To users who have difficulty hailing a taxi: Stop cursing. You are actually paying for the new policy.

"The online ride-hailing service has crashed, and shared transportation has returned to the pre-liberation era overnight."

As the Spring Festival is approaching, the circle of friends is not dominated by the problem of "difficulty in returning home during the Spring Festival travel rush". Instead, the key words that dominate the screen have become "difficulty in getting a taxi", "price increase for taxi hailing", "Didi being scolded", etc.

With the arrival of the Spring Festival, a large number of people from other places have evacuated Beijing, and the number of pedestrians and vehicles on the road has obviously decreased. However, Beijing, which is "not congested", has become more difficult to travel because those users who are accustomed to online ride-hailing find that online ride-hailing has become more and more a luxury.

Amid the criticism, people have raised questions: Is this the fault of Didi, Yidao, and Uber, or is it a regression of the times?

A major outbreak of supply contradictions

"Do you accept a 1.6-fold price increase?" "Sorry, there are no cars nearby. Are you willing to pay more?" "There are no cars within three kilometers of you."...

Recently, no matter which ride-hailing app you open, the above prompt has become very common. What is even more unbearable is that even if you click "I accept the fare increase", there is still no driver to accept the order, leaving you alone in the wind for "a few seconds".

Many people are directing their anger at the online ride-hailing platforms. They believe that the driver's order-accepting mechanism has led to drivers refusing to pick up passengers in disguise. Once the driver sees that the destination is not suitable, he or she will not accept the order and wait for the user to increase the fare. However, if the user does not get in the car, the error cannot be attributed to the driver's refusal to pick up passengers.

Doubts have multiplied as online ride-hailing services have increased in price. Coupled with the strong winds and cold weather in the north over the past few days, going out without a car has become a torment for users.

Facing doubts, Luo Wen, senior product director of Didi, initiated a conversation on Zhihu last night about the difficulty of hailing a taxi, and posted two hand-drawn charts of "Didi online driver data" and "Beijing order demand". It can be seen from the chart that after the start of the Spring Festival travel rush, the number of online drivers in Beijing has been declining, down nearly 25% compared to more than 10 days ago, while the order demand has been climbing, with an increase of 30%.

He believes that the imbalance between supply and demand is the reason why people find it difficult and expensive to get a taxi recently. "This early and peak Spring Festival travel rush is as powerful as a sudden rainstorm, which has widened the gap between supply and demand," he described.

Some people would say that if you can't get a taxi, just hail a taxi on the roadside. I believe that everyone has tried this method. Due to the large number of people and small number of cars, the business of taxi drivers has become extremely hot. Although they cannot raise the price, they have the right to choose to refuse to pick up passengers.

"I won't go to Sanlitun, I won't go to Wangjing, I won't go to places that are too close, and I won't go to places that are too far." In fact, we don't know what kind of work can satisfy taxi drivers.

A supply contradiction has erupted with the start of China's Spring Festival travel rush, with drivers, users and platforms all disliking each other.

Beijing is not the only country that has fallen

If you think that the difficulty in traveling during the Spring Festival is just another carnival for the capital's residents, you might as well look further ahead. Users in second- and third-tier cities are still "crying out".

In Shijiazhuang, the provincial capital closest to Beijing, the problem of difficulty in getting a taxi is no better than in Beijing, and may even be worse.

Due to the influence of air quality, citizens of Shijiazhuang who want to drive out need to follow the instructions of government departments at any time. "Today may be an odd-even rule, or there may be a limit of two numbers. If there is a strong wind overnight, there may be no limit on the number of cars the next day." Free public transportation may also be charged at any time.

Traveling is full of endless possibilities for the citizens of the provincial capital. Coupled with the traffic congestion caused by subway construction, the traffic environment here is actually worse than that in Beijing.

I once experienced the difficulty of hailing a taxi in Shijiazhuang for a week. During rush hour, it was basically impossible to get a Didi or Uber. Yidao was a little better, but even if I increased the price, few people would accept the order. After accepting the order, I often had to stand on the roadside for half an hour before the car came.

Taxis also refuse to pick up passengers without reason, and their way of refusal is even more direct than in Beijing, with just two words: “No ride”.

Unlike Beijing, the public transportation systems in second- and third-tier cities are still not perfect. If you can't get a taxi in Beijing, you can still choose other means of transportation such as subways and shared bicycles. But in small cities, if you can't get on the bus and can't call a car, everyone will wander on the road like an isolated island.

