On two wheels and a prayer, bike taxis have bumpy ride

State government flip-flops on whether app-based bike taxis are allowed or not affect livelihoods and mobility in India’s metro cities

Shreyaa Shyam, 25, stands at Bengaluru’s Malleshwaram, waiting for a ride she has just booked on an app. As the traffic moves, bumper to bumper, she knows that if she takes an auto, it will cost her ₹227 to Koramangala. Buses are of course a fraction of the cost at ₹25, but then she will probably reach only an hour later than if she took a bike taxi. At ₹134, a bike taxi is at that just-right price and speed. “The longer the distance you commute within the city, the cheaper it is,” she says, having worked out the math 18 months ago, when she began to use them, though the service came into existence in Bengaluru in 2016. In Delhi and Mumbai, they began in 2018 and 2020, respectively.

Ms. Shyam, who works as a copywriter in an event management firm, is like thousands of commuters who use this service in India’s metros to commute to work, catch up with friends, or to reach a metro station, where haggling with auto drivers is another stressor in the day.

However, with various State government flip-flops on whether app-based bike taxis are allowed or not, commuters, riders (white-board — not yellow board — vehicles), and aggregators all face problems, affecting both livelihoods and mobility. Services are disrupted, upsetting the bike taxi ecosystem built on youth-friendly rides, tapping into the lakhs of singles in the city.

The Bike Taxi Association of Bengaluru says that more than 1.1 lakh two-wheelers are attached with aggregators Rapido and Uber, out of which 70,000 to 90,000 are active.

Adi Narayana, from Tirupati, shifted to Bengaluru in 2013. Until the outbreak of the pandemic, he worked as a cab driver. “In 2019, I bought a car and registered it as a taxi hoping to earn decent money. But everything changed after the outbreak of the pandemic that hit the transport sector,” he says. He defaulted on his ₹18,000 EMI to the bank, and his vehicle was seized.

“In 2021, I decided to run a bike taxi as I had no income source. There are hundreds of people like me, each one has their own stories,” he says, adding he earns between ₹1,000 and ₹1,500 per day. While Mr. Narayana is a full-time rider, there are students and workers who have fixed job timings who ride part time.

In Bengaluru, they have not had an easy run of it, with the Transport Department impounding vehicles and imposing heavy penalties on bike owners for running bike taxi services without obtaining a license. Auto drivers have heckled and abused riders from the time they began plying, but on March 20, it came to a head with autos protesting.