Wednesday, July 1, 2009Make Taxis Visible on GPS Devices
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It's 1 a.m., and you're standing on a deserted street in an unfamiliar part of the city. A taxi turned the corner 15 minutes ago, but it streaked past as if you were invisible, and you could make out the shapes of passengers in the backseat. Since then, you've been pacing up and down the block, unsure whether to head north, south, east, or west. Somewhere in this neighborhood, there's bound to be an empty cab combing the streets for a customer just like you. But how will you ever find each other?
The answer, of course, is GPS--the same technology that lets you generate spur-of-the-moment maps on your iPhone and chart your progress with a moving blue dot. How difficult would it be to add a few yellow dots to that map, revealing the locations of approaching taxis? By the time a cab made its way toward you, you'd already be waiting with an outstretched arm. And if an occupied cab whisked by, you'd have no false hopes: at the same time as he illuminated his occupancy light, the cab driver would have pressed a button that turned his GPS dot red.
Although no taxi company has yet been forward-thinking enough to implement such a system, a few small transportation networks have proved that it can be done. On the Harvard campus, for instance, students no longer need to stand out in the rain, looking anxiously up and down Quincy Street. They can simply visit shuttle.harvard.edu, note the progress of several multicolored balloons moving across a Cambridge map, and choose a strategic moment to stroll to the nearest bus stop.
Applying the same technology to taxis would be an all-around success. Taxi drivers would earn more fares and spend less time burning needless gas. Customers would arrive home more quickly and safely, and the ease of the system might reduce the temptation to drink and drive. The only drawback: you might end up rushing to the end of Front Street, only to find three other smart-phone users waiting for the same ride back to Brooklyn. But you can cross that bridge when you come to it.
It seems to me this idea would be significantly better if applied to buses than taxis.
- There's less of them (less data to be collected)
- You wouldn't have to distinguish between occupied and vacant, or on/off duty taxis.
- The problem of three people going for the same cab wouldn't be a problem if it were a bus.
- They're public property, so compliance wouldn't be an issue.
- They're a greener, more efficient form of transportation anyway.
- And related to that, transit agencies are always trying to get more people to ride buses, so improving the predicatbility of buses would make sense. No one's really trying to encourage more cab ridership.
Maybe we could do taxis someday, but I'd love to see this technology applied to city buses (and why not trains too?) first.
There are so many cabs that your map would be overrun. Good idea though. I agree with the first commenter that this would work much more with buses.
JDL,
Chicago actually has this in one of the CTAs better ideas so far.
http://ctabustracker.com/bustime/map/displaymap.jsp
It works really well. I am hoping soon that the trains will adopt this.
As for waiting for a taxi, this idea WOULD make the wait a lot safer.
This is a really cool idea.
We've actually been working on this problem via the iPhone application Taxi Magic. The approach is to let you tap a button in the app, and have the cab come to you, rather than looking for cabs on the street.
It has been super popular for taxi passengers in US cities like San Francisco, Chicago, LA . . has anyone tried Taxi Magic on iPhone?
Just finished reading about taximagic.com on my flight from LAX-MSP. Will have a chance to try it on my Iphone in Chicago next week.
taxi drivers will never go for this. In New York, the mayor/the taxi and limo commission have wanted for years to have cabs equipped with gps devices. The cabbies hate the idea because they don't always want the government/their employers to know where they are.