It’s been a big year for GrabTaxi. The app, which came into 2015 as a third-party taxi booking platform, is ending off the year as a taxi booking/private car service/ride-sharing app — a mouthful that’s testament to the new and innovative initiatives they’ve launched in the last 12 months.
Their new features, notably GrabCar and GrabHitch, were not always met with positive response. Taxi drivers, in particular, have been pretty vocal about the problems that these initiatives have brought about for them. Taxi operators have also admitted to a lower demand for taxis these days. And like we shared in a previous article, this might seem like a pretty ironic situation, seeing as GrabTaxi started out as a huge boon for cabbies.
But as the year comes to an end, GrabTaxi seems to want to bring it all back to the group of people who’ve helped them in their early days. Earlier today, they released a video that revealed the surprise they had in store for some of their taxi drivers, as a way of saying “thank you”:
It’s a moving tribute to the people who, quite literally, keep our city moving — just look at that adorable taxi uncle enjoying his durian party on a boat, or the joy on the face of that working mum when she meets her daughter.
But beyond the video, perhaps it’s time for us to think about our own way of showing thanks to the taxi drivers and public transport personnel here in Singapore. Sure, we get stuck in traffic jams and broken down trains, but that shouldn’t stop us from giving credit where credit is due.