Dear Liz and Colleagues,

Apologies for coming late into the conversation. It is timely. I am curious to get feedback from anyone who engaged in the Stakeholder engagement meeting what the issues were. I believe this is a timely conversation since mobility (I deliberately refuse to use the term transport) is key to the prosperity of any economy.

I use the term mobility because the hailing services have gradually shifted to Motorcycles, then Bicycles (the guys who supply food Uber Eats etc). I see many cabs on the hailing platforms floating all over the highways, could there be an over supply?, could there be a skewed supply (Urban, Peri-Urban Rural). Without intentional Citizens may burn their fingers Investing in a Sector whose returns are minimal. Remember more than 100,000 Cars were imported at the end of the year causing a logistical nightmare at the port. A significant number of this cars were deployed to hailing services. In short if the sector is not regulated we are certainly leaving room for the kind of chaos we have witnessed in the Boda Boda Space.

My thoughts are we need a holistic conversation on mobility as a Nation and how we can leverage technology to meet our mobility needs. The conversation should not be dictated by the Multinationals that have become successful due to availability of venture capital or facilities that enable them to own smart devices thus creating a fertile ground for hailing services to thrive. We also need to pay attention to the challenges local operators have faced. Listening to a number of hailing service operators, there seems to be a problem, they are not getting a return on investment, they are always risking their lives working long ours to meet their targets and endangering their lives and their passengers lives to list a few issues i have heard. In summary, this is a timely conversation, NTSA is the right body to convene stakeholders, the conversation needs to be driven by Research.

On Wed, Feb 12, 2020 at 12:01 AM Mwendwa Kivuva via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:

On Tue, Feb 11, 2020, 9:11 AM Liz Orembo via kictanet <kictanet@lists.kictanet.or.ke> wrote:
Thank you Kivuva and Arya for your additional contributions.

@kivuva, You raise a very valid point. Carpooling was the initial idea of uber and the car owner business model was the unintended outcome, offering people alternative income, and shifted a big part of the traditional taxi industry to digitally hailed taxis. Current situation is that people took loans to own cars and are working day and night just like any other taxi guy.

This discussion has nothing to do with loans and private investors making bad financial decisions. In economics, garbage collecting is inevitable. Those with no proper use for their capital will loose it in dubious investments

So how can we make the carpooling idea work for Kenya to ease out the traffic?

Simple. Allow drivers ferrying empty seats to load them with humans, and don't legislate stringent measures that make that impossible. In fact, NTSA should pay private car owners to donate those empty seats for public transport decongestion. There are countries in this world where public transport is free. Movement of people leads to economic growth.
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