The Land Transport Authority of Singapore (LTA) has issued a warning against Ryde’s new courier service RydeSend just hours after the announcement was made.
Ryde had announced earlier that they were leveraging on their pool of 60,000 private-hire and non-commercial carpooling drivers to launch an on-demand 24/7 courier service. The service was projected to launch on 3 September 2018.
LTA had warned Ryde that its proposed new RydeSend courier service would contravene the regulations prohibiting Public Service Vehicles such as private-hire cars and taxis from solely conveying goods.
Private-hire cars and taxis are meant to carry passengers for hire and reward and not for the conveyance of goods for reward. Those drivers who flout the rule may have their PDVL and TDVL revoked.
LTA also mentioned that they were not consulted by Ryde prior to the announcement.
RydeSend is not the first
Leveraging on the pool of drivers to provide courier service is not new. Last year, many private-hire and taxi drivers were providing delivery service for Amazon Prime until it caught the attention of LTA.
In response, LTA issued a warning that private-hire and taxis are not allowed to provide courier service.
Response from Ryde
Today Online reported that Ryde was planning to leverage on its pool of 12,000 private-hire drivers and 48,000 non-commercial drivers for deliveries on RydeSend.
After the warning, Ryde confirmed that they would only tap on its 48,000 non-commercial RydePool drivers for deliveries. Ryde’s founder Terence Zou said that he will disable the delivery option for private-hire and taxi drivers to comply with the regulations. He added that Ryde will lobby for changes and work with authorities to allow private-hire and taxi drivers to perform RydeSend jobs.
Ryde-ing Fast and Furious
Ryde has been aggressively cementing its place in Singapore’s ride-hailing industry ever since the departure of Uber. It has launched various car services such as RydeX, RydeXL, RydeExec and RydePet to cater to the different rider’s needs, similar to Uber’s offerings during its time in the market.
Ryde also showed that it was not prepared to bow down to the big brother Grab. They filed a Police report and to LTA after they gathered compelling digital evidence of phantom booking that points towards Grab. The case is under investigation.
