1. Seven out of ten times, autos in Bangalore will refuse to go wherever you want to go specially if its a short distance travel.

2. Have seen them sitting idle for hours together implying they know 3-4 long rides a day on their LPG-auto (LPG cost is half of petrol) will make their day.

3. Eight times out of ten , the meters show higher fares implying they cheat out of habit than an economic necessity.

4. None of the autos have protection-curtains from rain.. Passenger service is not their botheration.

A similar situation with amby-diesel taxis was present in Kolkata about 7-8 years back. The problem was found to be in the supply side. Within a year, taxi licenses were doubled and today Kolkata taxis ply at Rs.10/ a Km and go wherever you want them to go. Meters are still tampered but passengers experience convenience of travel.

Significantly increase the auto licenses in Bangalore till the mass transit system (metro) comes into play and the problem will be solved.

The system of negotiable pricing does not seem practical, for the following reasons:

1. A person who is well-versed with all the routes and distances might be able to strike a good deal, but an outsider/tourist would be royally fleeced.

2. In a negotiable price scenario without any regulation, instead of competing with each other, the auto-rickshaw drivers will smartly gang up among themselves, mutually deciding upon a high fare to charge the passengers for specific routes. There would be a monopoly of groups of autorickshaws in various areas, leaving the passenger no choice but to pay the expensive fares.

3. Auto-drivers using petrol-driven vehicles would naturally have to charge higher than those with diesel-driven vehicles, thus leading to loss of business for them. A passenger would prefer to go in a diesel auto, as it would invariably be cheaper for him.

Lastly, if negotiable rates are allowed, one would need to pay through his nose to travel at odd hours (late night, early morning).

There surely has to be a strict regulation when it comes to auto-rickshaw prices. The above-mentioned system, where a combination of time and distance is used to calculate the fare seems most logical, though difficult to implement as well.

My solution - design a meter which internally stores the “expected time” for each kilometer. e.g. Assuming an average speed of an autorickshaw as 30 km/hr, it should take 1 hour to travel 2 kilometers. As soon as the meter starts up, a stopwatch also starts internally, which calculates the actual time required for travelling. Depending on how much the actual time differs from the expected time, add or subtract from the conventional fuel charge. What do you feel?

sorry but your reasoning is not correct, and if I might say so, a tad naive. For the “perfect market” to exist, perfect anti-cartel rules need to be in place. Thus, a perfect market is never an unregulated one, though the mistake is often made. An unregulated market (”free pricing”) would only lead to arbitrary price-hiking depending on the knowledge of the customer and transparency is lost.

Like someone else said, free pricing would be a huge step backwards.

The problem is quite easily solved. A combined fare of price/hour and price/km. For example: 10 RS * km + 30 RS * hour.

regards,
Martin

so leaving the market directly to the suppliers is like invigorating the ‘invisible hand’ and letting the market equilibriumize (pardon the verb) on its own…! i fear the repurcussions… in places like b’lore where i guess the rest of the public transport isn’t too much to talk about, auto-wallahs might just get the better of the general public…

I am enthused to find an example of zero regulation working in Sri Lanka. If it will work there it will work here too, but being the realist that I am, I know that there is no chance for that to happen. (at least for the next 20 years)

I had a wonderful explanation during one of my sales pitch in Bombay - there is lot of talent available in this country and lot of talented people with lot of time on their hands. Justify your talent and pricing as opposed to your competition?

I was swept away by this question and have changed my perception about selling anything in India. Just put the time/price situation of a taxi/rick driver in the above hypothesis.

But coming to the point of the discussion - I think in cities like Bangalore distance is redundant. Meters should simply be revised by time. Fix rates by the hour. Half hour would be half that etc. I don’t think it’s possible to really go much faster or slower than the rest of the flow.

Clearly, these are all true for rickshaw drivers. I use the same analysis to see how call girls should (and are) priced in Amsterdam (http://pratiksrandomwalk.blogspot.com/2006/10/caught-in-red-lights.html).