New Yorkers To Be Allowed To Hail Taxis Via Smartphone in February
This requires government permission?
Catching a cab in midtown Manhattan at 4:30 on a weekday afternoon is the closest most New Yorkers will ever get to hunting. You have to know the patterns of your prey: its favorite haunts, its preferred routes, its tendency to vanish when your need is most acute (during rainstorms, for example). You have to outwit all the cab-poachers lurking in the shadows.
Yesterday, however, New York City emerged from the hunter-gatherer cab era. The city's Taxi and Limousine Commission voted 7-0 (with two abstentions) to allow people to find, hail, and pay for taxis using smartphones. So-called "e-hailing" is already hugely popular in San Francisco, London, Chicago, Dublin, and other cities, where services such as Uber, Hailo, GetTaxi, and Flywheel are competing to sign up both cab users and drivers. Users love the convenience of being able to scan for nearby cabs and then summon one with a touchscreen tap. Cabdrivers are able to spend less time driving around looking for fares and more time carrying paying customers.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
i read this blog,nice blog and i also thinks that smartphone facility for the taxi cabs is very helpful for traveling,,Ur Cab Service offers limo taxi service in San Francisco and all over in bay area. We provide taxi cabs service and Limos for pickup and drop-offs at very reasonable and discounted mark ups.