Dan from Shanghaiist.com asked me the news says Shanghai taxi drivers get compensation for the increase of gas price. I know a little bit about this.

Formula of Shanghai Taxi

Almost for every Shanghai taxi, there will be two drivers for it. One runs for 24 hours and passes the taxi to the other one, and so on. Some taxis are run by couples, which means they can get a lot from the car but they don’t’ have time to meet besides the time to handle over the car. That extreme case is terrible – I cannot imagine a family like this.

Then, every one get passengers’ money and put it into their own pocket. A typical Volkswagen 3000 taxi driver needs to hand in 6150 RMB per month to the taxi company (this is the price for Qiang Sheng Taxi with telephone number 62580000). This does not include gas and maintenance for the car.

Gas is typically 150 – 170 RMB per day, but with the recent increase, it is about 20% more than before everyday. Now in extreme hot summer, they have to turn on air condition all the time, it costs more.

Then, they need to pay a lot of other different fees. For example, they pay around 60 RMB to have the taxi company clear their seat covers everyday. Some install GPS + CDMA. This is mandatory and you cannot choose to install or not. Then the driver needs to pay 65 RMB per month additionally for the service.

With the recent increase in gas price, the government gives 200 RMB per car compensation, which means 100 RMB per person and 7 RMB per day (if he runs 15 days a month). The 7 RMB is nothing compared to the increased cost, but it is better than nothing.