Carpoolers wait for Didi hitch service to resume

For Zhao Huijiao, it's a nightmare in the morning when her roommate stays in the bathroom taking an epic shower. But it's even worse if she can't find a driver in her WeChat group carpools.

Zhao, a 26-year-old accountant who lives near the south Sixth Ring Road in Beijing but works in the city's upmarket Guomao area more than 50 kilometers away, was a regular user of Didi Chuxing's hitch service. It saved her time and money.

Since Didi suspended it hitch service in September, after the murders of two female passengers by drivers, she has joined two WeChat groups that include 500 drivers and users in the neighborhoods.

"If the hitch service was still available, it would save me a lot trouble finding a driver every day," Zhao said.

Many people who are active in similar groups also look forward to the resumption of the hitch service. And Didi recently began laying the groundwork to restart its carpooling service.

Zhang Rui, the executive who was brought in to reform the company, has proposed five measures to revamp the service: restricting drivers' routes, abandoning the platform's social features, more strictly screening new drivers, allocating safety complaints to specialists and improving emergency management.

There is no precise timeline for relaunch yet, and the safety of the Didi model still concerns many passengers.

"If Didi strictly followed those rules, the platforms might not survive, as some policies are not market-driven," Gao Yu, 32, a coder in Beijing, said on social media. "There are still huge potential risks for passengers."

Xu Kangming, a transportation expert and policy adviser at the Ministry of Transport, said on Weibo that "hitch operates on the idea of matching private car owners and passengers heading in a similar direction, which is budget-friendly for both sides and helps address urban congestion and pollution. The new business model should be encouraged."

However, he added, many full-time drivers flocked to the service as a result of the low threshold for approval of driver applications, as well as big profits, which went against the essence of carpooling and added uncertainty to passenger safety.

"The key is to prevent full-time hitch drivers by limiting orders to two a day and restricting the routes, which might go against the ride-hailing platforms' goal of attracting more drivers and passengers," Xu said.

"But only when the platforms rule out the unqualified hitch drivers will the passenger be truly safe."