Governance | As Spring Festival approaches, carpooling home initiative organizers should clarify the boundary with illegal operation first
As the Spring Festival approaches, the demand for tickets becomes intense, making it difficult to return home during the holiday season. To address this challenge, many people have turned to carpooling as an effective method to find ride-sharing partners on platforms or social media circles. For commuters, carpooling offers a more comfortable and convenient journey home, relieving the stress of congestion and the anxiety of waiting for a fixed return date. Meanwhile, for the organizers of carpooling, it helps to share costs and ease the burden.
This type of carpooling generally refers to private carpooling, where the organizer publishes travel information in advance, and people with similar routes board and share part of the travel cost or help each other for free.
However, this informal practice, which supplements the transportation market during the Spring Festival, poses an unavoidable concern for organizers who charge a fee: where does the clear boundary between carpooling and illegal operation lie?
The lack of clarity on this specific boundary makes it difficult for organizers to know what is acceptable and what may result in penalties from transportation authorities. Therefore, when publishing carpooling information on platforms or social media, organizers must clarify the difference from illegal operations.
Before the 2018 Spring Festival, a deputy minister of the Ministry of Transport encouraged people to carpool during the holiday season but emphasized the crackdown on illegal carpooling operations.非法拼车运营主要是指拼车运营者多次规律性地往返某些线路，而拼车出行则是顺路捎带。该副部长也提醒拼车出行的民众，出行前要明确与车主的权利和义务。
This move received widespread support. However, in terms of more specific operations, some media pointed out that the boundary between illegal operations still needs to be clarified: how to determine whether it is “regularly returning multiple times”? How many times is considered “multiple”? Even if highways have cameras that can detect “regular returns,” how can we determine if it is carpooling if no action is taken in real-time? If passengers claim they didn’t pay even if caught in the act, what should be done?
The Jiangsu High Court recently released a batch of typical cases of administrative litigation, among which the case of Zhang v. the County Transportation Bureau and the County Government to revoke transportation penalties and administrative reconsiderations clearly explains the “identification boundary between ‘ride-sharing’ and illegal operation of online booking vehicles.”
In this case, Zhang, driving a green five-seat private car, took three passengers from County A to County B through a ride-sharing platform and received a total fare of 60 yuan. The county transportation bureau deemed Zhang to be engaged in online预约出租车经营活动without obtaining a business permit and imposed administrative penalties of a warning and a fine of 5,000 yuan based on various laws and regulations. Zhang disputed this decision, applied for administrative reconsiderations with the county government, which maintained the original行政处罚。Zhang then filed an administrative lawsuit.
The court of first instance deemed that both the行政处罚and administrative reconsiderations were in accordance with the law and dismissed Zhang’s claims. Zhang appealed, and the Intermediate Court of连云港认为，从张某的载客行为起因看，根据顺风车出行平台运行规则，行程路线首先要满足自身出行需求，张某的出行目的是回家，在平台上发布自己的行程路线信息并承接出行订单，具有合理性。从载客费用收取方式看，张某对费用的收取与分配并不占据主导地位，而是根据顺风车出行平台规则进行分配。此外，张某的私人小客车系新能源车辆，出行成本较低，客观上张某实际获取的费用高于出行成本，但该行程价格是根据平台既定规则计算并明示，并非张某自主决定。最重要的是，张某的出行路线完全覆盖了乘客的出行路线，具有“顺路捎带”的性质。二审法院综合考虑了这些因素，认为张某不属于擅自从事网络预约出租车经营，交通运输局对其作出的处罚以及县政府作出的复议决定均属认定事实错误。因此，二审法院判决撤销了行政处罚和行政复议决定。县交通运输局不服申请再审，江苏高院裁定驳回其再审申请。
The Jiangsu High Court mentioned the typical significance of this case: private cars “conveniently carrying passengers on their way” facilitates public travel, alleviates public transportation pressure, and is a new type of activity supported by the state for development. However, in actual operation, the concepts of ride-sharing and online car-hailing are often confused, and the legal relationship and regulatory means are not clear, posing challenges to the healthy development of ride-sharing. This requires transportation departments to improve administrative supervision capabilities and accurately define the nature of different activities. In this case, the court clarified through legal judgments that transportation departments should consider various factors such as the cause of passenger behavior, passenger routes and the rationality of fees, pricing decision-making power, and passenger frequency when investigating and punishing disguised online car-hailing behaviors in the name of ride-sharing. Based on comprehensive investigation and collection of evidence, accurate definitions of operational behavior should be made to avoid simple penalties based on fees being higher than travel costs as illegal engagement in online car-hailing operations. The handling of this case provides identification methods for administrative authorities to investigate illegal acts of “using the name of ride-sharing to conduct online car-hailing operations,” which is conducive to regulating the healthy development of new activities in ride-sharing in accordance with the law.
In fact, this case not only has general guidance significance for administrative law enforcement agencies but also has practical reference value for carpooling organizers who should also consider various factors such as the cause of passenger behavior (ride-sharing), passenger routes (completely covering passengers’ travel routes), rationality of fees (cost sharing should be reasonable without profit-making purposes), pricing decision-making power (platform order taking is preferred based on judicial precedent), and passenger frequency (avoid regular round trips multiple times).
Admittedly, these factors may still need further clarification. For instance, what constitutes “complete coverage” of passengers’ travel routes? What are the specific criteria for fee rationality and cost allocation? These issues need to be addressed clearly. Only by clarifying these standards can people feel at ease when initiating or participating in carpooling home trips, and administrative authorities can ensure law enforcement while pursuing illegal activities and enforcing laws, thus enabling carpooling as a supplement to market transportation force to truly play its role.
