GrabTaxi teams up with World Bank to relieve traffic congestion in Vietnam

Motorcycles, buses, and cars cause traffic congestion on a road in Ho Chi Minh City.
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The two will work to figure out ways to prevent traffic gridlocks and increase road safety in big cities where the taxi-hailing app is present, including Cebu, Manila, Davao City, Jakarta, Hanoi, and Ho Chi Minh City.

Traffic congestion and road safety are affecting the life quality and economy of taxi drivers and passengers in developing countries, including Vietnam, according to GrabTaxi.

GrabTaxi and the World Bank will provide an open-source platform called OpenTraffic for transport authorities in Indonesia, the Philippines, and Vietnam, allowing them to monitor traffic in real time and collect road safety data.

With the collected data, the transport authorities will be able to make the right policies to better manage the traffic.

The cooperation is a response to the Open Transport Initiative launched by the World Bank Group’s Transport and ICT Global Practice, which is aimed at building safer, cleaner, and cheaper traffic systems.

GrabTaxi founder and CEO Anthony Tan said the company is honored to team up with the World Bank to realize the idea of revolutionizing public traffic in Southeast Asia.

Tan said he hopes the company can help reduce traffic congestion and improve road safety in cities where it operates.

GrabTaxi, considered the biggest rival of ridesharing app Uber in Southeast Asia, is working with transport authorities in 20 big cities in six countries, including Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, and Vietnam, where the taxi-hailing app is online.

More than 70,000 taxi drivers have joined GrabTaxi and there are more than 6.3 cabs hailed via the app per second, according to GrabTaxi.

GrabTaxi was developed by two Harvard Business School graduates and launched in Malaysia in 2012 as MyTeksi. The app allows customers to order cabs closest to their location in less than a minute with just two taps on their smartphone.

All information related to the driver and the booked taxi, including their name, the plate number, the phone number, as well as the estimated fare, is made known to the passengers before they get in the cab.

In Vietnam, GrabTaxi also offers the GrabBike service, which allows people to find the nearest xe om, or motorbike taxi, and get the full knowledge of who is going to give them a ride and how much they will have to pay.