GPS Tracking ROI

… The use of GPS and wireless technology was supported by taxi drivers and Sincavir, the taxi owners’ union, who cited increased crime rates as the need for real-time vehicle tracking and location. Installations will include ‘engine disable’ functionality and a driver ‘panic button’, both of which directly address driver security concerns. The program will also help taxi fleet owners improve customer service, reduce operating costs and aid in the recovery of stolen vehicles… read full article here:

Is there a lot more crime in Brazil than in the USA, or are Brazilian taxi drivers just a little more open to change than US drivers?  frankly I think it is a bit of both.

You know I have written a number of times about contentious and poorly implemented GPS programs involving US taxies but I’m sure corporations and drivers (and City Parking Authorities, hello Philadelphia ;-)) make just as many mistakes overseas as they do in the USA.  So why do drivers seem to have an easier time adapting to a newer technology that will not only keep them safer but earn them more money?  Beats me.

I know I* have told this story in the past but it’s worth repeating.  A couple years back I went to San Antonio on a business trip.  Since my hotel was downtown and the meeting I was attending was in the hotel, I just took a cab from the airport.  The driver was an older fellow and had that ‘old timer Texas cowboy’ look, the last person you would immediately suspect was ‘into’ new technology.

I noticed he had a little screen on the dash that seemed to be feeding him information and mostly just to make conversation I asked him what it was.  "Oh that is our new GPS tracking-aided dispatch system" he responded.

"Do you like it?" I asked.

"Like it?  I love it!" was the response.  "My take home pay has doubled since I asked for this to be installed in my cab, and I also have a one-button silent alarm I can trigger to get help if I need it."

"Doubled?" I asked, a bit incredulous.

"Yep, at least for now.  You say many of the younger drivers and their union is fighting these things.  Suits me fine."  he interrupted himself to push a button on the dash terminal and then resumed his tale.  "You see that button I just pushed was confirming my next fare pickup to the dispatcher.  There’s a guy waiting at your hotel for the airport, so I won’t wait even a minute for the next fare after I drop you off."

he went on to tell me how the rest of the guys kept giving him petitions to sign to ban the use of the system because it ‘invaded their privacy.  His standard response to petition requests?

"Not no, but Hell No!".

Whet’s your response?

The excellent Telematics Journal website is a daily read of mine.  They cover a lot of important news on GPS tracking as well as the rest of the world of business communications.  They are now running some excellent blogs, worth a read.  One of the better ones is by David Alexander, one of their analysts.  I’ve written about the New York Taxi Strike/GFPS “Rebellion” before, I thought I’d comment on a couple of David’s recent points here.

Some New York taxi drivers are striking to show their unhappiness with the new mandated GPS/credit card systems installed in their cabs. The stated concern appears on the surface to be one of privacy, and one of the large drivers unions is using this as a platform. The other large union however sees no such privacy issue and is not supporting the strike.

The system itself is a computer with a screen that the passenger can use to select information such as weather forecasts, restaurant details, and can follow the taxi’s route through the city. GPS provides the instantaneous position of the vehicle.

And of course there will be plenty of advertisements to entertain the captive audience in the back seat. There is a messaging system for the driver, and a credit card option that can process payments without needing the driver to do anything.

Some drivers have complained that the credit card processing clips about 5% off their income for fees, but they are missing the bigger picture that with credit cards (as demonstrated in many other industries) customers on average tip better and can spend more than just the cash they have on them. For taxi drivers that may mean more of the lucrative trips into the suburbs….

This is the sort of thing I have pointed out for years.  It’s why I stylize myself as the “ROI Guy”.  It isn’t what you “spend” for something in business that counts, it’s what you “make” from something that drives an intelligent business decision. 

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The Conde Nast Portfolio published a nice blog recently about the sad and senseless NY taxi strike.  I decided to furnish a few comments. 

New York Taxi Strike, GPS, and What Can Be

by Kevin Maney

I stood on Third Avenue in New York today, trying to hail a cab, and wondering why there seemed to be so few. Well, it’s because about one-third of them are on strike to protest the city’s insistence that each taxi install a GPS tracking system.

The opposition comes from one of the taxi drivers’ unions, which doesn’t like the fact that the system will cost drivers (who often own their own cabs and have to pay for improvements like this) some $6,000 a car.

This is one of my top objections to this whole madness.  I’ve written about it before, regarding both the New York fiasco and it’s very si8milar “train wreck’ companion in Philadelphia. See  More On How _Not_ To Implement GPS Tracking , NYC Cabbies Add New Reason To Hate GPS , Who The Heck Is Ron Blount And Why Should You Care? for a little background.

