Abstract:
The taxi industry has been an alternative to public transportation for many years. The industry’s growth was spurred by the increasing population and the inability of the public transport system to meet the growing demand for transportation services especially in towns and large cities. Before 2016, the traditional taxi was the only taxi transport service available in Dar Es Salaam.
This study aims at assessing the extent to which the e-hailing system has changed the taxi transport services in Tanzania especially Dar es Salaam City in terms of pricing, security, and accessibility. The problems were prominent during the traditional taxi era. Three specific objectives are addressed by this study, first is to determine the extent to which the pricing mechanism has changed since the introduction of the e-hailing system. The second is to find out how the e-hailing system has addressed the security problem on Taxi transportation and the third is to assess the extent to which the e-hailing system reformed the accessibility of the Taxi services.
Features like the ability to find the forgotten/lost item which had a total of 100 per cent scored for the features provided by e-hailing taxi system, or ability to safely use to send a parcel or family members this finding scored 74 per cent, confirms how secure and trustworthy e-hailing is compared to a traditional taxi.
Pricing of the e-hailing service was found out to be attractive by customers, as they would be able to see an initial price before calling the e-hailing taxi. The motivation of the initial price for users scored 98 per cent. For the users, this was an essential factor as it allows them to know if they would afford to pay for the trip or not.
The issue of accessibility of taxi service, Dar es Salaam city people have confirmed in this study that, e-hailing service was more accessible during an emergency (night) or rain. Findings to these categories scored seventy-six per cent (76 per cent,) which confirms, e-hailing taxi service is more conveniently accessible in cases of emergency compared to a traditional taxi.
This study recommended e-hailing taxi service providers to expand their services countrywide and not only to base on some major cities. To improve customer support and enhance more features for security and pricing
