Taxi Industry Research Articles

Beyond the precariat: race, gender, and labor in the taxi and Uber economy

ABSTRACTUber has been hailed as a revolutionary peer-sharing platform, disrupting the archaic taxi industry, and creating employment and transportation opportunities for an increasingly imperiled middle class. We counter this representation by arguing that Uber’s main innovation is not its app, but the creation of part-time vs. full-time drivers. This durational divide reproduces familiar hierarchies of race, gender, and citizenship, with male immigrant full-time drivers positioned against more privileged part-time drivers both within the ranks of Uber and across the Uber-cabbie divide. We tie the differential regulation histories of Uber and taxi cabs to ideas of racial freedom; consider how disability and premature death is unevenly distributed; and conclude by considering how workers today can be understood through the experience of public demonstration or assembly. Here, we go beyond the universalizing term of precariat, without returning to limited understandings of class, to consider collective vulnerability and agency.

A data-driven quantitative assessment model for taxi industry: the scope of business ecosystem\u2019s health

IntroductionThe taxi industry has boomed over the years, both in street-hail and dispatch market. However, few studies focus on comprehensive perspectives, which make decisions such as implementing regulative or incentive policies difficult. As an economic community working in the value-oriented process, the taxi industry requires a holistic performance evaluation to determine how to adapt strategies to survive and grow.MethodsThis paper proposed the concept “Taxi Industry Health degree” based on the theory of Business Ecosystem and the evaluation of its health. A four-layer criteria set is developed from aspects of robustness, productivity and sustainability, and weights are determined through Analytic Hierarchy Process.ResultsA synthetic evaluating model combining Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation and Artificial Neural Network is used to maintain the goal of multi-criteria decision-making. With the GPS and Taximeter dataset of taxicabs in the whole taxi industry in Wuxi, the model is applied to empirical studies.ConclusionsThis paper provides sensibility analysis on not only the company’s order volatility, revenue growth and utilization of resources, but also influence on citizen’s welfare, energy consumption and environmental pollution, which enables practical regulations and policies within taxi industry.

Analyzing Gender Disparities in the Labour Market in an Urbanizing City- Maseru, Lesotho

The study aimed at investigating the gender differences in the labour market of the urban formal sector in Maseru. The research was undertaken to illustrate the existing gender gap between men and women both in occupation and remuneration thus exposing inequality manifestations particularly in an urbanizing city, Maseru. The assessment was carried out in Maseru urban formal sector in three government entities: the National Manpower Development Secretariat, Office of the Auditor General and Ministry of Labour. The three government entities were purposively selected because of easy access of documented data and availability of resource persons to assist during data collection exercise. While at the same time a few interviews were conducted with men working in the taxi industry and the informal sector. Observations as well formed part of approach to the study to ascertain the validity of information obtained from the documented data and interviews. The main finding of the paper is that women in Lesotho the paper concludes that the formal labour market in Maseru is characterized by gender gaps where women occupy well salaried positions as opposed to their male counterparts with these low income jobs thus making men live in vicious cycle of poverty.

How can the taxi industry survive the tide of ridesourcing? Evidence from Shenzhen, China

This paper aims to examine the impact of ridesourcing on the taxi industry and explore where, when and how taxis can compete more effectively. To this end a large taxi GPS trajectory data set collected in Shenzhen, China is mined and more than 2,700 taxis (or about 18% of all registered in the city) are tracked in a period of three years, from January 2013 to November 2015, when both e-hailing and ridesourcing were rapidly spreading in the city. The long sequence of GPS data points is first broken into separate “trips”, each corresponding to a unique passenger state, an origin/destination zone, and a starting/ending time. By examining the trip statistics, we found that: (1) the taxi industry in Shenzhen has experienced a significant loss in its ridership that can be indisputably credited to the competition from ridesourcing. Yet, the evidence is also strong that the shock was relatively short and that the loss of the taxi industry had begun to stabilize since the second half of 2015; (2) taxis are found to compete more effectively with ridesourcing in peak period (6–10 AM, 5–8 PM) and in areas with high population density. (3) e-hailing helps lift the capacity utilization rate of taxis. Yet, the gains are generally modest except for the off-peak period, and excessive competition can lead to severely under-utilized capacities; and (4) ridesourcing worsens congestion for taxis in the city, but the impact was relatively mild. We conclude that a dedicated service fleet with exclusive street-hailing access will continue to co-exist with ridesourcing and that regulations are needed to ensure this market operate properly.

