3,000 ridesharing vehicles could replace all 14,000 NYC taxis

James Murphy January 21, 2017 Blog

Can we just put a fork in the taxi cartel? Sure, I understand that there are plenty of corrupt governments in cities, towns, counties and states all over the country (and for that matter around the world) that wants to keep their taxi gravy train going with a little bit of ‘regulatory capture’. That notwithstanding, the taxi industry needs to head into obsolescence just like Blockbuster Video, fax machines and the Cuecat.

Uber is so obviously a good thing that you can measure how corrupt cities are by how hard they try to suppress it.

— Paul Graham (@paulg) July 9, 2012

Enter Lyft and Uber–providing cleaner, more efficient and more flexible point A to point B automotive transport. Want to hazard a guess as to how inefficient and outmoded the traditional NYC taxi cabs are? According to research published by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory a fleet of just 3,000 4 passenger cars could replace 98% of the 14,000 taxis that currently serve NYC and with an average wait time of 2.7 minutes:

According to research recently published by MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), a fleet of just 3,000 four-passenger cars could serve 98 percent of taxi demand in New York City with an average wait time of 2.7 minutes compared to the nearly 14,000 taxis that currently service the city.

What’s more, MIT’s algorithm revealed that 95 percent of demand could be covered by just 2,000 10-person vehicles.

Maybe some of the cabs can be retrofitted into Colonial Williamsburg-like exhibits that could hoodwink tourists into paying to experiencing a filthy, poorly maintained, urine reeking taxi.