The Japanese government has decided to approve ride-sharing service partially in April 2024 as one of the Digital Administrative and Fiscal Reform efforts. Firstly, taxi operators can be a ride-sharing operators in particular local areas suffering shortage of taxies.
“We will respond to the ride-sharing challenges in the light of serious local transportation issues,” Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said. The government will start improving significantly non-profit transportation services that can be operated by local governments, chambers of commerce, Japan Agricultural Cooperatives and so on in addition to deregulation of the taxi operations.
Also, Kishida mentioned that the related-ministries will start discussing the legal system that allows parties other than taxi operators to operate ride-sharing businesses toward June 2024.
The Digital Administrative and Fiscal Reform initiatives
The Digital Administrative and Fiscal Reform Council decided that taxi operators will be allowed to operate ride-sharing services using local drivers and cars on apps in particularly-designated areas, seasons or times of shortage of taxies based on data.
The law system for consumer-to-consumer (CtoC) ride-sharing services should be discussed toward June 2024.
In addition, second-class license acquisition will be deregulated in order to secure drivers for taxies or buses.