Mining factors affecting taxi drivers’ incomes using GPS trajectories

Taxis provide essential transport services in urban areas. In the taxi industry, the income level remains a cause of concern for taxi drivers as well as regulators. Mining underlying factors affecting the income level will not only benefit the newcomers and low-income drivers but also assist in developing effective optimization algorithms for taxi operations. This paper intends to disclose the factors affecting incomes along with their quantitative influence by mining over 167 million GPS records from nearly 8000 taxis in Shanghai. We first identify a marked difference in drivers’ incomes and categorize drivers into three income levels accordingly. We next investigate the overall search-delivery process, thereby defining several factors that may affect the income level. We then develop a generalized multi-level ordered logit (GMOL) model to find the significant factors that influence incomes. Finally, we compute the elasticity for those significant factors and present their contributions, as well as challenge some preconceived ideas regarding how to earn high incomes.

Taxi market equilibrium with third-party hailing service

With the development and deployment of new technologies, the oligopolistic taxi industry is transforming into a shared market with coexistence of both traditional taxi service (TTS) and app-based third-party taxi service (ATTS). The ATTS is different from TTS in both entry policy and fare setting, and brings competition into the market. To account for the revolution of the taxi industry, in this study, we analyze the characteristics of the TTS and ATTS, model the taxi market as a multiple-leader-follower game at the network level, and investigate the equilibrium of taxi market with competition (TMC Equilibrium). In particular, passengers are modeled as the leaders who seek to minimize their travel cost associated with taxi rides. Followers involve TTS and ATTS drivers, who compete for passengers to maximize their revenue. The network model captures selfish behavior of passengers and drivers in the taxi market, and we prove the existence of TMC Equilibrium for the proposed model using variational inequality formulations. An iterative algorithm is further developed to find the TMC Equilibrium, which corresponds to the strongly stationary point of the multi-leader-follower game. Based on numerical results, it is observed that fleet size and pricing policy are closely associated with the level of competition in the market and may have significant impact on total passengers cost, average waiting time, and fleet utilization.

The Usage Analysis and Policy Choice of CNG Taxis Based on a Multi-stage Dynamic Game Model

The promotion and application of low-carbon energy has become a basic energy policy in China. In the taxi industry, the adoption of natural gas is a typical reflection of the use of low-carbon energy, however, the application of CNG taxis in practice is difficult because of the ignorance of consumer behaviour choices and the lack of consideration of the reforming and maintenance costs of CNG taxis in practical use during the implementation of this policy. In this paper, the construction of a multi-stage dynamic game model is proposed: this is used to analyse the complex dynamic relationships among consumers, the taxis, and the policy-making behaviours of government. By the means of backward induction, a conclusion is drawn such that government should determine the subsidy coefficientper unit of product as well as the carbon taxand the optimal reduction rate of carbon emissions confirmed by operators determination. Based on these, concerning the behavioural choices among consumers, taxis, and government, this paper draws five conclusions, which answer the problems concerning whether, or not, the government should levy a carbon tax and subsidise such operations as well as how much that financial levy and subsidy should be. Besides, this paper also makes a value judgment of the future format/mode of taxi operations. The study shows that, with the increasing subsidy, the competitive advantages of the CNG taxis are strengthened while the revenues of oil-fired taxis decrease constantly, which forces oil-fired taxis out of the market. At the same time, the service prices of both kinds of taxis are proportional to the money paid by consumers and the positive impacts of service prices on CNG taxis are greater than that on oil-fired taxis.The carbon tax standard set by government can play a proper role only if it gives consideration to the interests of both consumers and CNG taxis.

The role of stakeholders in relation to the business model in the taxi industry

This paper illustrates how business models and business model innovation are related to the theory of stakeholders. Thepaper explores how lack of business model innovation in the taxi industry, can be explained by the relation to the powerand interests of its stakeholders. The authors have employed an explanatory case study, using multiple sources ofevidence, primarily archival records and observations. The research reveals that the business model of the taxi industryhave not experienced major changes, even though the environment surrounding the taxi industry have seen severalchanges. An analysis of the stakeholders of the taxi industry explains that the lack of business model innovation is aconsequence of the misfit between the power of the taxi industry and government, and the customers. The papercontributes to the existing literature of business models, business model innovation and stakeholder theory, and theirrelation in between.

