Without a doubt the biggest downside of living in Kingston is the need to get taxis everywhere after dark. Crime is a serious problem in Kingston.
Our house’s preferred taxi service is Express Taxis.
And what a service they provide.
-Good evening Express
-Hi. Can I get a taxi to downtown Kingston?
-Seven minutes sir
They give you ETA’s to the nearest minute. They always arrive early. And they get you to your destination in the fastest time legally (or thereabouts) possible.
It’s the kind of efficient operation that you can’t help but admire. After some investigation, I've worked out how the system works:
1. the operator calls out asking who is available to pick up the ride.
2. the fastest to respond (by their ‘call name’ – normally something punchy and easily recognisable over the radio) has ownership of the ride provided they get to the point of pickup within the operator’s ETA (seven minutes in our example).
3. If they get there even one minute late, the ride becomes open to the fastest driver to reach the point of pickup.
In practice this means that a driver, not being the allocated driver, who is around x minutes away from the pickup point, where x = ETA given to customer, could, and normally does, take the risk of zooming to the pickup point on the off-chance that the allocated driver will have just missed the ETA. For this reason, the customer will often find that the taxi scheduled to arrive in five minutes will arrive on his doorstep in two. For the driver knows the cost of arriving even one minute late in the dog-eat-dog world of Express Taxis. It’s the kind of self-assured, well-organised capitalist machine that Henry Ford would have approved of.
One of the great things about the system is that the players respect the rules. If a driver attempts to pick up a ride that has been allocated to another driver before the ETA has elapsed, then the rule-breaker hands over the entire fare he has made.
So there it is, an efficient, self-regulating free market system. And they said it would never work...
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"So there it is, an efficient, self-regulating free market system. And they said it would never work..."
ReplyDeleteSurely not... thought this man was not for turning!
To me, this is in the broadest sense extremely inefficient. Multiple taxi's careering desperately to the pick up joint wastes resources (gas) and raises risk to the innocent (crashes)...
It is only workable in small social networks where personal shame in breaking the rules would be a big enough disincentive but how about when the size of the system tends to impersonality? Imagine Camden Town on a Friday night? Actually imagine that... how much fun would that be to watch!!!!
The safety of their driving is at the average level of driving in Kingston (although viewed objectively this is actually very dangerous).
ReplyDeleteIt's not the norm that multiple taxis would go for the same spot. It's just that there is an incentive if you happen to be nearby. Arguably the extra waste in such a scenario (i.e. the extra gas) is offset by the extra customer satisfaction. Express Taxis know their brand is the one that keeps customers waiting the shortest time possible!
Of course they probably wouldn't be the environmentally healthiest taxi service.