Smartphone taxi hails are a real thing, but not in app-proof New York
A Hailo co-founder demonstrates the app. via youtube.com/hailocab
1:51 pm Jul. 31, 20121
Taxi Magic is a smartphone app that helps people find available taxis and which, last month, facilitated 1.2 million rides across the country. None of those rides took place in New York City.
Hailing taxis by smartphone may be the wave of the future, but in New York City, the trend has foundered on the idiosyncratic regulations governing the city's taxi industry. Basically, the entrepreneurs who have entered the market elsewhere can't seem to figure them out here.
Some, including at least one app developer backed by millions in venture funding, assert the apps are legal. Others, including taxi fleet operators and a former taxi commissioner, think they aren't. No one is totally sure.
The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, which ought to be able to break the tie, can't, quite.
"Maybe there’s a need for clarification and updating the rules, because as technology changes, you might have to revisit some of those rules," said Ashwini Chhabra, the commission's deputy commissioner for policy and planning, echoing the findings of a recently released report on the topic by Matthew Daus, the city’s former taxi commissioner.
At issue is the notion of a street hail, and what precisely those words mean. In New York City, yellow cabs are allowed to respond to street hails, and livery cars respond to service requests by phone.
So what, then, is a request for service by app on a iPhone, which is essentially a souped-up phone? Is it a digital-age street hail that a taxi can answer? Or is it really just a fancy version of a call?
Jay Bregman, the founder of Hailo, a London taxi-app import preparing to launch by the end of this year in 2012, argues it's “the natural logical extension of a doorman with a whistle.”
Bregman believes Hailo can operate in yellow cabs without any regulatory overhauls whatsoever.
Mike Levine, who runs cabs in Chicago and in New York City, could not disagree more. As C.E.O. of Chicago's Taxi Affiliation Services, Levine uses Taxi Magic. As president of Arthur Cab Leasing In New York, he does not.
“Right now, it would be illegal,” Levine explained.
Hailing by smartphone would seem to be a logical next step in taxi technology.
At the end of World War II, the taxi industry helped pioneer the use of two-way radios to control the movement of vehicles, according to Alfred LaGasse, C.E.O. of the Taxicab, Limousine and Paratransit Association.
The 1970s saw some early experimentation with computer-aided dispatch systems, followed, in the '80s and '90s, by full-on computerized dispatch systems.
Then came cell phones, GPS and now smartphones, with all of their attendant apps.
Today's GPS-enabled applications, like Taxi Magic, Uber, getTaxi and soon Hailo, allow a rider to request a cab or luxury sedan, call the driver to check in, or chart the cab’s progress by iphone map. The customer can even pay by phone.
“Will it revolutionize the industry?" asked LaGasse. "I’m not sure it revolutionized anything, but it is a significant enhancement."
It may be a while before New York gets to find out.
Last year, the Taxi and Limousine Commission notified livery car drivers, which handle the pre-arranged segment of the market, that they can use apps like Uber and the new Sedan Magic, assuming they do so through their livery base, and not independently (livery bases are regulated and have all sorts of liability insurance).
But in March, New York’s Taxi and Limousine Commission issued a request for proposals for an app that would allow riders to pay fares using their phones. The TLC said it was also interested in other functions, including an app that would allow riders to find available cabs.
Yet, as Chhabra readily acknowledges, “The word ‘hail’ is not defined in our regulations.”
Chhabra suggested at one point that the apparent lack of urgency around bringing taxi apps to New York may have something to do with actual levels of demand in most of Manhattan.
“I can step outside of my office now and a yellow taxi will come by within the minute,” Chhabra said. “By the time I fish the phone out of my pocket, fire up the app and try to request a taxi ... an empty cab will probably approach.
"But 'I don’t know' is the short answer.”
A reader, Ann Rebecca, wrote in with a response via email:
"With respect to Dana Rubenstein's essay on a smartphone app whose function it is to help people hail taxis (Smartphone taxi hails are a real thing, but not in app-proof New York, Capital, August 1, 2012), the emphasis is on its efficacy in cities other than New York, and the reasons, both regulatory and those which revolve around negotiations, that the app is not available in New York City. Not one mention of the app's affect on democracy and fairness, is made.
Everyone knows that it is rude to park yourself upstream of someone who is hailing a cab, in order to be in front of that person with respect to the stream of taxis coming along the road. It's downright undemocratic, some would say - to break the tradition of keeping your place in line, in the interest of fair play. I'd say it's equally undemocratic for couples to occupy a place on two different lines (one on each line) at Zabars, for example, in order to increase their advantage in getting to a cash register first. The same sensibility should apply to electronic devices.
Nowadays, not only are computers taking up more and more time as people (obviously, including me) become engaged in their use, using up greater amounts of our professional and personal time. There lurks behind all of that, the entrance of hard-wired technology into the realm of how we live our lives in real time, and whether, in fact, we should allow that to happen to ourselves, and if it is fair in terms of our societal/community relations.
There are people, especially in these hard times, who are unable to afford a smart phone. Perhaps they may be forced to use a taxi to get to a job interview and do so in desperation, for fear of arriving late, but an ongoing monthly fee for a smartphone is not within their means. Once again, the taxi app proffers an advantage on those who can afford it most, providing its owner a means to call a cab directly to him or her. Who needs the taxi more? The pregnant woman who's water just broke and needs to get to a hospital? The lawyer running to a court appearance to defend a death row inmate? The student running late to class? These examples, you will note, are ones that no reasonable person would criticize. Perhaps one or more of these fictional persons is unable to afford a smartphone and the taxi app.
The point is, however, why should money, once again decide a person's fate in a nation referred to by many as the most powerful democracy on earth. The question is anything but rhetorical. For example, perhaps that out of work person is running to a job interview as a epidemiologist. Perhaps the student is in a program that will enable him to find the means to create sustainable yield farming, even in times of drought. Perhaps the newborn, if he/she arrives in the world unscathed, will bring peace and harmony to a troubled world. If not for affordability, one or more of these outcomes will be denied.
While the underlying assumption in Ms. Rubenstein's well wrought piece is that the app, with its promise of helping those who have it, is a desirable commodity, on its own terms. Why do those questions regarding its effects on further stratification of our culture on monetary grounds, remain unbroached, not by Ms. Rubenstein alone, but by those with whom she communicated about it? Have we become so Fascistic that if a contraption makes money for its creators, then we consider it a good thing?
The answer lies in its attainability for the most people whom it would serve. And the key word is, of course, "serve." Perhaps there could be stations on certain blocks in the city where a customer could sign in, use the app installed in, say, a telephone booth, and get a ticket denoting his/her place in line for the slew of taxis jockeying for a position on that block. Since New York City is already experimenting with installing Wi Fi in phone stations, why not a taxi app? I'm not a city planner, but it seems to me that we should all be thinking of serving society when we create technological apparatuses, rather than simply what they will give us in monetary reward, in return. Popping out a numbered ticket would solve the fairness problem and, perhaps, that promising epidemiologist might just hand his lower numbered ticket to the pregnant lady in labor and wait for the next taxi."