Apps giving taxi drivers, consumers a lift

“Those are the killers,” said Arnold Julce, 55, a taxi driver. “To make money, you need to have paying passengers in the cab.”

Julce has driven a cab in Boston for 24 years. So when he heard of an app that would let customers order a taxi on a smart phone, he listened. It was free to drivers.

The app was Hailo, originally developed by a London cabdriver. Hailo began recruiting drivers in Boston in October 2012. A similar app is Uber, developed initially by a San Francisco company for smart phone users to order a limo. Uber introduced its taxi option in Boston in September 2012. Some drivers use both.

The apps show registered drivers the location of customers requesting a cab. When a driver accepts an order, the customer can view a picture of the driver and follow the progress of the taxi toward the pickup location on a GPS display. To accept a job, the driver must be no more than five minutes away.

Both apps guarantee that once a driver accepts a job, no other driver can take it. According to Pierre Duchemin, 55, this is a huge improvement over radio dispatch, which may give out an open call, simply broadcasting the location where a customer is waiting. If another driver gets there first, others can lose the job, a waste of time and gas. That doesn’t happen with the apps.

And they do. Julce gets 3-4 rides a day. It would be more, he said, but he can’t accept a new job when he currently has a customer in the cab. Duchemin uses the apps 3-4 hours per shift. According to Andre-Michel Colas, a 20-year veteran of the Boston streets, the vacancy rate in his taxi has decreased 5-10 percent since adopting Hailo. Recently, Colas became a driver-partner to Hailo, providing training and 24/7 support to drivers using the app.

“Under the old system, both customer and driver suffered,” said Colas. “The customer would call, and radio dispatch wouldn’t even answer the phone. Or the customer would have to wait 30 minutes.” In Boston, the problem is chronic in Forest Hills and other parts of Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, West Roxbury and Dorchester, Colas said.

According to Vanessa Kafka, general manager of Hailo Boston, vacancies plague the taxi industry all over the world.

“In London, with arguably the best taxi service in the world, cabs are vacant 60 percent of the time,” Kafka said. “In New York it is 40 percent.” In Boston, cabs are empty 25 to 50 percent of the time, according to a recent survey by Hailo. Meanwhile, riders everywhere complain to city officials that they can’t get a cab.

According to Kafka, because most people using taxis are in the central city, taxis concentrate there, cruising the streets and competing for the same rides. Then when people in outlying areas call radio dispatch, there are no cabs available. From the driver point of view, the smart phone app goes right to the heart of that problem.

“By being able to see the location of people who need cabs, a driver would not have to cruise the central city, but could potentially pick up steady work in an area such as Dorchester,” said Colas. “Having available cabs could conceivably contribute to quality of life in those neighborhoods.”

Leatherhead had the ball in Folkestone's net after 20 minutes, but the goal was disallowed after the referee's assistant incorrectly flagged Kev Terry for offside while intercepting a back pass.

Worse was to follow as Folkestone took the lead after 31 minutes after an awful mix up in the Leatherhead defence.

Chris Boulter received the ball from Neil Jenkins and then sent a square ball into an empty space. Richard Atkins gratefully intercepted before shooting low past Young.

Atkins almost added another a minute later – heading inches wide of the post – before Stevenson was shown a straight red card for his dangerous tackle on Smart.

Tanners failed to utilise their one-man advantage as they conceded a penalty after 39 minutes.

Johan Ter Horst played a ball into the box from the right which hit the top of Jenkins' arm.

Jenkins protested his innocence, but the Leatherhead defender's pleas fell on deaf ears as the referee pointed to the penalty spot and Smith stepped forward to strike the spot kick firmly down the middle.

In the second half Folkestone were content to sit back with their two-goal cushion, allowing Leatherhead time and space in the middle to run with the ball.

But time and again play broke down as the visitors were caught out by an efficient and effective offside trap.

And the Tanners could have fallen further behind when Frankie Chappell and Atkins both went close late on, while Ryan Flack saw his effort ruled out for offside.