GPS tracking does NOT cost $6,000 per vehicle … by any stretch of the imagination.  yes, I know these are “sophisticated” units, credit card readers, (potentially) live video feeds, and so on, but this cost is way, way out of line.  Someone is being taken for a ride!  I’ve been specifying, writing proposals and doing government source selection for live GPS tracking systems since 1999.  I’ve also been a commercial seller of the technology, implemented a number of government and commercial systems, and I emphatically state that no matter if the drivers have to pay or the city should foot the cost, the costs are out of line with reality.  In Philadelphia, with a similar project, the city attorney even voiced his opinion that the deal was “improper’ ( Does GPS Tracking Have to Involve Crooked Dealing? ) but no one seems to have the “stones” to call a spade a spade … even in New York?

But in the long run, these things could reshape the way taxis work in a big city. The GPS can track the taxis, …. Or perhaps you could click on one of the dots on the map to let that taxi know you’re nearby and looking for a ride. The possibilities could get exciting.

Exactly, Kevin.  exciting and profitable.  In cites where GPS tracking, even in more rudimentary forms, has been successfully implemented many drivers are profiting from it. big time.  As I have said before, it is not the GPS tracking idea that has caused the strike, it’s mismanagement, ignorance of basic educational needs and a blatant power struggle between the city and the drivers … which need never have happened  … just start by 1., following sensible, honest procurement methods and 2., having some basic respect for the drivers human and civil rights.

Some of my faithful readers already know I’ve written a few times about Ron and the Taxi Worker’s Alliance of Philadelphia and the city’s ill-advised plan to GPS Philadelphia cabs.  But for those who came here looking for Katie Couric’s legs (by far my highest visitor count ever that day, never underestimate the prurience of the average Internet surfer, I guess) I’m using Ron to help point out what not to do if you’re considering using GPS tracking.

Many of the better business schools teach classes in how not to implement a business or new business idea.  For someone now I’ve been following a long, sad saga perpetrated by the Philadelphia Parking Authority.  Right about now, were I putting together a business course, I’d rank them right up there at the top for examples in how to take a good idea and turn it into a real turd in the punchbowl.

For reason which are mysterious to me this organization has acquired the near fief-like control of the taxis in Philadelphia.  Why?  Only someone on the inside of Philadelphia politics can answer that for me.  The two concepts are almost foreign to me to begin with.  taxis are public transportation which obviate the need for parking lots and garages.  Parking garages are a pollution-enhancing (necessary?) evil of modern cites which conspicuously hurt  the adoption of more low-pollution public transportation.  I dunno.

What I do know is, the Parking Authority came across the idea of using a special-purpose GPS solution to enhance the service level of taxicabs in Philadelphia.  On the surface this certainly sounds like a good idea.  I’ve been a GPS tracking practitioner for many years now and I certainly know that, properly implemented, GPS for taxis can:

• Enhance both driver and rider safety
• Provide better profits to cab operators
• Reduce customer wait time
• Eliminate the constant mystery that surrounds complaints of bad service or cheating … bad drivers are immediately detected and weeded out, good drivers, wrongly accused are protected and rewarded for their dedication to decent service.

There are other benefits that can accrue to management, drivers and customers but those four are certainly in the lead and they are easily proven with a number of successful GPS implementations around the world.

the Parking Authority, though, in an apparent display of lack of interest in either driver or passenger viewpoints just proceeded like a bull in a china shop.  They:

• Failed to involve the independent businessmen (drivers) who are the true “make or break” of system changes.  Who knows more about what is needed than the men and women who are performing the work, day and night?
• They (in my view) violated laws from the US Constitution on down by ruling that independent business would fund and maintain a city-dictated system without even having any input in the matter.
• They appear to have “gotten in bed” with a particular vendor, selected that vendor and then hired the vendor’s marketing lead to become a city employee who specified and source selected the system to “feather his nest” by moving over to the contractor side and getting a fat salary to run the very system he bought as a government official. Sounds crooked and impossible in this day and age, doesn’t it?  But it happened and the city attorney even opined publicly that it was wrong … but failed to take any action.
• And last but not least they took an ancillary aspect of the system … the ability to accept credit cards as a convenience, and decided to extract funds out of the driver’s pockets by charging grossly unfair fees for credit card use and further discriminating against the poor and the differentially abled who are the people most likely to have no transportation choice except taxis and the least likely to have credit cards.

Wow, Phil Park, is there anything else you could have done to make this system any worse?  I don’t know, but Ron does.  He’s the president of the Philadelphia Taxi Worker’s Alliance a group who has now become pretty polarized against the city’s high-handed methods.  Read their latest newsletter here.  You can also see the kind of publicity and “friends” that the City of Brotherly Love is building for itself here.

Now I am sure I have lots of old school conservative readers here.  In fact I am pretty old school and conservative myself.  So why should you care about Ron and his TWA and the mess that the Philadelphia Parking Authority has made?

