Havana Cuba. — “La Nave,” an app that connects drivers with customers in a similar way to Uber, has become popular in Havana.
The platform software has two versions, one for customers, which makes it easier to plan the route through mobile GPS and choose a category of vehicle with greater or less comfort, and another for drivers affiliated with “La Nave”, in which the location of the clients and the destination of the trip are received.
“It is of great help in the midst of the crisis that Cuba is experiencing with transportation,” he told CubaNetIsmary Arencibia, who regularly uses this service.
“The Cuban (Uber) is the solution for those who want to get to their destination quickly because public transport is insufficient, it is true that prices are not within everyone’s reach, but at least there is the possibility of being able to move quickly and arrive on time,” he added.
Drivers who join “La Nave” must pay 10 percent of the earnings to the creators and administrators of the application. Still, many professional drivers have abandoned the usual “tipping” routes to work using the app.
“I am a professional driver, I pay 1,500 Cups a day to the owner of the car I work in, and I also pay for the fuel I use and the repairs. When I worked on a fixed route the earnings were much less. I was about to leave it because it was not profitable,” Armando Bueno, a professional driver who covered the route between Havana-Santiago de las Vegas and who migrated to “La Nave,” told this newspaper.
“The advantages of ‘La Nave’ for us drivers are many, we always have a ticket available and thus increase profits,” added the driver.
The situation in municipal polyclinics with the lack of ambulances to transport patients to hospitals is becoming more and more precarious. About this, Leticia Blanco, a housewife who uses “La Nave” to transport her asthmatic daughter to the hospital, told this newspaper.
“I have an asthmatic girl and many times I have to run to the hospital with her because crises are very frequent. We have no means of transportation and the buses are getting worse and worse. The app gives you the ability to move quickly, and for me that’s critical.”
Recently, the official media Granma He acknowledged that “of the 881 teams that the Havana Provincial Transport Company has, in January only 418 offered services to the population.”
Luis Orlando Hernández Pacheco, deputy director of operations of this entity, explained that “with that number of vehicles they could only transport some 514,727 people and make around 4,790 trips, at the established times from 4:30 a.m. to 1:30 a.m. am the next day.”
“The public transport crisis is mainly due to the shortage of equipment and means to repair buses, the lack of pieces and parts to replace broken ones is the biggest problem. There is a shortage of tires, batteries, crucial parts such as starter motors, alternators, oil pumps, among components, ”he explained to CubaNetRodolfo Kicute, bus driver on the Havana-Santiago de las Vegas route, one of the busiest in the capital.
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