Rideshare app Gojek has disrupted traditional paratransit services. The cost to places like Bandung is a loss of spaces once autonomously co-produced by drivers and passengers.
Anyone who’s visited Bandung in the past five years or so would be hard-pressed to miss the green jackets of Gojek and Grab motorcycle drivers filling the streets, escorting customers, delivering packages, or simply waiting for their next order. Imagine Uber on two-wheels, but with more services: ranging from rides to food delivery and electronic payments. Motorcycle taxis (ojek) under the banner of these decacorn-status platform companies have integrated so well into the urban rhythm of the city it is difficult to imagine life without them.
As a cultural hotspot and UNESCO Creative City, Bandung has attracted tourists, students and creative workers alike, increasing its population steadily year by year. Most of the city’s population use paratransit services such as the angkot minibuses and ojek, when private transportation is not an option. Ojek drivers have always had steady customers to make a living until the arrival of Gojek, which disrupted this long-standing ojek dominance and has caused much friction between the two groups. As a synthesis of a traditional motorcycle taxi and algorithmic process, Gojek’s hybrid mode of labour has posed an existential threat to ojek, which had hitherto held an effective monopoly of the city’s informal transit market.
Read the full article on Failed Architecture
Author: Hamzah Al Asadulloh
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