A competitive carbon emissions scheme with hybrid fiscal incentives: The evidence from a taxi industry

As two major approaches to reduce carbon emissions, command-and-control instruments and market-based carbon trading systems have their own weaknesses. Our paper first proposes a type of endogenous equilibrium methodology to dynamically derive the industrial carbon emissions standards. At the equilibrium, the sum of all carbon assets and liabilities is zero in the considered industry. Moreover, the standards fall over time with low-carbon technological advance. Most importantly, combining Pigou's and Coase's ideas, we construct a fiscal instrument accounting for both carbon taxes and allowances based on the dynamically improved emissions standards and carbon trading prices. This “No revenue for government” method implements a self-operated ecology for carbon trading market. Finally, considering the “Waterloo” recession of carbon prices, we introduce an adjustment factor into the model, which generates a negative-feedback mechanism with carbon prices. To support our idea, we present the application to Beijing taxi industry in detail and raise relative policy implications based on the evidence.

Humanistic management philosophy in governance in the taxi industry in South Africa

Ponte Academic JournalMay 2017, Volume 73, Issue 5 Humanistic management philosophy in governance in the taxi industry in South AfricaAuthor(s): Vimolan Mudaly ,Kudakwashe ZvitamboJ. Ponte - May 2017 - Volume 73 - Issue 5 doi: 10.21506/j.ponte.2017.5.36 Abstract:Small and medium enterprises sustainability and governance recently become a topical issue. Governance applicable to companies (corporate governance) had been questionable due to a plethora of scandals, ethics issues and corruption happening in companies. Therefore, applicability of corporate governance to small and medium enterprises like the minibus taxi industry has been questioned. These challenges caused the study to explore humanistic management philosophy in governance with specific reference to the Port Shepstone minibus taxi industry in KwaZulu -Natal, South Africa. Humanistic management philosophy was put forward as an alternative to economicism philosophy in governance. The study wanted to establish the extent to which humanistic management strategy, humanistic management leadership, humanistic management ethics and humanistic management culture affect governance of small and medium enterprises like the minibus taxi industry. These objectives were viewed using Ubuntu philosophy as a theoretical framework. The study adopted a concurrent triangulation mixed method approach advocated by post-positivists. A mixed method approach taps into the advantages of both qualitative and quantitative approaches to gather rich data which explained the phenomenon. The case study designed used enabled the study to do an in-depth analysis of the phenomenon on one industry (minibus taxis industry). The research methods used were questionnaires, observation and interviews to gather data. The data was gathered from minibus taxi operators. The integration of results from research methods generated a generalisation. The results revealed that humanistic management philosophy in governance of the minibus taxi industry was a challenge. The taxi operators, as owners of the business, were not implementing humanistic management leadership principles, humanistic management strategies, humanistic management ethics and humanistic management culture in governance. This affected their sustainability due to conflict with stakeholders. This contradicted the expectation of stakeholders who believe in African philosophy (Ubuntu). The governance of the small and medium enterprises like the minibus taxi industry was based on economicism philosophy instead of humanistic management philosophy. Therefore, the study recommended a humanistic management philosophy in governance model to guide small and medium enterprises in their business governance. Download full text:Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution Username Password

Time-of-Day Pricing in Taxi Markets

For a regular weekday in New York City, the number of taxi trips at 8 P.M. may be 10 times greater than that at 5 A.M., while passengers are charged under the same pricing scheme. Motivated by temporally non-stationary demand and supply in the taxi market, the time-of-day (TOD) pricing scheme for taxi industry is framed to vary trip cost dynamically over time, so that total market revenue is maximized. Temporal market dynamics is modeled as a semi-Markov process, which captures leftover of drivers, spillover of passengers, and restoration of drivers in service along the time horizon. The TOD pricing scheme is therefore formulated as discrete time stochastic dynamic programming with the goal to find the optimal sequence of price multipliers. The approximate dynamic programming (ADP) approach is introduced to solve the curse of dimensionality. Numerical experiments are conducted using New York City taxi trip data to illustrate the effectiveness of TOD price in real-world taxi market. The results suggest that TOD price may increase daily market revenue by over 10% using the ADP approach. Our experiments also show that TOD price may be even more effective if sudden surges in demand take place in the market.

