Taxi Driver Online

What on earth was i thinking about when i decided to switch from zonal fares to mileage bases fares? I must have been possessed by something when i made that decision, don't get me wrong I'm still a big fan of charge by the mile but i was totally unprepared for all of the mess that i created when we switched. Sometimes you just have to hold your hands up and admit you got it wrong, so that's exactly what i did today, in the form of an internal memo to all of my drivers and control room/call centre staff.

What went wrong with my plans?

In honesty just about everything that could have gone wrong did, firstly i should have had my new system in place for at least 3 months before even considering going live with it. This would have given me ample time to test out my new fare structure, in reality we had maybe 1 or 2 day's at best to test before go live, this is what turned out to be my critical error.

Secondly my advertising campaign and promotion was planned to coincide with my system switch over, this turned out to be another critical mistake and probably the one that i feel most ashamed of. Not because the promotion was a bad idea, just bad timing, i really should have known better and postponed my promotion until a month or so after go live.

Even after all these years of running my own business i still ended up making what i feels like some very basic errors, I've had to take myself off and give myself a severe talking to over the last couple of weeks. I keep repeating to myself, PPPPP (Planning Prevents Pi** Poor Performance).

On a more positive note my drivers, tele op's and controllers were all very pleased to hear that we will be switching back to zonal fares in a few weeks time. I have enlisted the services of 6 local students for the next few weeks, they will be working on our live system building a brand new zonal fare matrix which will consist of approx 150,000-250,000 data entry's...........I'm guessing but I'd imagine this should be complete within about 4 weeks or so.

The light at the end of the tunnel is beginning to shine brighter.....at last!

I think if you are going to price by the mile then only a meter will do that properly, cos sometimes punter give wrong info, and sometimes phone girls make mistakes.

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IDFIMH

You are 100% correct, the Auriga evo system with map point installed is very accurate though, i believe we are the 1st UK PH company to have this installed from go live with a brand new system.

I tried something new with the best technology available to me in an attempt to drum up more business, it didn't work out for us this time but i am sure many other company's that are already pricing by the mile will find this technology very useful indeed. Once i get my zonal matrix built we will continue to use map point for all out of town pricing as well as all local multiple pick up's/drop off's.

I am slightly confused with all the talk about pricing...... charging...... I know the system Delta and SRC use... displays the fair the same as a metre at the end of the journey..

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

I completely understand how this may be confusing so I'll try to explain:

The PH trade have very little competition from HC's in our area, so the PH company's have in the main always used Zone to zone fare calculation. By calculating fares this way the PH drivers have become used to not having to do too many minimum fare jobs, to fully understand this you also need to consider that we operate in a semi rural area. A good example of this would be a local village to the same village run, we charge the customer the same amount for a short trip as we would for bringing them into the city centre which could be a 6 mile journey,that's how zonal fares work, this is obviously very good for the drivers but not so good for the customers.

My company is now of a size (110 cars & 180 drivers) that we have vehicles all over our normal working area, so i tried to use price by the mile (metered fares) but also implementing a zonal uplift charge for when any jobs do not start/finish inside or pass through our normal working area. This would have meant lower prices to the customer and hopefully more work for my drivers, however the computer system we use (Auriga) and as far as i know every other system on the market do not yet have the facility to automatically uplift a fare by zone when the run does not meet our out of area criteria as described above.

I haven't totally given up on the idea of metered fares but it is something that will have to be put on the back burner for now as my main priority is to automate the correct pricing for all of my work immediately, with the tools that i currently have available to me. The only way i can do this at the moment is to revert back to zonal fares, which could take us up to 6 weeks to rebuild the database required. I am hoping that Auriga will address this problem with us and maybe develop something for future release, In honesty i don't believe this will happen unless some of the bigger company's else where decide that they would like to efficiently cover more out of area work.

Hope this clears things up?

When I started on private hire before 1976 it was on a small company that was operating between 140 to180 vehicles , the job count on a Saturday, the full 24 hours was approximately 1800 jobs, after the bus's where made private it went up to2700.

The companies here operates I would say a 25 mile radius from centre, they work in zones, as a new zone is added they still charge the same, but they will canvas that zone until it becomes self supporting, they make sure drivers working new zones get some decent jobs during the day,
Delta Job count last year 7.500.000

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

Is that Delta in Liverpool?

No Sefton.But the new base is approximately four miles from Liverpool city centre. their advertising budget is 250,000 a year... it's OK for some ...

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

Puts my 35k to shame then, like i said our area is semi rural so our working area is much smaller than a 25 mile radius, you can pretty much travel 2 miles in any direction from our city centre and you are in open country side with just the odd village every few miles. We need more people to move to Lincoln, it's a very nice place in the middle of no where.

The secret to life, is to know when you have enough for you and your family, and are able enjoy it..

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Justice for the 96. It has only taken 27 years...........repeat the same lies for 27 years and the truth sounds strange to people!

Too right!

You must be kidding! I went round Lincoln on the A46 this afternoon. From the first roundabout, the turning for North Hykeham to the last one, the turning for Nettleham which is a distance of 8.5 miles took me nearly 45 minutes. Sometimes it takes even longer.

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Grandad,

I forgot about our issues with traffic, when it's bad it's very bad!

Not just in Lincoln......