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Shared taxis in Brussels : the missing link in urban transport?

In 2008, a city-wide, flexible shared taxi service will be launched in Brussels. This major innovation in the city’s urban transport system will be closely watched as a sign of things to come.

Taxis and public transport: partners to serve the new urban nomads

Taxi users are also PT users. This is strongly suggested by a recent GFK survey into taxi use in 5 major European cities . Looking at the transport user profiles it identified, two results stand out. First, many heavy car users (28% of respondents) as well as the die-hard “public transport only” users (25%) have a rather “sedentary” profile, displaying fairly limited and regular mobility habits, more PT-oriented in city centres, more car-oriented in the suburbs. But “nomadic” urbanites, claiming the freedom to move about wherever and whenever they like, already make up an impressive 47% of all users, 13% being “car only” users. Secondly, about 23% of respondents call themselves regular taxi users, but strikingly also PT users (with 11% also car users) and all are “nomads”. The emerging “urban nomad” seems to juggle a range of modes, in which PT and taxi complement and reinforce each other.

This should not come as a surprise, for taxi and PT are close relatives. Where public transport is less developed, spontaneous services fill the gap, from the Malgache taxibrousse to the Istanbul Dolmus, but these are difficult to pin down as either PT or taxi: door-to-door or on fixed routes, with cars or minivans, for single passengers or shared, applying distance-based fees or flat fares or zone fares. The neat separation in European cities is actually the result of historically developed regulation. In Brussels, which is fairly typical, taxis are a regulated private sector undertaking , legally defined as door-to-door transport (strictly distinguished from limousine and car rental), with a proportional distance and time-based fare. Local authorities grant licences, set price levels, supervise compliance with social legislation and define policy objectives. Professional taxi associations sit in on an advisory committee. There is no possible confusion with STIB/MIVB, whose core business is regular collective transport, based on fixed routes and timetables, integrated into bus, tramway and subway networks. STIB/MIVB provides a public service funded by the local authorities, who set policy, enshrined in a regularly updated management contract. Both are struggling against their polarized public images: whereas PT is upgrading to shake off its reputation as overcrowded, unreliable transit for the captive masses, taxis are striving to be seen as more than elite luxury transport. A recent Brussels survey shows that non taxi users overestimate the price of trips up to double or triple the real price, partially explaining taxi’s low share of urban trips, around 1%.

But taxi potential is huge, since they fit in with strong mobility trends. PT operators are well aware of increasingly dispersed mobility demand and the increase in off-peak trips for highly customized shopping, leisure and social purposes. This trend fits in with deeper social trends towards personalized lifestyles, of which the cell phone is the perfect emblem, a communication tool doubling as a mobility tool, allowing free movement and permanent connection. The trend also fits in with constantly rising car use: the number of private cars rose by 14.3% in Belgium over the last ten years (2000-2007), with now 4.8 cars for every 10 Belgians . The resulting environmental and social issues are well-known. In response to this challenge, PT operators are developing more flexible services. Logically, on their way they are bound to meet taxis again, the most flexible PT mode around.
Designing a large-scale shared taxi service

To upgrade and develop this underused resource, the Brussels Minister for Transport, Pascal Smet, developed a “Taxi Policy Plan” (2005) , acting on a range of issues, such as cab and cab rank design, pricing, taxi vouchers, use of dedicated bus lanes, social legislation and driver training. At the same time, STIB/MIVB set out to create a night transport offer. The night bus network NOCTIS now consists of 20 lines operating on Friday and Saturday nights up to 3 AM . But from the start, taxis and in particular shared taxis were meant to play a key role in the night transport system.

Demand-responsive transport (DRT), whether by taxi or minibus, is definitely growing up. In 2005, a preliminary study compared a number of existing (DRT) services open to the general public (not dedicated to niches, such as the mobility impaired) and operating on a wide scale in an urban area (not the small-scale rural or urban periphery services). In the seventies, DRT services first appeared as local substitutes for regular PT in low density areas or at off-peak hours, generally as feeder services, using dedicated vehicles and drivers and with long booking times (more than 24 hours in advance) to allow for manual trip planning. What has changed is the technology. Dynamic trip optimization technology (or routing) allows for vastly more flexible services (door-to-door) with booking times down to 20 minutes, while at the same time able to process ever larger numbers of demands. DRT is ready to service entire densely populated urban areas, as demonstrated by the Regiotaxi in the Netherlands and the night shared taxis AST in Linz, Austria. Technology also facilitates operational aspects, such as fleet management, and outsourcing to existing taxi operators is becoming more widespread.

