New York|The Push to Make Cab Rides Smarter
App City
The Push to Make Cab Rides Smarter
By Joshua Brustein
When it comes to technology, 2007 was the last big year for taxis. That year, New York City began requiring that cabs be fitted with devices so that customers could pay with credit cards and with GPS devices so that they could track their progress on touch screens in the back. (Cabbies went on strike twice before the gadgets were finally installed.) Also that year, Apple introduced the iPhone, although the cab connection was not immediately apparent.
It became clear, though, as developers created a number of taxi-related products. Report a Taxi allows riders to complain about bad drivers directly to the Taxi and Limousine Commission (or praise good ones) with an iPhone app. The ratio is about four complaints for every compliment, the company says. (Riders can also complain to Facebook or Twitter.) Another app, Cab Sense, used the data being collected by in-cab computers to put together a map showing which corners are best for hailing a ride, although it has not updated its data since 2010.
The most ambitious projects are smartphone apps that book and pay for cars directly. Uber, which began operating in New York last year, has become a darling of the technology industry for an app that allows a rider to call for a car and charge it directly to an online account. It has spurred a number of competitors. Taxi Magic , which operates a similar service in 35 cities, introduced a new app last week called Sedan Magic, bringing it to New York for the first time.
Credit...Christoph Hitz
Uber's drawback is the heavy premium it charges, and SedanMagic has the same problem. I paid $56 to get to Astoria, Queens, from Gramercy Park in Manhattan on Tuesday, almost three times what I would have paid in a yellow cab. And the spell wore off completely when the driver asked for my credit card, took out an old-fashioned card reader and wrote me a receipt. The company says that this was an anomaly, and that the ride should have been charged automatically to my SedanMagic account.
Hailo, a cab-hailing app currently operating in London that is planning New York service this year, says its rates will be more akin to those of yellow cabs'. It plans to begin with a limited service that allows disabled riders to call for accessible vehicles.
The contract with the companies that provide the taxi touch screens expires early next year, and the taxi commission is using it as an opportunity to give smartphones more of a role in cabs. It is working on a pilot program with Square, a company that allows people to accept credit-card payments with a phone, for fees lower than what drivers currently pay. (The fees were what made drivers strike in 2007.) And it recently solicited proposals from developers for a payment app. In exchange for developing a payment system, the commission is offering access to the data it collects about the 500,000 cab rides that take place each day, as a way to spur the creation of new services.
For taxi tech, 2012 looks like another big year.
Have a favorite New York City app? Send tips via e-mail to appcity@nytimes.com or via Twitter to @joshuabrustein.