To my mind the reason we should all care is easy.  Disputes between people are a fact of life.  But they hardly ever benefit either side.  Life in general and business in particular is better when things are more unified than polarized.  This mess I have been chronicling here has put Philadelphia back into my mind as the former city of Mayor Rizzo … an dif you don’t know who he was, just Google Boss tweed and add some physical force.  What a setback.

CABBIE ISMAIL Ibrahim has no problem with the idea of using the global-positioning devices and credit-card swipers that will be required technology in all city taxis by the end of the year.

The reality, however, is costing him money.

He’d been using the GPS for about a week when I talked with him. And let’s just say he has some complaints.

“The meter went blank on my way to Conshohocken,” says Ibrahim, who owns his cab, rents the required medallion and takes ride requests over a radio system run by All City Taxi.

“I tried to round off the fare. But the people thought I was trying to rip them off.”

When the GPS goes off, he said, the meter goes off. This also happened to Ibrahim a few days ago, when he logged onto the system at the beginning of a shift and got a message saying the system was temporarily unavailable.

So he tried offering flat rates to the customers who flagged him down, but they accused him of trying to rig the ride.

Frustrated, he called it a day - and lost a day’s fares.

“Riders don’t trust you,” he says. “If the system is down, they think you did it.”

Ibrahim seems like a straight-up guy, but I confess: I’d figure he was lying, too.

Riding cabs in this city has been a crapshoot for so long, a fed-up public won’t give a decent cabbie the benefit of the doubt, even when he deserves it…. Read Full Article Here:

Recently I asked my friend Ron Blount from Philadelphia how the forced installation of GPS tracking on Philly cabs was progressing. Ron’s report wasn’t good. Instead of being a tool to help the drivers earn and a boon to the customer it seems that Philly’s GPS implementation is still fraught with many problems, most of which are the fault of inept management. Some, however, now that the system has had field evaluation, reflect a a basic incompetence with the proper design of a GPS tracking system … especially if one wants to use GPS to gain a rapid ROI … and if you don’t want an ROI, why on Earth would you use GPS? Previous posts are here, and here and here:

GPS Tracking Management Issues:

• First and foremost, when thinking of a GPS system (or anything else that directly affects your worker’s pocketbooks) you must involve the workers in the decision-making process from the beginning. In Philadelphia’s case, most of the taxi drivers are independent businessmen … it’s un-American to impose a city agency’s will in this manner, as well as downright dumb business.
• Secondly, the folks who specify and procure the system must be above reproach. To allow a city employee to select the contractor and then jump ship to work for that contractor on the system he selected … sad.
• Third, just because you are a city agency had you have power doesn’t mean that using that power to impose your will is the best way to get things done. Just as a vendors “sells” a system to a client, GPS tracking can easily be sold to drivers if one focuses on the true benefits.

GPS Technical Issues:

• Number one issue is, there must be a back-up plan. Any system devised by man can fail, what differentiates good managers from the ranks of the also-rans is how the system “rides through” outages. If a system computes fares … which are the living of the drivers, the business income of the cab owners and the discretionary expenditures of the passengers, to have no plan to charge agreed upon rates during a GPS outage is inexcusable.
• Number two: GPS tracking is many things but one of the things it is not is an accurate odometer. I’ve written about that issue before in some detail here. Fair trading practices are legislated in every state and if I were a Philadelphia I would take this issue and run with it to Harrisburg. The Parking Authority may have a strangle hold on Philadelphia the may mayor Rizzo used to, but he’s long dead and so is any excuse for cheating the public … or the drivers.
• My last point ties in with the second. GPS also does not do well in the heart of a city … read about the “Urban Canyon Effect“. A properly designed system will have a`secondary, short-term means of navigation, such as a digital odometer and a heading sensor that can navigate (and measure) the cab’s progress during periods of bad GPS reception, system outages and act as a check on overall mileage to make sure the customer or the driver is not being cheated.

Frankly, I’m appalled at the way Philadelphia has mismanaged this system and how poorly the city government is serving its citizens (both taxi drivers and taxi riders typically fall in that group). If you ride taxis in Philly, if you ever plan to, or if you just hate to see bad government in action, here’s the folks to have a word with:

Philadelphia Parking Authority: 3101 Market Street, Philadelphia, PA 19104, Linda J. Miller 215-683-9675

Philadelphia Mayor’s Action Center: City Hall, Philadelphia, PA 19107, (215) 686-3000, Renee.R.Grundy@phila.gov

London tests satellite tracking

TfL could use satellite technology for more flexible road-use charge

Dave Friedlos, Computing 05 Oct 2006

Transport for London (TfL) has completed a London-wide test of satellite tracking technology with a view to establishing more flexible congestion charge pricing.

