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Taxi rides going hi-tech
10/05/2007 11:00 - (SA)
New York - To taxi officials, the touch-screen monitors cropping up in cabs help passengers make the most of the 13 New York minutes spent on an average ride.
Passengers can pay by credit card - no more fumbling for cash and tip. As a cab heads through Greenwich Village, passengers can find out information on neighbourhood bars through ads on the screens. They can also view news stories, restaurant reviews and an electronic map of their cab's progress.
But a plan to put the monitors in every New York City cab has angered many drivers. They see the technology as an expensive imposition, costing them money and letting taxi owners and officials check up on them. The group leading the opposition isn't shy about reminding people that it carried out a crippling one-day taxi strike in 1998.
The Taxi & Limousine Commission is scheduled on Thursday to consider an October 1 deadline for all the roughly 13 000 cabs to start installing the systems.
"This project is nothing short of revolutionary and evolutionary for the taxi industry," Taxi & Limousine Commissioner Matthew W Daus wrote in a recent agency newsletter.
The commission called for the technology while approving a 26% fare increase, and the agency argues that both riders and drivers stand to benefit.
The credit-card option is expected to prove popular with customers in what is now a mostly all-cash $1.8bn-a-year business, and officials say it could translate to bigger tips and more fares from riders short on cash.
Global positioning system
The global positioning system in the technology will also automate required record-keeping and give drivers crucial information about traffic, a convention letting out, or a passenger's lost wallet.
If someone reports losing a wallet after getting dropped off in Times Square, for example, the taxi commission could send alerts to drivers who just drove someone to that neighbourhood to be on the lookout for a missing wallet.
The commission has approved tests of four systems and may endorse them for sale within days. Taxi owners would choose from the four systems, at a maximum three-year cost of $7 200 for equipment and various fees, although TLC officials expect the cost will be far less in many cases. Vendors say advertising can offset at least some of owners' costs.
But some drivers do not like the idea. They have raised concerns about the costs of the hardware, credit card fees and potential working time lost if the systems need repair.
Some worry that the global-positioning system will be used to track drivers' movements, although the taxi commission says it will record only the pickup and drop-off points and fare, which drivers already are required to log.
"It's trampling on our constitutional rights, and it will cut deeply into our income," said Bill Lindauer, who drove a cab for 30 years and is a member of the organising committee of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a drivers' advocacy group with more than 7 000 members.
The alliance held a rally in March to protest the new systems, and Lindauer said this month that the group was exploring both legal and political avenues for trying to block the plan.
Some drivers are embracing the new technology, which came free for those who offered their cabs as proving grounds. The devices are now being tested in about 200 of New York's emblematic yellow cabs.
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