Taxicarbussharing

Posted by tomo at 12:58 AM in transportation . | 8 Comments

Recently, I learned about Taxibus, a new hi-tech dynamically-routed microbussing solution in the UK, "Revolutionary Urban Transportation for 21st Century Cities". It works like this: a rider contacts the Intelligent Grouping Transportation system with their cellphone, request a pickup (whoa, it's the Matrix), and IGT finds a taxibus whose current route coincides closest with your requested route and routes it to you, "generally within three minutes". Faster and more convenient than a conventional bus and cheaper and more efficient than the single-occupancy door2door taxi. "Analysis indicates that ... as much as a 75% decrease in the number of cars on the roads is feasible".

Like conventional bus systems (at least Ann Arbor's), the largest portion of the cost is the cost of labor, paying drivers. This is why I think we need to put serious efforts into finding automatic (driverless) driving solutions. Though a difficult feat to achieve, I believe it would a silver bullet for bus systems.

In Singapore, Honda is behind an advanced carsharing model called Honda Diracc (Direct Access) whereby members are issued smartcard which are used at a number of special ports to easily check out a car (a Civic Hybrid, even) easily and without pre-booking. This multi-port system has also been in use at UC Riverside since 1999.

Big Motor in Detroit may not wake up to such innovations until it's too late, but carsharing needn't be backed by giant corporations. Last I heard, the Ann Arbor Community Car Co-op (a2c3) was about to have their first car, but were having some insurance difficulties related to the "different" nature of its use, and the conventional pricing would be expensive. I don't think we have the density for a taxibus and without the bigger carsharing companies like exist on the west coast, a co-op may be the only way for it to happen. Until then, there is the AATA bus system as well as the RideShare carpooling community that they back by reimbursing taxi fares when a car fails to show as well as their Night Ride subsidized taxi-sharing.

I currently have a car (of whose existence the insurance company just kindly reminded me) that has sat in the parking structure since my last trip to Columbus. It gets used about once every 1-2 weeks. In another situation, I might be better off getting rid of it altogether, but for two main destinations: Columbus and Detroit. There's no Amtrak from A2 to CMH (besides the fact I'd be fucked in Columbus without a car) and the proposed Lightrail from Ann Arbor to Detroit has been shelved due to state funding going away. Lucky for me, I can afford the luxury of paying hundreds of dollars a month to use my car a few days.