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A hailing app for Thailand's licensed public motorcycle taxis, with fares calculated to the Department of Land Transport's published rates and built on a social solidarity economy framework — you know the price before you get on, nobody has to haggle, and the rider gets a fair fare.
When a platform becomes infrastructure
Digital platforms have become as everyday as electricity, water or roads. Yet they remain in the hands of profit-seeking companies, with no mechanism for the community to help govern them.
To build network effects, large firms tend to distort the market — dumping capital to manufacture artificial demand. It works in the short run and damages the market in the long run.
What we believe
Technology should make people's lives better and their opportunities wider.
- Stakeholders matter more than shareholders
- Shared benefit before profit maximisation
- Cooperation between everyone with a stake
Where it hurts
Easing the pain for one group can easily create new pain for another.
- Service with no consistent standard
- Fares that don't follow the legal rates
- Having to haggle for any destination not on the board at the rank
- No idea where the ranks are in an unfamiliar area
- You can only hail at the rank — nobody comes to you
- No easy way to check whether a rider is licensed
- Fares that don't move with fuel prices, inflation or the cost of living
- The official rate table is a step scale — hard to compute on the job, so haggling became the habit
- Unfair competition from commercial platforms
- Those platforms don't fit the rank's own rules — joining means breaking them
- Limited comfort with technology
- Delivering public transport that is safe and efficient
- Managing public space — pavements and traffic
- Regulation that isn't joined up across agencies
- Rules written for a world that no longer exists
- State machinery poorly suited to building or maintaining digital public infrastructure
- Shortages of technical expertise and operating budget
Riders · Passengers · Regulators
One system designed so all three gain together, rather than one gaining at another's expense.
Four things that change immediately
A nudge towards electric bikes
Passengers can ask for an electric motorcycle when they hail a ride.
- Gives passengers a way to help cut urban emissions
- Creates a real pull factor for riders to switch to EVs
Interested in bringing this to your area?
We're glad to talk with rider groups, local authorities and regulators who want to develop this together.