GPS Log Analysis Uncovers Millions In NYC Taxi Overcharges

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission is using GPS data collected in every cab to review millions of trips in New York City over the past 26 months and has discovered a huge number in which out-of-city rates, twice the rate charged for rides in the five boroughs, were improperly charged. The drivers' scheme, the commission says, involved 1.8 million rides and cost passengers an average of $4 to $5 extra per trip when drivers flipped switches on their meters that kicked in the higher rates, costing New York City riders a total of $8.3 million. Cab drivers are supposed to charge the higher rate only when they cross the border between New York City and Nassau or Westchester. 'We have not seen anything quite this pervasive,' said Matthew W. Daus, the taxi and limousine commissioner. 'It's very disturbing.' The taxi industry vigorously challenged the city's findings, saying it was unimaginable that such a pervasive problem could be the result of deliberate fraud. The commission says that 75% out of the city's 48,000 drivers had applied the higher rate at least once. Officials hope to roll out a short-term fix in two or three weeks in which an alert will appear on the backseat monitor when a cabbie activates the out-of-town rate."

Re:Because Cab drivers are notoriously ethical

[causality]

For example- truck drivers used to be expected to make 8 stops and were paid 8x dollars.

Once GPS came in, suddenly they are being expected to make 11 stops (because the gps showed they were sitting around for 20 minutes) and work 100% while on. But the pay is still 8x dollars.

There's an easy solution to that which involves neither GPS tracking nor micromanagement.

Pay the drivers on a per-delivery basis, allowing for things like distance driven and amount or weight of cargo to be variables that determine this rate. Then the drivers can decide how they wish to use that 20 minutes. If a driver can make 11 deliveries in X time, then he gets paid about 28% more than a driver who makes 8 deliveries in X time. Now they have an incentive to be more productive that doesn't require tagging them like cattle and any expenses associated with that. The recipients of the deliveries have no incentive to help the drivers cheat this system, since that would mean failing to receive their items.

I wonder if there is a correlation between how much the out of town rate was activated and how slow a day the driver was having?

Our drivers in Houston are certainly not retiring wealthy (unlike some of our police sergeants). Cab driving should provide a decent living and with government intervention in rates, that can be tricky at times.

The most robust solution to this is presented in the summary. Have some unambiguous indicator that allows the paying passenger to see whether the out-of-town rate is being applied. It could be as simple as a bright LED with a label saying "When light is on, out-of-town rates are being applied" that is tied to the driver's rate switch. This would guard against both deliberate deception and honest mistakes and would represent full disclosure to the customer.

The idea of using GPS to monitor everyone's whereabouts and track their activities is both unnecessary and needlessly complex. Simpler, more robust solutions can be implemented that come with none of the privacy concerns. Not only is a centralized GPS database a tempting target for attackers who would compromise it, it's also a single point of failure if such a compromise does occur. That's undesirable in a system used to keep people honest. It'd be far more difficult to obtain physical access to every cab in NYC and disable the physical indicator of which rate is being applied.

Re:Because Cab drivers are notoriously ethical

[Cyberax]

Yup. That's how taxi works here in Kiev (Ukraine).

When I order a taxi over the phone, I'm immediately told what the price is going to be, so you pay exactly this sum to the driver (+tips).

And now it's the driver's problem to chose the shortest and fastest route. If we get stuck in a jam - I'm not paying more.

Re:Who is surprised?

[spire3661]

Its a no skill job. you sit, you drive, you talk. Hard to throw your weight around when we are one good innovation away from removing the need for a human to do it. Someday in the not too distant future we are going to wake up and hail a Johnny Cab, (Total Recall). Ive been thinking about this for a while, how far are we realistically away from driveless cars on (mostly)* unmodified roads? How hard is it to automate driving a car on a known circuit (city grid). *Allowing for sensor installations and machine instruction signage, failsafes, etc.

Re:Very easy fix

[icebike]

I'm not saying dictate the route to the cabby.

Just dictate the price from point A to point B removing any incentive to tour you thru some back street route.

I'm not saying the companies can't compete on rates, just have a set rate.

Cabbies make their money on tips and quantity. Get there quicker by better knowledge and you pick up another fare that much quicker.

You never get toured when there is lots of business. Only when business is scarce.

Re:Very easy fix

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

That makes more sense. But the rate thing is going to be hard to compete on - most people flag taxis down in the street, or get them out of a taxi queue at a place like the airport. Its much less common to be in a situation where you can shop rates.

Re:Because Cab drivers are notoriously ethical

[Anonymous Coward]

As a European, I remember that it was the Republicans that fought a war to free the slaves, while the Democrats were largely in favor of keeping "those brownskins" as personal property.

How do you re-frame this?

Lincoln died over a 100 years ago. So did his supporters in the party. Those republicans are dead. We have new ones now.

I'm a social liberal and a financial conservative. The republicans lose on the first point, and they lose on the second point ad well. I'd rather "Waste" a "trillion" dollars on healthcare than war profiteering.