Computing has learned that TfL tested a number of devices, including custom-built in-vehicle units and PDAs, to track cars accurately through London streets.

The trials were staged to gather route data and overcome common problems such as loss of signal when a vehicle enters a tunnel, or passes through a dense block of tall buildings… Full Article Here:

Lately I seem to be running heavily to British subject matter, but I can’t help it, I only report the news as it happens. I wrote about Transport for London earlier. TfL will be installing GPS tracking on buses, reporting back both to dispatch centers and public information kiosks to improve transport efficiency and increase ridership (as in profit and more profit).

As you ca see from the quoted article there also a lot going on regarding Pay As You Drive (PAYD) toll, taxation and cutting down city traffic by offering incentives for off-peak traffic use. It all sounds great to me, except for one thing.

The dreaded urban canyon effect. When a GPS receiver can view a large part of the sky … on the order of half the sky or more, it will work great. There are virtually always 12 satellites in view from anywhere on earth and a receiver needs on four satellites to get a decent “fix”. However, when you are down between tall buildings in a big city … the so-called “urban canyon”, GPS can come up with wildly inaccurate readings or just shut down altogether until more ’sky’ becomes visible.

This is well known, long known and, in my view, is a black eye on the face of many GPS manufacturers. They just ignore the problem instead of bringing out receivers that could cure the problem.

The best solution is a dual-mode GPS chip that takes positron from the sky when available and runs in a self-contained inertial mode when not enough satellites are in view. Inertial navigation is a much older science than GPS. It involves sensing the movement and direction of a vehicle and then calculating the vehicle’s position from where it was last know, Many years ago this was an expensive, mechanically complex undertaking. Today there are inertial navigator self-contained chips that are roughly the size of pure GPS internal chips. There is an added cost but most of that cost would go away rapidly if manufacturers just realized they were in the navigation business and not the GPS business. GPS receivers today are a fifth the cost that they were 2 years ago and the price continues in free fall. Add on inertial capability would fall just as rapidly if anyone decided to live up to their responsibilities.

….  It may be the hot topic of the moment but for Michael Ray, the outgoing president of Bermuda Taxi Association (BTA), the issue of GPS is a dead one.

He once led the Island’s cabbies in revolt against Tourism and Transport Minister Ewart Brown’s proposals for the satellite navigation system. But now his message to taxi drivers is: “It’s a done deal. Get past it.”…  read full article from the Bermuda Royal Gazette here:

Seems there was this young ag school grad student who had the job of selling an expensive technical book on farming to the local farmers in some little backwater place or another.  The eager young man sort of trapped a crusty old farmer in the corner of two fences one day so that the old boy had to listen to a long spiel explaining to him how much the book would benefit him and why he ought to buy it.  Finally the eager young salesman  paused for breath and popped the magic question … “Sir, now that I’ve explained all the benefits, would you care to buy the book?

The wizened old farmer responded with a terse “Nope.”

Undeterred the eager ag ‘ techno geek” pressed on, asking, “Sir I’ve explained and you’ve agreed that the information in this book will probably increase your efficiency and even improve your profits.  Whatever is your reason for not wanting to take advantage of our offer”?

The old boy looked down, spat between his boots, raised his head and said, “Sonny, I already don’t farm half as good as I know how.”

The story I linked to here is fairly long but it’s well-written and I urge you to read it if you’re interested in GPS or if you now manage, or think you’ll ever need to manage people.  It’s a pretty good lesson in how well-meaning government folks, industry managers and rank and file employees and entrepreneurs can all work at a project with a good heart, yet make it all come out terribly wrong.  It would make a great case study for Harvard or the Wharton School of Business or for one of my old bosses who told me about his MBA at least 15 times a day … on a good day.

I’ve written a number of time before here about the forced GPS taxi issues in Bermuda and in Philadelphia.  See here, here, here and here for a few samples.  I’m really at a loss on these two quagmires that people have dug themselves into.

Although I am neither a driver nor a taxi business owner I have been a government official and then a business owner for many years.  I understand the basics of how you can make money with a cab, and certainly know something about how bad work has to be before a taxi owner/operator is going to toss it away.

The article from Bermuda explains quite a bit about some of the personalities, but certainly doesn’t account for the total waste of having a system on board that has been proven to make more money yet arbitrarily refusing to use it.

I can tell you this from my long experience in these projects as well.  It is not the technical implementation that will pose your biggest challenge.  Nor is it the financing or the legal issues.  It’s how you present the project to the folks who will have to live with it, the persons’ whose livelihood you are messing with.

If you’re thinking about a GPS project and you don’t want to be front page news and “blog-fodder’., better consider the people first.  Otherwise they are going to keep on farming only half as good as they know how.