Research on the Innovation of Online Booking Taxi Service in China Based on the Perspective of Supply-Side Structural Reform

The rise of online booking taxi service in China is not only the result of information economy development but also the result of the supply-side structural reform. From the perspective of the supply-side structural reform, the business model of online booking taxi service break the monopoly mechanism which derived from the franchise of traditional taxi industry. It changed the supply mechanism of traditional taxi service industry. The market access management principle of traditional taxi service industry has been changed from the single-closed franchise system into the multiple-opened permit system which encourages different business models coexist. On the other hand, the business model of online booking taxi service employs modern information technology to improve the problem of information asymmetry between the passengers and the drivers. It effectively enhances the quality and efficiency of taxi service which improves the relationship between supply and demand, and it sets up a kind of ‘win-win’ ecological economy.

Factors affecting the implementation of the taxi Recapitalisation Project: the Department of Transport

The advent of democracy in 1994 presented the South African government with twin challenges, of significance was institutional transformation while simultaneously introducing new policies in line with the democratic Constitution. In effecting the Constitution, new policies and programs were put in place that would attempt to improve the lives of all citizens. The Taxi Recapitalization Program was amongst challenges facing South African government. The taxi industry plays a crucial role in the economy and contributes 65% of public commuters taking into consideration that the majority of South Africans are poor and dependent on public transport. Thus, access to public transport is seen as a basic right of all citizens, as enshrined in the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa (108 of 1996, p. 1251). The right of access to public transport has to be complemented with availability, affordability, appropriateness and timelines of a service within a safe and comfortable environment to the satisfaction of those who use public transportation. This paper is based on literature review. Content analysis method was used. The objective of the paper was (i) to investigate factors affecting the implementation of government’s TRP by the Department of Transport, (ii) investigate the pillars informing the implementation of the TRP, (iii) establish the role of the South African National Taxi Council (SANTACO) in the implementation of the Taxi Recapitalization Project. Keywords: TRP, SANTACO, SA, DT, taxi associations and policy. JEL Classification: R41, R42

Taxi Drivers, Infrastructures, and Urban Change in Globalizing Mumbai

AbstractThis paper focusses on taxis and the taxi industry in relationship to crisis and change in contemporary Mumbai. Through an ethnographic exploration of Mumbai's taxi modernization project, changes in the material aspects of the taxi and taxi system, and a community of hereditary taxi drivers known as chillia, I examine ways that infrastructure is understood, practiced, and contested. Focusing on how chillia drivers negotiate livelihoods in the context of contemporary moves to modernize, deregulate, and privatize the taxi trade, I argue that while rationalizing imperatives of infrastructural modernization are vital to jumpstarting urban change, they contend with multiple and shifting meanings that infrastructure building takes on among various actors in the city. Mumbai's taxi modernization project illuminates how negotiations around these meanings have the capacity to shape and redirect urban change both from “above” and “below.” [Urban Infrastructure; Globalization; Labor; Transportation; South Asia; Taxis; India]

Sharing Economy and Regulatory Strategies towards Legal Change

AbstractThe rise of the sharing economy is transforming the way we produce and consume goods and services. This transformation requires a revision of current legal rules concerning sectors where the sharing economy is emerging. Taking the regulation of the taxi industry as a main example, this article analyses why those rules ought to be reviewed, the obstacles law makers have to face in order to perform such a task, and the regulatory strategies they could use for that purpose. The paper considers a variety of regulatory approaches including regulatory impact assessment, legal variation, the coexistence of different legal regimes, experimental legislation and compensation.

Inferring Passenger Denial Behavior of Taxi Drivers from Large-Scale Taxi Traces.

