City cabbies say technology is too taxing

Cherry Hill is about eight miles from Center City as the crow flies, nine miles according to most computer mapping software, and 269 miles if you're a Philadelphia cabbie.

At least that's what the global positioning system, or GPS, used by the city's 1,600 medallion cab drivers, read.

As for the route suggested by the GPS during a cab ride Thursday, well, 269 miles may not have been far off. As it continuously recalibrated the route, the GPS's serene, modulated female voice directed the driver near the Benjamin Franklin Bridge, under the bridge, around the bridge, but never over the bridge.

A year after the Philadelphia Parking Authority ordered cabbies to use the GPS and a "smart card" system to let passengers pay without cash, drivers and owners say the GPS-fare system is seriously flawed, costing them fares and passengers convenience and timely service.

One union of cabbies, the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania, which represents 1,200 drivers, has called a two-day strike starting Wednesday to call attention to the system's shortcomings.

This will not be the alliance's first protest of the new system. In May 2006, the alliance called a strike that organizers said had left fewer than 100 cabs on the city streets. The 1,600 medallion cabs account for all but about 200 of the taxis on city streets.

The 2006 strike caused less disruption than expected, however, because facilities that depend on taxi service, such as the Convention Center and airport, provided limousines and shuttle buses, and the parking authority provided a list of temporary taxi services.

Parking authority officials acknowledge problems with the $4 million system, which was supplied by VeriFone Transportation Systems, a New York-based joint venture of VeriFone Inc. and TaxiTronic Inc.

The idea behind the VTS system is to combine a GPS with the taxi dispatch system and a payment system using a credit card or smart card.

Its problems are serious enough, said Linda J. Miller, the authority's director of public affairs, that the agency is withholding almost $1 million in payments on VTS's contract and reviewing the company's contract performance bond.

But Miller said she believed some drivers were using the problems to mask their opposition to accepting anything other than cash for fares.

"They are balking at accepting credit cards," Miller said.

Cabbies are not the only ones complaining.

Michael Lieberman, owner of Olde City Taxi Coach Association Inc., which has about 200 cabs, called the new system a "nightmare."

"It's costing me business," said Lieberman, who has an apology on Olde City's phone message for "any inconvenience caused by the GPS dispatching system mandated to us by the Philadelphia Parking Authority."

VeriFone Transportation Systems considers the Philly system a success, and on Aug. 16 cited the "successful rollout in Philadelphia" in announcing plans to take the same system to New York City and Las Vegas taxis.

In an e-mail exchange, VTS chief executive officer Amos Tamam wrote that the Philadelphia system's failure rate was "significantly below one percent."

"Also, not all technical issues are equipment-related," he wrote. "Some may be affected by the cars' mechanical problems, driver training and drivers' willingness to accept change."

Tamam described the implementation of the VTS system as part of a "tremendous cultural change in the taxi industry in Philadelphia."

He added that the system was designed to the parking authority's specifications, and that VTS would meet the remaining deadlines in the contract.

"This is not successful," said Lieberman, a member of the Philadelphia Dispatchers Working Group, which has been working with VTS and the authority to debug the system.

New York cabbies are skeptical, too: About 10,000 members of the Taxi Alliance of New York also will strike Wednesday, said Biju Mathew, an alliance founder.

New York cabbies will begin getting the GPS-fare system Oct. 1, said Mathew, who added that reports from a New York test fleet were not encouraging.

"Believe me," Lieberman said, "I would love for this to work. It would be great. But this crashes at least once each week, and we're seeing way too many anomalies."

Not everyone is a critic.

Walter Fernandez, part-owner of PHL Taxi, said he had volunteered his fleet to be the first to get VTS systems: "We went through some difficult times, but the system works fairly well for us."

He acknowledged worries about system crashes and said one that lasted from 5 to 9 p.m. Aug. 24 "was a very serious problem for us."

Fernandez said he now requires drivers to carry cell phones.

Ronald Blount, president of the Taxi Workers Alliance here, said that accepting credit cards was no longer an issue for drivers, but that problems with the VTS technology were.

On Thursday's cab ride with a City Cab driver, for example, the GPS worked intermittently and then was out on 17th Street from Race to Chestnut and again on Chestnut from 16th to 13th.

Driver Tekle Gebremedhin, 54, a native of Eritrea and a cabbie for 10 years, tested the device twice with no response: "If this is an emergency, now I'm dead."

Gebremedhin knows the way to Cherry Hill without an aid, but Blount said many new drivers were unfamiliar with the region.

A bigger problem is that when the GPS does not work, the driver is invisible to the dispatcher. The dispatcher cannot tell if the driver is near a person calling for a cab and the cabbie cannot get the dispatch.

Though the two systems are supposed to be independent, drivers said that when the GPS didn't work, the smart-card reader might also freeze or slow processing to 30 seconds or more. At other times, the meter freezes and the driver must estimate the fare.

None of this makes drivers popular with their passengers, Blount said.

"I can understand the need for new technology, but it should be lab-tested first," Blount said. "They shouldn't be using the nation's fifth-largest city as their guinea pig."