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If all taxis in the city are allowed to pick up passengers at the airport, the waiting time for taxis will be unimaginable, and the driver’s income will be the same. David Boenitz, director of ground transportation at San Diego International Airport, explained: “The more taxi trips, the more revenue. If all 1,500 licensed taxis in the city can pick up passengers at the airport, there will be an oversupply. Some taxis It will not be able to pick up customers.” This has not taken into account the traffic congestion and waiting costs.
Therefore, the airport only allows 362 taxis to enter the airport to pick up passengers. These taxis were also distributed a TransCore eGo passive UHF RFID tag. The airport ground transportation dispatch department uses TransCore RFID readers to read all eGo tags on taxis. Then, based on the length of the stay, the system instructs the taxi to enter the two waiting queues at the airport. In this way, the airport has achieved dispatch control, but the demand is still unknown. The airport knows the number of taxis, but it is difficult to know the number of people waiting to use them.
(San Diego taxi waiting queue)
The airport will send employees to count the number of passengers on a regular basis, but this method is not effective, so the airport began to look for technical solutions. Boenitz said that one of the solutions is to use infrared cameras in the queue area, and then use software to determine the number of people and the waiting time. But when the weather is hot, the technique of this method is not accurate, so the airport abandoned this plan.
More than a year ago, the airport began trialing the technology provided by Blip in a terminal. The technology uses BlipTrack sensors to collect MAC addresses from nearby cellular devices’ Bluetooth or WiFi. Then, the sensor encrypts these numbers, timestamps them, and sends them to the server.
At San Diego Airport, a BlipTrack sensor was installed on the sidewalk leading to the waiting queue for taxis. A sensor is also installed in the riding position. In this way, the system can judge the waiting time of passengers.
This solution of Blip Systems can allocate taxis based on actual demand, rather than guessing. In addition, the system can also determine whether the taxi company fulfills the airport contract, that is, send enough taxis to ensure that the waiting time for passengers does not exceed 10 minutes.
Due to the good results, the airport decided to install the system in another terminal.
In the next step, the airport will integrate the data of the Blip system with the taxi distribution system. At present, the scheduler still needs to manually check the waiting time in the Blip system, and then schedule. Once the integration is over, there are 15 passengers in the waiting queue, and the system will send 15 taxis to pick them up.
After the integration, the airport will use a screen to display the waiting time of passengers. This will help passengers decide to keep waiting or use other tools such as Uber.
Boenitz said that the airport has reached cooperation with four shared service providers (Uber, Lyft, Wingz and a local provider), and the demand is very strong. The airport charges the service provider based on the number of passengers picked up.
In recent years, more and more passengers have begun to choose shared service providers to travel, which are also cheaper than taxis. However, when the demand is high, the waiting time for taxis is usually shorter than for these services.
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