The Transportation Revolution In Response To Smart Phones

In the US, the age of the smart phone has arrived.

Not just for a select group of business types or the affluent, but for the majority of Americans.The evolution of mobile telecommunications devices has and will continue to bring about new opportunities for people to communicate and organize on the go. The need for a home based computer is beginning to diminish, much in the same way that cell phones in the late 90s began to diminish the need for a home phone.

One of the many ways in which people will begin to react to the decentralization of web based platforms will be reflected in their engagement of transportation systems. With the advent of the smart phone and fierce competition among telecom companies, it is safe to say that most mobile device manufacturers for the next five years will be focused on creating and distributing 3G compatible devices.

What this means for the consumer is that over the next five years he/she will see a dramatic reductions in the price of “smart phones” or web enabled devices as well as the service plans which support them.. These reductions in price will inevitably push 2G phones out of the market. Consumers will no longer settle for just any mobile phone, they will choose web enabled devices that are more internet and email friendly. This will, and already has begun to create a society that is constantly connected to the internet. This society will grow increasingly dependent on continuous access to the web, to the point where people will seek out, demand and require those internet based programs that make their on the go life style more efficient.

Here is where Cabcorner.com fits in.

It will enable communities and society at large to create more efficient solutions for transportation within cities and could be scaled up to revolutionize how people might travel out of cities and into the suburbs.

Transportation, as a function of modern life, has been presented with the opportunity to become immensely more efficient, environmentally less damaging and fiscally more responsible. With the appropriate infrastructure, augmented by a web based platform, commuters of the future will be able to organize themselves into travel groups and get from point A to B collectively, instead of individually. This shift in thinking and application of transportation vehicles will not only help to conserve resources (materials, fossil fuels, labor, and capital), it will also limit the amount of space required to support the transportation needs of our society. A great place to begin initiating this shift would be in the heart of major cities. Why cities? Because cities have large commuting populations, a transportation infrastructure already in place (buses, trains, subways, taxis), and cities are generally the best incubators for large scale social movements. I would like to focus on revolutionizing a subset of the New York City transportation system, the taxi cab (both private and public entities). As a first step, it must be determined that people are not only capable, but willing to communicate with each other when it comes to organizing their own transportation.

Cabcorner.com is a web based program that aims to make it easy for potential cab riders who are originating from similar locations and heading towards similar destinations, to meet up and make that trip together. If Cabcorner.com can establish that complete strangers are capable of organizing their own transportation at this level, then from there it can be extrapolated that people, strangers, would be capable of meeting up in greater mass at collectively determined locations to make more extensive commutes (such as out of the city and into the suburbs). By sharing a cab, the rider’s individual carbon footprint will now be divided among the other riders of that cab. By sharing a cab, the financial cost of a cab to the individual will be halved, at minimum. Over time, the aggregate carbon footprint of all cabs across the city will be reduced because there will simply be less demand for individual cabs and thus the supply (amount of cabs) will be reduced to create a lower equilibrium. Fewer cars on the road equals less traffic, which in turn equals less time spent commuting, which has a two-fold effect; One, the environment benefits from less CO2 and other carcinogens generated by cars wastefully idling in traffic. Two, instead of wasting time in traffic, the rider is effectively granted more time to do something other than sit in traffic.

Cabcorner’s footprint can only be as large as the taxi infrastructure of any given city and so therein lies its limitation. But the proof of concept, especially in regards to how smart phones will possibly play a pivotal role, can be tested within this framework and thus why I have taken on the challenge of creating such a program.

Once people get used to creating and sustaining a decentralized transportation infrastructure, the possibilities for how we commute, which modes of transportation we value and which programs we should pursue to continue the transportation revolution, will become clearer. A major positive consequence of giving people more flexibility in terms of how and where they engage the transportation complex, is an infrastructure that will be born out of the needs of individual commuters. Cab stands and other less intensive infrastructure components will be built to meet the specific demands of commuter groups. For the first time in modern mass transportation history, the infrastructure will neither create the demand nor will it inefficiently try to respond to an already present demand, it will grow concurrently with demand. It will only be as big or small as the needs of all the individuals who participate in this transportation revolution.