The multinational company Free Now wants to make Barcelona taxi fares more flexible and propose reductions and increases in the price of the journey depending on supply and demand and the state of traffic. The application that most drivers use in the city to find customers quickly aims to offer citizens the possibility of paying a little more in exchange for getting a vehicle at times when it is more difficult to find one.
Free Now bets in this way to set changing and dynamic prices, more or less what the big apps that use rental cars with a driver (also known as VTC) do, such as Cabify, Uber and Bolt... The difference with the others is that Free Now also proposes to set limits on the corresponding increases and decreases in the price of the race by 15%.
It is, in reality, a whole bet in the profession. One of the main characteristics of the taxi for life is that the rates are fixed and regulated by the public administration. In no case are they happily left in the hands of the market. Around 4,000 taxi drivers use this app in Barcelona. About 400,000 passengers use it every year. More or less.
Despite this, as could be expected, Elite Taxi, the main association of taxi drivers in the metropolitan area of the Catalan capital, opposes the idea of this multinational. Because many taxi drivers understand that the real objective of this platform is to liberalize the sector in order to monopolize the supply by applying discounts and then increasing the commissions it charges taxi drivers for each trip it provides.
"The taxi must be modernized and adapted to the new times - says Isabel García, general director of Free Now in Spain, in a recent interview with La Vanguardia. And this leads to more flexibility in many aspects. One of these aspects is that of tariffs. We suggest that it adapts depending on the state of traffic and the supply and demand of the service. But with limitations, establishing a price range. In no way do we want to do what other apps are doing that work with rental cars with a driver and people find that they suddenly double or triple the price."
The general director of Free Now in Spain also assures that the initiative is being tested in Berlin since the beginning of the year, that they are collecting all the data on its operation and that they will soon send it to the Metropolitan Taxi Institute (Imet ) to take them into consideration. "A similar experience is also being carried out in Madrid, but there we only have discounts. We must take measures to improve the competitiveness of the taxi. Free Now bets on the Barcelona taxi. We do not intend to make commissions more expensive and we continue not to work with rental cars with a driver. But the mismatches between supply and demand during weekends are very serious. We also need to make the festival system more flexible, so that there are more cars on the streets, so that cars can be on the streets for many more hours. Taxi drivers must be able to decide when they want to work."
Apparently, Free Now has several studies that illustrate these mismatches between supply and demand for Barcelona taxis. If nothing else, that assures. But it is better not to go into details. The truth is that applications dedicated to urban mobility do not usually provide much data.
