Taxis By Algorithm: Streamlining City Transport With Graph Theory

New submitter Mark Buchanan (3595113) writes with a story about research from scientists at MIT, Cornell and elsewhere showing "that big city taxi systems could be made 40% more efficient with device-enabled taxi sharing. We could cut miles driven, costs, and pollution with the right application of just data and algorithms, and do it while introducing no more than a 5 minute delay to any person's trip. " Letting such algorithms compete seems an excellent reason to encourage, rather than reject by law, ride-coordination services like Uber and Lyft.

Comments

Taxi licensing laws aren't about good service.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

Letting such agorithms compete seems an excellent reason to encourage, rather than reject by law, ride-coordination services like Uber and Lyft.

Taxi licensing laws aren't about giving the CUSTOMERS good service. They're about limiting competition so the licensed cab owners have a regulated oligopoly that limits competition and keeps the prices higher than market-clearing.

It's much like the laws limiting car sales to dealers that are giving Tesla such a problem.

This is crony capitalism at its most blatant.