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NYC Wants Ideas For "Taxi Technology 2.0"
An anonymous reader writes "New York City is soliciting ideas from the public about possible technology improvements for its 13,000+ fleet of taxis. TLC (the city agency in charge of cabs) is 'seek[ing] input and information on ways to enhance the technology systems in each taxicab for the benefit of passengers, drivers and owners alike.'"
Seriously, I started smoking to get the cab smell off of me.
http://www.interstaterentals.net/id84.html
:)
Nothing worse than a smelly cab driver on a hot summers day. Eliminate odors electronically and help repair that pesky hole in the ozone while you're at it
MG
Install translators so drivers and passengers can communicate.
Make all new taxis run on 100% electric. NYC's electric power comes 40% from nuclear (Indian Point), the rest from high-efficiency (up to 85% in CCGT) natural gas plants. The resulting switch would cut a lot of the smog remaining in our fairly green city.
Oh yeah, make the cars amphibious so they can go around the bridges/tunnels bottlenecks that clog so much NYC traffic.
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make install -not war
Then I reckon they need Ajax and rounded corners. Cleaner cabs with fewer sharp edges on them. Plus they'd have to be called "yellowcbs".
If you read the RFI, it makes clear that they're not talking about the motive power of the taxicab. They're looking to upgrade the "in-taxi experience".
For comparison, they cite the ability to pay with credit cards and the "Passenger Information Monitor (PIM) with payment screen, live map, and various content", which they put in all taxis after the last round.
They're also hoping to improve things for drivers and the fleet, like better ways to get available drivers to where there are passengers to be picked up.
I think they want an idea like this: use your phone (and its built-in GPS) to summon a cab, without the tedious standing-in-the-street phase. Cabs go to where people need rides, rather than guessing.
Add a Multi-touch Screen in the back with Google Maps or something similar, and support multiple languages. Provide status updates of where you are, what route is being taken, and how long it will take to get to your destination. The system can also provide tourist information and, yes, advertising. There should be no need to speak with the driver. This will ease the transition to driverless taxis, once that technology becomes available.
Introduce a "taxi-card" smartcard payment system.. but also accept cash and credit cards. They can do this at the supermarket, I don't see why they can't do it in the back of a taxi.
Provide an online booking system for taxis and, ya know, actually show up when you say you will.
How we know is more important than what we know.
I want to be able to pay extra to QoS tag my taxi cab so that it gets priority over the other traffic.
Never happen. The moment the taxi authority even starts to think about driverless cabs, you will get EVERY taxi driver in NYC walking off the job (causing chaos) or worse, using their cabs to block up the streets or blockading the authorities office or both.
If there's one thing I learned from all my years of playing Crazy Taxi on the Dreamcast, it's that customers will tip more if you nearly get them killed.
I say, let all the taxi drivers play Crazy Taxi for a week, then get back to driving cabs with their new skills. It's bound to get results.
Technically, the cabs are already great at what they do. They quickly and reasonably cheaply (considering) get you from point A to B. But the biggest problems I've had with cabs have had less to do with tech than human factors.
For example: Advertisements. Someone thought it would be a good idea to fill cabs with loudspeakers and screens that subject the passenger to one-way advertisements. I'm annoyed by this because A: It's unpleasant to be so aggressively marketed to and B: I didn't think of it first. If there was a way to equip cabs w/ a basic data terminal that used GPS to bring up relevant data regarding where I was (or services near my destination), that would be brilliant.
Also, the credit-card issue is slowly being addressed. It's gotten much better, but everyone still runs into some cabbie who makes a big show about pulling a manual card-swipe out of the trunk. Give me a debit-style terminal in the back seat like a freakin' grocery store.
Instead of political issues like electric cabs, let's see an improvement on the end-user experience. The rest will happen on their own as business owners start seeing a financial advantage.
Automate them with artificial intelligence and give them defocused temporal perception so that they're always ready to pick you up even before you know you wanted one.
Make the interior stainless steel and have it go through an internal wash and rinse cycle at the conclusion of every trip as there will always be people excreting various unwanted solids, fluids, and gases inside.
Share and Enjoy.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
If the TARDIS couldn't translate the language of the Beast on the Impossible Planet, what makes you think any human-designed translator could manage the feat?
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Or how about a GPS system mounted in the back, where you could input the address you wanted to go to?
It would have the added benefit of showing you the trip you were taking and your expected arrival time; it'd also give visitors a way to make sure that the cab driver isn't taking a longer way for a higher fare.