How to understand individual human actions is a fundamental question to modern science, which drives and incurs many social, technological, racial, religious and economic phenomena. Human dynamics tries to reveal the temporal pattern and internal mechanism of human actions in letter or electronic communications, from the perspective of continuous interactions among friends or acquaintances. For interactions between stranger to stranger, taxi industry provide fruitful phenomina and evidence to investigate the action decisions. In fact, one striking disturbing events commonly reported in taxi industry is passenger refusing or denial, whose reasons vary, including skin color, blind passenger, being a foreigner or too close destination, religion reasons and anti specific nationality, so that complaints about taxi passenger refusing have to be concerned and processed carefully by local governments. But more universal factors for this phenomena are of great significance, which might be fulfilled by big data research to obtain novel insights in this question. In this paper, we demonstrate the big data analytics application in revealing novel insights from massive taxi trace data, which, for the first time, validates the passengers denial in taxi industry and estimates the denial ratio in Beijing city. We first quantify the income differentiation facts among taxi drivers. Then we find out that choosing the drop-off places also contributes to the high income for taxi drivers, compared to the previous explanation of mobility intelligence. Moreover, we propose the pick-up, drop-off and grid diversity concepts and related diversity analysis suggest that, high income taxi drivers will deny passengers in some situations, so as to choose the passengers’ destination they prefer. Finally we design an estimation method for denial ratio and infer that high income taxi drivers will deny passengers with 8.52% likelihood in Beijing. Our work exhibits the power of big data analysis in revealing some dark side investigation.

The influence of knowledge-based factors on taxi competitiveness at island destinations: An analysis on tips

Mobility at the destination is an important element of the tourism system on islands. Tourists have mobility needs that are often met by trains, buses, taxis and other means of transport there. The competitiveness of the taxi industry can be strategic for destinations because it is an industry with a traditional high proportion of entrepreneurs and SMEs. The knowledge-based view has contributed to understand firm performance better, and knowledge-based factors can be crucial for taxi competitiveness. The impact of taxi drivers' knowledgebased- aspects on tips are analysed, since this last factor is an interesting proxy for competitiveness due to its link to tourist satisfaction and potential loyalty. The empirical approach of this work is based on a survey in Gran Canaria, Spain. Knowledge of foreign languages (with mixed results), driving knowledge and knowledge creation seem to exert a significance influence on tips and play a relevant role in taxi competitiveness.

Taxis and crowd-taxis: sharing as a private activity and public concern

The sharing economy has generated interest among economists for its customer focus and potential to enhance competition. However, it has also caused uproar in industries which have felt competitive pressure, for example among the established stakeholders in the taxi industry. While regulations currently impose considerable costs on the taxi industry, they do not cover virtual transport innovations such as Uber. The lack of a level playing field between taxis and such 'crowd-taxis' has generated media attention and conflict. Taxi owners worry about decreasing revenues and taxi drivers about poor working conditions. Other concerns are related to poor transport preparedness, accessibility issues, quality assurance and tax evasion. Despite considerable media attention, there has so far been a lack of scholarly literature addressing the consequences of the sharing economy in the transport sector. Focusing on the Norwegian taxi market, we argue that crowd-taxis will likely produce a range of unanticipated effects, necessitating regulation. For example, crowd-taxis may contribute to a loss of transport preparedness in rural areas. The findings are based on first and secondary data and 19 interviews.

Optimal Fleet Size and Fare Setting in Emerging Taxi Markets with Stochastic Demand

AbstractThe emerging taxi services, for instance, Uber and Lyft, are challenging traditional fully regulated taxi markets. Transportation agencies are spending significant efforts to understand the optimal pricing and fleet size taxis that are efficient for a given urban area. This study develops a modeling framework for studying a decentralized equilibrium based market study where the fare is strictly regulated by a taxi commission. The nature of demand‐supply equilibria with stochastic demand are discussed to determine optimal development strategies, for instance, number of issued licenses and fare setting. Two Stackelberg games are formulated to specify leader‐follower relationships between transportation authorities and and the followers — taxi drivers and passengers. An iterative approach is designed to simulate the games and solve corresponding mathematical optimization problems. The case study is based on New York City data which shows that the taxi market may be oversupplied and underpriced, which confirms findings from other studies and price hikes in 2012. Furthermore, different development strategies are proposed based on two Stackelberg games to respond to intended taxi system changes, such as price and quantity elasticity of taxi demand, levels of demand variance, average taxi operation speed, passengers' waiting time value, and taxi service coverage. The results have important implications in determining development strategies for taxi industry with emerging taxi services, stochastic demand, and the rapidly changing environment.

Uber and the Persistence of Market Power

:Entry into the taxi industry involves few risks. Entrants have lower costs than the incumbents, sunk costs are small, and modern technology makes it easy to hail a cab using the Internet. Despite large scale entry and low barriers to entry, monopoly power persists. The persistence of monopoly power illustrates that new technologies may not quickly eviscerate monopoly power.