Technical Taxis — Making Money With GPS
… We developed a new dispatching control system as an application of the radio dispatching systems — particularly GPS and automatic vehicle monitoring (AVM) systems — that are widely used in the Japanese market and developed a methodology for operating taxis as an element of the public transport system. The goal of our study is to maximize the use of taxis as urban transportation, even though they tend to be viewed as for-profit businesses rather than public transportation because of their user cost…
Full article with references and illustrations here:
After writing twice about the cool visualization tool www.cabspotting.org I spent enough time on the site to notice two important things that would make me dig much deeper into business issues if I either ran a cab company or was trying to earn my living as a cab driver.
First, a lot of cab business is trips to and from the two major airports serving San Francisco. OK, this is somewhat of a no-brainer, but observing the behavior of real-world taxis indicates they don’t do much planning, or don’t have much information for planning, to decide what to do after getting a fare to the airport, or where to go next after picking up an airport fare and dropping the passenger off.
Secondly, another no brainer. Empty cabs congregate around certain spots in the city while waiting for fares. In some respects this is, of course necessary … cabs have got to be where people are, if they expect to attract fares. But even an hour or so’s observation will clearly show that empty cabs continually drive to certain areas (a business loss) and then often drive empty (another business loss) to pick up fares … assumedly passengers who have called the dispatcher, who then directs the closest cab … or the driver who has been without a fare longest and is thus next ‘up’.
The article I referenced above is of Japanese origin and thus centers around a similar problem focused on commuter rail stations. But I think there’s a lot of interesting data there … along with a model that cities thinking of GPS’ing taxis ought to look at closely. I may be that running a service with each taxi ‘on its own’ and each cab company ‘on their own’ might not be optimal for the raveling public … and might not be optimal (read, most profitable) for the taxi companies and drivers themselves. Good food for thought.