehicle disinfection and mandatory mask-wearing inside taxis were implemented, heightened public awareness of COVID-19 is presumed to be the cause of the score decline."

Additionally, separate from the satisfaction survey, a public perception survey of 1,000 Seoul citizens revealed that the taxi market is rapidly changing, mainly driven by taxi apps such as Kakao Taxi. The proportion of passengers using apps to hail taxis was 42.2%, an increase of 13.8 percentage points from the previous year. Among taxi apps, 'Kakao Taxi' had the highest usage rate at 83.7%, followed by 'T Map Taxi' at 38.7%.

The reasons for using taxi apps included "difficulty in catching a taxi (39.7%)" and "ability to know the assigned driver and vehicle information (39.7%)." However, complaints were raised about "difficulty in dispatching vehicles during certain times (58.1%)" and "difficulty in dispatching for short distances (55.0%)." A high proportion of citizens also experienced harm from "drivers unilaterally canceling calls without contact (49.8%)."

In particular, when investigating dissatisfaction with taxi drivers, "reckless driving" was the highest at 20.0%, followed by "ride refusal" at 19.5%, "rudeness" at 18.4%, "unnecessary chatter" at 14.2%, and "unpleasant odors" at 13.9%.

Hwang Bo-yeon, Director of Urban Transportation at Seoul City, stated, "We will strive to provide safe and comfortable taxi services that satisfy citizens by implementing more thorough quarantine management and service improvements."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.