Private vehicles will be prohibited from offering car-hailing services via online platforms in a bid to ensure passenger safety, an official at the Ministry of Transport reiterated on Tuesday.
Zeng Jia, deputy director of the taxi management division of the Ministry of Transport, told China National Radio that non-commercial vehicles will be banned from providing online car-hailing services in order to provide passengers with quality service and ensure their safety.
Regulations imposed on commercial vehicles are more stringent than non-commercial vehicles, including private cars, he explained.
The Beijing Morning Post reported that a woman in Beijing was allegedly blackmailed and harassed in April by a taxi driver who works for Didi Zhuanche, an online taxi-hailing service in China.
"Under the new regulation, the government can easily supervise taxis, which will offer safety to passengers," Zhu Tao, a professor on transportation at the Beijing University of Technology, told the Global Times.
However, he added that banning private cars from offering services may increase transportation costs for passengers and dampen the emerging online car-hailing industry.
The new regulation will deal a blow to the private car-hailing business, Yin Hao, a Nanjing-based car rental service owner who has over 800 private car owners working for his online taxi business, told the Global Times on Wednesday.
"Our drivers are professional and the cabs are all in good condition. It's unfair to ban them from providing online car-hailing services just because the cars have not been registered as a taxi," Yin added.
Zhu suggested that the government should allow private cars to provide such services while imposing certain measures to ensure passenger safety.
"The government can establish a nationwide driver database, while rental car companies provide professional training for their drivers and insurance for their cabs," Zhu added.
The Ministry of Transport on Saturday released a draft regulation on car-hailing services.
