Taxi queue in the field.
Heavy fines will be imposed on the tender winners if passengers wait more than 12 minutes (Photo: Niv Aharonson)
Yango will compete in the tender, Get and Uber have not yet decided
Anyone who comes to Israel in recent years encounters taxi drivers who attack passengers in the departures hall. Those who need public transportation, especially on weekends, encounter a thin line of taxi drivers in the official queue. Again and again stories come up about drivers who picked up tourists from the field and charged them exorbitant prices, are hundreds of percent higher than the meter prices.
This is despite the fact that taxis are the main means of transportation for flights. According to data from the Airports Authority (Rashat), for example, 40% of departing passengers leave the field in 1.7 million taxi trips per year.
On weekdays, taxis have competition from the train and a few bus lines and service taxis, but from Friday afternoon until Saturday night, taxis are the only option to get to the field or leave it.
The new taxi tender published by the Authority last month was supposed to put an end to the excessive mess even in Israeli terms, and is one of the projects led by the new CEO of the Authority, Major General Hagi Topolansky, who took office last year. Since the failure of the previous tender in 2017, in which the GETT company together with Hadar Lod taxis won, after committing to a 30% discount from the meter rates, the mess in the field is celebrating, despite the airport authority's efforts to manage.
The contestants in the new taxi tender have until January 25 to submit their bids, and the authority hopes that by The next Pesach flight peak, which falls this year in April, will already operate in the new arrangement, provided that the losers in the tender do not resort to legal proceedings.
This time, too, a combination of an application for ordering taxis with at least 100 taxis and a large station, with at least 100 taxis, is required.
The tender is for five years, with an option to extend for another four years.
The winner of the tender will receive at its disposal for the duration of the operation a new building established by the RAS, and it will be able to be used by the ushers who will manage the activity, and as a waiting and rest area for the drivers. In addition, the RAS learned the lessons of the failure of the previous tender, which angered the taxi drivers due to the commitment that the tender encouraged for a large discount from the price The counter: This time there is no demand for a discount, even with the understanding that after the state itself canceled the price list for trips to the field that it had published for decades and was intended for tourists to be able to make sure that they are not being ripped off, and drivers to be able to make a decent living, and at the same time it cut the intercity fares by 30% itself, for drivers already There is no where to give a discount.
The Authority even boasts that it has reserved a budget of NIS 6.3 million to subsidize the janitorial activities of the winner of the tender and the work of 9 staff members, 364 days a year.
"Our goal is not to make a profit from taxi operations, but to ensure an available and supervised service for passengers who need it," says an official at the Rasht.
And what do the potential contestants think?
GETT has not yet decided if she will compete, Yango already announces that she will.
"We are happy that in the tender a significant emphasis is placed on the technological aspect, because it is the one that enables availability and good service for both drivers and passengers. The tender also fits well with our vision because the solution for efficient public transportation must combine solutions for mass transportation alongside individual solutions such as a taxi, and everything must work in backup A technology that optimizes the process," Miango said.
Maover, which returned to the local market last year as a taxi service provider, said that "the company is studying the tender".
It was also reported that Uber "already operates today in more than 600 airports in cooperation with the aviation authorities, including the leading airports in the world, including Heathrow, Schiphol, JFK, Newark, LAX and hundreds more, when just this week we announced an exclusive cooperation with the airport of Dubai to run a pitch
Traveling in Israel. On weekends, with public transportation disabled by law, taxis are critical to getting to the field (Photo: Reuven Castro)
What happened on the tour of the bidders in the National Bank of Israel
But during the tour of bidders conducted yesterday by the Israel Defense Forces, other and angry voices were heard about the tender and the way it was managed.
The tour, which lasted more than four hours, was led by Shmulik Amsalem and the general director of the passenger service division, Itzik Dahan from the commercial department.
In addition to the representatives of the three applications, the tour was attended by representatives of the major stations such as Hadar Lod Taxi and Castel Tel Aviv, Horeb Haifa and Ben Gurion Taxis from Holon, and even representatives of several transportation and technology companies.