People often ask me here, is our traffic situation worse than Beijing's? Indeed, it is much worse than Beijing's. It is very similar to Beijing around 2008, with only buses, taxis and the subway under construction.

It is understood that in addition to Shijiazhuang, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Wuhan, Hefei and other places have also recently encountered the problem of "difficulty and high cost of taking a taxi" which has not been mentioned for a long time.

The one-size-fits-all approach under the executive order cannot improve travel difficulties

This year's Spring Festival came early, and the flow of students and migrant workers overlapped. On the one hand, the number of users increased, but the decrease in drivers made people reflect. Why is it that during the same Spring Festival, the dispatch fee in the taxi-hailing software has already existed? Why did such an extreme situation not occur last year and the year before last?

This requires us to examine the Interim Measures for the Administration of Online Taxi Booking Services, which came into effect on November 1, 2016. At the same time, in addition to Beijing, new policies for online taxi bookings have also been introduced in various places.

Problems followed. First, a large number of drivers did not meet the requirements of the new online car-hailing policy and were forced to be "laid off".

The "Beijing people with Beijing license plates" policy will first restrict a large number of online ride-hailing drivers. Outside Beijing, among the more than 410,000 drivers activated by Didi in Shanghai, only less than 10,000 drivers have Shanghai household registration; only 10% of the 350,000 online ride-hailing vehicles in Nanjing meet the entry requirements of the new policy, and once they become online ride-hailing vehicles, they will not be able to resume non-operational status.

The policy adjustment will inevitably lead to a significant reduction in the supply of online ride-hailing vehicles in the market. The difficulty and high cost of hailing a taxi have begun to quietly return, and will explode at the end of the year. So when you call a taxi, you often hear the driver say: "It's hard to work anymore. I'm going back to my hometown at the end of the year and I won't drive anymore."

Picking and choosing passengers, refusing to pick up passengers, taking detours and charging exorbitant prices have become the beginning of taxi retaliatory attacks after the departure of online ride-hailing services, and passengers have to bear the cost of all these.

When the policy was first introduced, public opinion online overwhelmingly pointed the finger at ride-hailing drivers and platforms, believing that the policy had only led to drivers losing their jobs and platforms suffering. But when the policy really began to take effect, the first to suffer were the ordinary users who were unable to hail a ride in the cold.

Seeing the "regress of the times", online car-hailing drivers can just quit and go back to work, while taxi drivers, though squeezed, are still experiencing a new spring. Only those Internet users who have been trained to use shared travel methods are a little confused, and they are still unable to adapt to the days when there were only buses, subways and taxis.

Didi, Kuaiche, Uber and Yidao have been criticized since the first day of their birth.

But can we live without online ride-hailing services? Of course, we can live without them. We have become accustomed to this convenience.

In the past two years, online ride-hailing has gradually become the largest transportation supplement to public transportation in people's daily lives, slowly changing people's travel habits. Whether it is a boss or a lady or an ordinary worker, they all use online ride-hailing to travel. Their mobile phones are either Didi or Yidao. Some people even install three or four ride-hailing apps at a time. With Yidao, users can choose the owner and type of car. The birth of online ride-hailing has not only improved travel efficiency, but most importantly, it has given users a comfortable experience that taxis cannot achieve.

“Difficulty in getting a taxi” may not just be a problem before the New Year, but will continue after the New Year.

The reason why online ride-hailing services were able to emerge and flourish is precisely because of the shortage of the public transportation market caused by long-term planned control. The precipitous loss of online ride-hailing services makes people wonder whether certain policies are really compatible with the mobile Internet era?

The problem of supply and demand is right here. When the masses have demands, the first priority of the functional departments is to resolve the tense imbalance between supply and demand, rather than trying to solve one problem but causing another and letting users pay for the risks of the new policy.

Finally, let me ask one more question on behalf of the majority of users: next year will we still be able to bask in the spring breeze of the sharing economy as we did in the past and hail an online ride-hailing vehicle bound for spring?

As a winner of Toutiao's Qingyun Plan and Baijiahao's Bai+ Plan, the 2019 Baidu Digital Author of the Year, the Baijiahao's Most Popular Author in the Technology Field, the 2019 Sogou Technology and Culture Author, and the 2021 Baijiahao Quarterly Influential Creator, he has won many awards, including the 2013 Sohu Best Industry Media Person, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Beijing Third Place, the 2015 Guangmang Experience Award, the 2015 China New Media Entrepreneurship Competition Finals Third Place, and the 2018 Baidu Dynamic Annual Powerful Celebrity.