Kakao Mobility launched its ‘Mobility Report Homepage’ on the 14th, providing analysis content from its ‘Mobility Report,’ which has presented domestic transportation trends. The website will serve as an archive for the digital assets built and managed over the years from the annual Mobility Reports, as well as new content being published.
Over the years, Kakao Mobility has published annual Mobility Reports, analyzing big data from Kakao T users to highlight changes in users’ lifestyles and domestic mobility trends.
The newly opened Mobility Report Homepage will not only centralize the digital assets and integrated management of the Kakao Mobility Reports published annually since 2017, but will also serve as an ‘archive for mobility content and data,’ bringing together timely mobility data analysis results set to be released starting this year. This will allow all users and stakeholders to easily access both timely content from the Mobility Report and past content and data.
The ‘Kakao Mobility Report’ has received acclaim as a resource that provides a comprehensive view of key mobility data and related issues for each year. As such, there are plans to continue publishing a separate report in booklet form each year at the end of the year, compiling the content released on the website.
As the first content on the Mobility Report Homepage, Kakao Mobility examined this year’s largest topic, the taxi crisis, as well as the realities and implications of demand-supply mismatch and analyzed the correlation between individual driving frequency and the endemic phase. This analysis extends beyond mobility services, exploring the underlying reasons for changes in daily life based on accumulated data.
According to the analysis, taxi demand showed significant variation based on factors such as time of day, day of the week, location, and weather. Daily call volumes exhibited considerable fluctuations, particularly concentrated during peak commuting times (17-20) and late-night hours (22-02), with call volumes following after work hours on Fridays (17-03) increasing 2.5 times compared to Mondays. In addition, call volume at midnight in Gangnam, a representative commercial area, was over ten times higher than in densely populated regions like Nowon, Dobong, and Gangbuk. The analysis also revealed that during the historic heavy rain on August 8th this year, the call volumes between 17-24 surging 249% compared to the previous week illustrates changes driven by irregular factors such as weather.
Conversely, supply exhibited rigidity, focusing service primarily during daytime hours rather than midnight. Personal taxi licenses account for about 66% of the total taxi industry. According to statistics from Seoul city, more than half of personal taxi drivers are over the age of 65. They tend to finish their shifts earlier (around 18:00) compared to MZ generation drivers who typically finish around 23:00, indicating a fixed pattern of operation for peak taxi hours between 9:00 and 18:00.
The inflexible working environment of corporate taxis, which have maintained their role in supply without distinction between day and night, has led to a slowdown in the inflow of new drivers, further impacting taxi supply. In July 2022, the number of operating corporate taxi drivers by hour showed a decline by an average of 26% compared to the same month in 2019, prior to the spread of COVID-19, even with demand recovering due to the lifting of social distancing, and during the nighttime period, this reduction reached up to 37%.
Kakao Mobility analyzed that solving the long-standing issue of taxi shortages, which has persisted for decades before the emergence of platforms, requires an environment where supply can change more flexibly. To achieve this, they suggest implementing varied fare systems that can be adaptively applied according to supply conditions, referring to examples from major global mobility platforms and domestic large-scale premium taxi services such as Kakao T Venti, as well as diversifying driver supply methods to meet rapidly changing demand.
In a review based on Kakao Navi data, an unusual trend was observed this year, as the frequency of driving per person has continuously decreased starting in April, in contrast to the previous year when there were more tourists. Comparing driving frequency from April to July by day and fuel type against last year’s data, it was determined that the lifting of social distancing had a more significant impact than rising fuel costs.
This year, weekday driving frequency decreased by 3.50% compared to last year, which is a much larger decline than that of the weekend (0.85%), indicating that commuting by private cars has been replaced by public transportation following the endemic trend. In fact, from April, the number of subway users has consistently surpassed last year’s figures, supporting this observation.
In contrast, the decrease in driving frequency for electric vehicles compared to the same period last year was 6.39%, which represents a larger drop than for gasoline (1.86%) and diesel (2.77%), suggesting no correlation between rising fuel prices and changes in driving frequency.
Kakao Mobility’s CEO, Ryu Geung-seon, stated, “Kakao Mobility has been analyzing changes in living environments beyond mobility based on the vast amounts of data secured through Kakao T and Kakao Navi, and through the Mobility Report Homepage, we aim to timely reveal data analysis results, exploring the social meanings and values encapsulated in changes in mobility, while also showcasing various technological innovations.”
Lee Sang-jin daedusj@autodiary.kr