Like many taxi cab companies around the globe, Baltimore’s Yellow Checker Cab is in a fight for its life.
That’s why the company recently decided to fight fire with fire, rolling out a smartphone app called “zTrip” in the Baltimore market.
The app's rollout comes as area taxi companies suffer the entrance of Uber and Lyft into the market, capturing a significant share of the market and drawing away drivers as well.
The new zTrip app can be used to hail either taxis or professionally driven black car service. It can also be used to book pickups in the future, a feature its owners believe sets it apart from other offerings.
Users can now hail Yellow Checker cabs from the app, by phone, by text message or online, said Bill George, president of the taxicab and sedan divisions for Transdev. Transdev is the company that owns Yellow Checker Cab Co. and developed zTrip.
George pointed to what he sees as other advantages for zTrip. It allows users to tap an icon to instantly call customer service. And it does not use surge pricing, the practice competitors like Uber follow that increases fares when demand is high.
The new app soft launched in Baltimore with company insiders conducting a field test, George said. In March it will add an ADA icon allowing users to hail ADA-accessible cabs directly from the app.
Baltimore is an early market to get zTrip. The app is also live in Kansas City, Denver, Boulder, Colorado Springs, Orlando, Minneapolis and Austin. Transdev plans to expand the app to 19 cities by March.
Transdev executive Dwight Kines says his industry has to learn to compete with the ride-hail companies that are making inroads into his market.
Kines, who is also president of the Taxicab, Limousine and Paratransit Association, said his group is also exploring sending calls to drivers operating their own vehicles during peak hours.
Transdev's Pittsburgh market is piloting a program that would use personal cars from part-time drivers in peak periods. That pilot program will likely spread to other cities in the future, George said.
Prior to launching the new app in Baltimore, Yellow Checker completed an upgrade of its dispatch system in cabs. The new system allows for the app technology to be integrated while also shaving about four minutes off of dispatch times, George said. Yellow Checker has 584 Baltimore cabs and 90 black cars, all equipped with the new system.
"Having it integrated into the dispatch system gives us a lot more flexibility," George said.
zTrip charges the same fares as taxis, roughly $2 per mile. It allows for in-app payments, payments in cars with credit cards or cash, and billing accounts for corporations, George said.
A quick tour of the app shows it working with the same basic navigation as a ride-hailing app from a competitor like Uber or Lyft. Users call cabs or black cars and receive fare estimates by using an interface based on addresses and pins on maps.
Worldwide, Transdev is Uber’s single largest competitor. It has 10,000 vehicles in more than 100 cities worldwide, including Denver, London, and Paris, as well as shuttle services to 50 airports in North America.
Transdev is co-owned by two French companies—Veolia Environnement, a public utility company, and Caisse des Depots et Consignations, a state-owned bank. And it’s lobbying hard to contain the disruption to the $11 billion global taxi market.
“We survived two world wars and the Great Depression; we will survive Uber,” says Mark Joseph, the chief executive officer of Transdev North America. Joseph says Transdev subsidiaries have prompted investigations into Uber by sending letters to regulators in core markets like Colorado, Maryland, and Pennsylvania.
Transdev was also among the companies that took the battle to a commercial court in Paris, which last year resulted in a 100,000-euro ($107,000) fine for Uber’s UberPop ride-sharing service, Europe’s equivalent of UberX.
“They (Uber) have been lobbying to be self-regulated on the grounds that they are a technology company, but then they market themselves as cheaper than taxis,” said Joseph.