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To enforce the control of taxi and radio taxi rates in the La Paz municipality, the Mayor’s Office of La Paz said this Sunday that the use of technology is essential and to achieve this purpose it is discussed with the transport sector, through tables of work, how the user will be charged, either with the use of applications or a taximeter.
“Effective control will be done through technology, it is something that has to be entered in some way and the Municipal Government of La Paz, in the last administration, made an attempt, there were actors who did not allow this to develop, but it will finally be implemented ”, announced the director of Regulation and Organization of Mobility, Luis Alemán, according to the Municipal News Agency (AMN).
In the nine working groups that have been held since October, Alemán announced that on Tuesday 16 and Wednesday 17 he will meet with leaders of the Federation of Neighborhood Councils (Fejuve) of La Paz, of taxis and radio taxis to advance in the determination on the use of the application of technology for rate control.
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The authority recognized that it is evident that the commune must increase actions to control the rates of these modes of transport, since there is arbitrariness at the time of establishing a cost by the operator. Alemán recalled that in 2019 the Mayor’s Office of La Paz tried to incorporate the taximeter as a method of setting rates, in addition to a mobile application, which will allow for “effective control”.
“The regulation that establishes the collection through an application and the taximeter is still in force; however, as we are at work tables with the transportation sector, this is one of the issues that we are going to deal with fundamentally, ”said Alemán, in time to point out that the rate established in 2013 is still in force.
The Mayor’s Office of La Paz intends to define this issue through dialogue with the motor transport sector in this management, with which it must be defined which taxi and radio taxi fare model to apply. And as for the technology to use, there are also several options.
“The cell phone, the applications, the payment by QR, allow us to have a range of possibilities to be able to carry out this control without the need to have a GPS element outside or outside the vehicle, which is an additional installation, then, although it is an element that we can consider is not the only one, we have several alternatives, “added Alemán.
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The aforementioned tariff establishes zones for the collection of the tariff, the base price of that tariff scale in a referential zone is eight bolivianos, which increases its cost depending on the zones through which the vehicle transits.
Alemán acknowledged that it is very difficult to control compliance with these rates since “physically controlling this charge is problematic.” The Municipal Transport Guard cannot cover the entire city and it is complex to “ask the 9,000 registered taxi and radio taxi drivers that operate in the municipality” if they comply with these provisions.
With the work tables installed in the middle of this year, the aim is to correct this issue and reach consensus with the operators. According to Alemán, radio taxi companies observe the calculation of the rate, which takes two variables: time and distance.
“They have established that, for example, at night the distance is much easier to travel due to the fact that there are not so many gates, in the day it is quite the opposite, the distance is less because there is a set of elements that play in La Paz so that this trip does not take place in a prudent time, which makes the issue of fare calculation vary, according to his interpretation, ”he explained.