Sharp criticism was heard in the tour against the demand in the tender that a passenger should not wait more than 12 minutes for a taxi.
Three complaints per month that the authority finds to be justified on the subject, will lead to a fine of 10,000 NIS on the winning companies, 4-7 complaints to 20,000 NIS and 9-10 to 30,000 NIS.
Three complaints about waiting for more than 15 minutes already raises the fines to NIS 20, 40 and 60 thousand, respectively.
The companies may also be fined if their drivers do not activate a meter, or run wild in the field.
But in Israel there is no real enforcement against the drivers today. The representatives of the Rasht Authority promised that with the entry of the new operators, they would fund the presence of five paid police officers to enforce the law on the taxi drivers, but the participants of the tour pointed out that this does not appear in the tender as a written and binding promise.
"Today, apps and taxi stations have almost no authority vis-à-vis drivers, imposing fines on them because of their behavior will be nothing more than a source of income for the authority," says an official in the field.
The representatives of the stations were surprised at the requirement that every taxi carry a roof for the luggage, and pointed to the line of taxis that stood in Terminal 3 during the tour, and only one of them carried a roof.
"Since the Ministry of Transportation canceled the baggage fee, most of the drivers who still installed a roof have removed it. A roof increases fuel consumption, creates a noise nuisance, and now there is not even any income from it," said one of the participants.
The participants were also surprised by another requirement: that the winning companies make sure that their drivers do not have a criminal record.
This is because the law does not generally allow them to ask the drivers about it.
Another requirement that arouses serious controversy is that drivers who are not from the winning companies who have trips invited to the field will transfer their details to the companies that did win, so that they can verify that they do have such a trip.
"Can you imagine a situation where one taxi app would transfer such details to another?", wondered another official who was present at the tour.
"Certainly when the requirement in the tender is for the information to be transmitted via Bluetooth, rather than via cellular communication. At every major airport in the world, information about the arrival of a taxi to the field complex is transmitted via cellular to the operating software, in order to know the size of the fleet available for travel. It will be possible to transmit the information via Bluetooth only when the taxis They arrive right at the terminal."
It is also unclear whether Get and Uber will agree to transfer information to Yango, which is owned by the Russian Yandex, which is obliged by Russian law to keep all the information it possesses in Russia, accessible to the government.
When it was revealed in Israel that the Shin Bet and the Mossad prohibited their employees from using the application, Yango stated that the information in its possession is not available to any government, other than through a legal application through Interpol.
Another problem is the authorization fee that the Israel Security Agency requires from the tender winners.
Although even in similar tenders around the world, taxi stations pay for the right to work at airports.
But with the current taxi rates, drivers, apps and taxi stations have no ability to transfer part of their income to the Authority.
Already today, many taxi drivers who receive a call for a trip to the field, call the passenger from the road, demand prices higher than the price on the meter, and if he refuses - cancel the trip.
"On the one hand, even after canceling the driver's payment for luggage, the state did not cancel their obligation to collect 5 shekels from passengers at the airport and transfer it to the airport authority, which thus enjoys tens of millions of shekels of income per year," says an official in the field.
"On the other hand, the authorization fees that the winners of the tender are required to pay will be passed on to the drivers, and they are not allowed to collect them from the passengers. If a driver has to pay the application 10, 15 or 20 shekels as an authorization fee, how many drivers will come to work in the field?"
When the participants in the tour raised the issue of the low meter rates to Amsalem, he suggested that they contact the Ministry of Transportation with the demand that they raise them.
"It's ridiculous, Amsalem is a senior official at the RAS, which is under the responsibility of the Ministry of Transportation.
If the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh does not succeed in convincing the Ministry of Transport to correct the injustice, will the taxi drivers succeed?", explains an official in the industry.
And a source who participated in the tour summarizes: "The feeling is that the Network is looking for someone to drop the case of the taxi problem in the field,
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