Next, a service model was designed for a Brussels shared night taxi. One of the key designing issues is the degree of flexibility allowed, because there is a trade-off between flexibility and passenger grouping. In a highly flexible area-wide door-to-door service, customers decide on their trip origin and destination and time of departure: excellent service, close to regular taxi, but making it hard to combine trips and so requiring more trips and vehicles. Alternatively, in a “virtual line” service concept, vehicles follow fixed routes, sometimes serving predetermined stops and running to a timetable, but only on demand: grouping trips is much easier, approaching fixed-line public transport, but the service will be felt as a substitute for a “real” line, while not offering increased flexibility. On the fixed-flexible scale, many variations have been tried. For instance, flexible area-wide service can be stop-to-stop (serving a number of predefined points); or in the virtual line model, the driver may be allowed to drop off passengers in between stops or make slight detours within a corridor. The final choice is not purely technical but depends on the desired performance criteria, based on policy priorities and market positioning. For the Brussels night service, it was important to position it as clearly distinct from both public transport and taxis, in order to avoid (real and perceived) competition and target a new market of trips now made by private car. At the same time, for security reasons, it was deemed crucial to drop off passengers at their destinations at night.

Soon available in your neighbourhood

The service will allow you to make trips throughout the entire Brussels Region area (19 municipalities, 162 km2, ± 1 million inhabitants) from midnight to 6 AM, every night of the week. Passengers will need to pre-book, up to 30 minutes before departure, and waiting time will be guaranteed to be less than 10 minutes. Departures will be possible on the half hour. Clients will be collected at signalled pick-up points and dropped off at destination (stop-to-door). They accept to share the cab and make slight detours to collect and drop off others. They will pay a flat fare in cash, probably in a two-tier system of a short and long trip fare, but in any case higher than a public transport ticket and lower than the normal cab fare.

The service will be operated by a taxi dispatcher and call-centre as a public service contract. The operator will ally himself with a technology provider for the optimization system, equip the necessary number of cabs of affiliated taxi operators and commit himself to having sufficient numbers of taxis available. No extra vehicles or drivers will be put into circulation: existing, ordinary taxis will alternate between traditional taxi trips or shared taxi trips, as dispatched by the central.

The service is subsidized by the regional authorities. The operator provides a monthly listing of trips, their real cost (as registered by the taximeters) and fare revenue. The authorities then compensate for the difference, and the central distributes this sum among the taxi companies involved. For the taxi companies, each shared taxi trip is simply an extra trip, yielding full revenue.

Strategic decisions will be made by a steering group, including the regional authorities, STIB/MIVB, the operator and user groups. Decisions to be finalised include pricing, location and signage of pick-up points (most likely at existing PT stops), design of a start-up phase, as well as name, visual identity and promotion. STIB/MIVB will also ensure the coordination with the NOCTIS network. The technology requirements include compiling full history details of all demands and trips, to allow invoicing and quality control but also analysis of geographical origin-destination patterns, important market information for PT in general.

Potential demand for such an innovative service is hard to quantify. The service is positioned and designed to attract an unmet demand: people catching the last bus or using the private car, who find the individual taxi too expensive. The young, night shift workers, low-income groups and all those without access to a private car (for financial or health reasons) will be the first to profit. Brussels has 5 times the population and more than 3 times the population density of Linz, where the similar nacht-AST is increasingly successful. The Brussels population generates about 45000 trips between midnight and 6AM, of which traditional taxis capture 3 to 4 % . Shared taxis should be able to grab a sizeable share of the rest, since they offer a flexible and secure service, at a moderate and predictable price.

Though shared taxis are first of all a taxi innovation, market opportunity and image boost, PT clearly stands to gain as well. STIB/MIVB is already a financial stakeholder in the successful and growing CAMBIO car-sharing service, and shared night taxis will be another addition to the spectrum of private-car alternatives. All in all, shared taxis will make Brussels a less private-car-dependent and more accessible city, while stimulating its nocturnal development.

Dirk Dufour
Spatial and transport planner
Espaces-mobilités (consultant)
dirk@espaces-mobilites.com

Since this article was written, the Brussels shared taxis service has been launched (september 2008) under the name of Collecto. www.collecto.org

[1] Le public des taxis : ses usages, ses nouveaux besoins, available on http://www.ville-en-mouvement.com/taxi/index.html [1] www.taxi.irisnet.be [1]http://www.statbel.fgov.be/press/pr110_fr.pdf [1] available on www.taxi.irisnet.be/docs/taxiplan_FR.pdf [1] http://www.stib.be/noctis.html [1] Les taxis collectifs urbains, available on www.flexibletransport.org or through dirk@espaces-mobilites.com [1] Belgian national mobility survey (1999) www.mobel.be