Uber says no surge pricing on Wednesday as Mumbai's taxis, autos go off roads

With Mumbai’s autos and taxi drivers announcing a strike in protest against private taxi firms, Uber announced that they would not apply surge charge pricing in their fares on Wednesday to ensure that Mumbai’s citizens can get around the city seamlessly. [caption id=“attachment_2298462” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Uber has disabled dynamic pricing for Wednesday. Reuters[/caption] They, however, warned that the lack of dynamic pricing could affect the availability of cars due to the increase in demand. “On 17 June, from 00:00 hours until midnight, one can avail Uber’s services without having to shell out extra in the guise of ‘dynamic pricing’.”

Ola, however, has not announced any such move and a customer executive speaking to Firstpost confirmed that no such decision was taken as yet. This comes a day after the private taxi firm’s fares had skyrocketed to three times the normal rates in order to capitalize their gains on the taxi strike day. To book a cab on Monday using the Uber app, many customers had to shell out a whopping Rs 750 as minimum fare for five kms as opposed to the usual fare of Rs 150, reports Mid-Day. This was an added misery for commuters who were already facing the brunt of the city’s incessant rainfall added with a day long strike organised by the city’s auto and taxi drivers. The strike of taxis and auto-rickshaws was a result of a protest organised by Congress MLA Nitesh Rane-led Swabhiman Union to voice its protest against cab aggregators like Uber and Ola.