How about a method for electronically hailing a cab?
Part of the inefficiency taxis is that they drive around looking for fares, while interested riders may be waiting nearby but out of visual range.
Some method of being able to hail a cab from a cel phone with built in GPS would improve the ability of cabs and customers to find each other. The technology should be fairly easy to set up, simply requiring smartphones on both the passenger and driver end and at least a couple of servers to manage the information. Costs could be paid for with advertisements or very small fees from participants.
The biggest barrier to such a system is critical mass, which would be easy to obtain if the city simply picked an official provider of such a system.
They all seem to disappear when it rains, which I assume is because they can't get wet. So, they need to be waterproofed, or at least be given big umbrellas.
Umbrellas might work, actually. The umbrella vendors pop up out of nowhere when it rains, like hibernating frogs in the desert. Maybe they could be put to good use covering up the taxis.
Ok, if nobody else is going to...
"You're in a Johnny Cab - Would you please restate the destination?"
DISCLAIMER: This post was not checked for speling and grammar- if you complain- you're a whiner
Stop taking cash.
Pay them more and remove tipping
In Cab Wi-Fi
Clean cabs that don't stink
Online in Cab ratings of the Cab, company and driver.
Free umbrellas. Big ugly orange things that get picked up and returned to the cab.
No Radio
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
For extra revenue, hook up with a fat farm or fitness club and CHARGE people to pull the rickshaws ...
$$$$ 13,000 Cash Cabs $$$$
Cash Cab
First, make many of them electric. Two hundred mile range vehicles are possible today, and according to this, there are 800 million miles driven each year by 13,000 taxis, which is 170 miles, according to my calculator and my brain. Beware: my brain is currently on pain meds from dental work. Charge all the unused electrical capacity of the grid at night to local Taxi stations, install some flywheel charging systems or a simple battery swapping system, and it will help us develop the next generation of electric vehicle infrastructure.
Next, equip all taxis with good GPS. Put a screen in the back so the passenger knows they're not being taken the long way or the wrong way. Use this data to calculate traffic and anticipate passenger needs based on events, weather, holidays, etc. Allow cabbies to see each other on the GPS, so they know if they are crowding certain areas unwittingly. Allow people to log into a website to see real time anonymized traffic flow information.
Give out decent prize money for Smartphone apps that become public domain. Allow a person to stand at a street corner and hail a cab by pressing a button, or request a timed pickup with a non-refundable deposit charged to their credit card.
And finally, make all cabs bike friendly, with a quick and secure way to attach two bikes to each one. This will allow those in a hurry to bike to work, catch a cab to a movie, and then bike home.
When I visited New York and Los Angeles I noticed they have some sort of reverse TARDIS technology going on with their cabs - huge on the outside, with the turning radius of an oil tanker, but tiny on the inside, with my knees scraping against the seat (and I am a short guy). Why not make the car smaller on the outside and bigger on the inside, like London cabs? You can even buy some of the older models (e.g. the TXII) in the USA now...
This is actually already done and present in all New York City cabs. http://www.google.com/search?q=nyc+taxi+gps
fsck -u
There *are* vehicles that get priority over other traffic. In fact, they chain groups of cars getting this priority together for maximum efficiency, and they put in lots of seats so many people can ride in each car.
Unfortunately, the way they solved the prioritization issue means that they only run on fixed routes throughout the city. However, there's a lot of these routes, and so most locations have one within ready walking distance. Scheduled pickup and dropoff times are usually pretty frequent. You should check it out.
Tweet, tweet.
I heard a FOAF story about a taxi driver who installed a GPS in his taxi. He'd always say to new fares: "You can have the GPS route, or you can have the route I think is best. Which do you want?"
Many, perhaps most, people would pick the GPS ... and promptly get stuck in traffic, because it doesn't know when to avoid main roads, all the shortcuts available, etc. It paid itself off in a few weeks..
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
All official NYC cabs have a TV screen in the back that have a map of your route. I got back from there on Tuesday.
ilovegeorgebush
Optional?
Many, perhaps most, people would pick the GPS ... and promptly get stuck in traffic, because it doesn't know when to avoid main roads, all the shortcuts available, etc. It paid itself off in a few weeks..
TomTom and Vodafone have a service that monitors traffic. The GPS device takes another route based on that information. I don't know how it would work out if everybody would use it.
Ditch the driver
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.