By: Co-Editor, Bobby B:
As a born and bred New Yorker who also spent his youth bar hopping and cab hopping in Manhattan, I was intrigued to hear about CabCorner.com.
CabCorner.com is an innovative Internet-based cab share program that aggregates user-generated cab rides and matches riders willing to split a cab and a fare. The service provides a market-based solution for people who want the convenience of a cab for a fraction of the cost. The obvious benefits of cab share include sharing resources, providing an additional transportation option, increasing capacity, easing congestion, and improving fuel efficiency. On top of these benefits, cab share will provide a measure of certainty as the MTA scrambles to plug its $1.2 billion budget deficit.
CabCorner helps its users find cab rides that complement their itinerary. If no such trip exists, users can create a new ride. Traditionally, this type of service has been restricted to blue van shuttles that organize trips by either starting or ending at an airport. By organizing riders by point of origin or destination, it is easy to coordinate a route that picks up or drops off riders along the way. CabCorner, however, casts a wider net than previous services by using the Internet to pool riders who share a common itinerary.
There is a “Hot Spot Map View” that outlines popular locations in NYC where you can meet others and share a cab. There is also a video on the site that explains in detail how the site works.
As it states on its blog, cabcorner.com is green because it makes use of already existing structures and infrastructures to create a secondary product that not only helps to cut down on pollution and traffic, but also in it of itself is something that requires no further production inputs beyond the collective participation of its users. It is an infrastructure that is built through the participation of the collective. It serves not to create another thing but to streamline already existing systems by simply providing users who are already using these pre-existing structures, a way to use them more efficiently and by virtue of those gains in efficiency, also more effectively. Urban environments have to remain high functioning, beacons of modern socialization. And to do this effectively, they must evolve with the changing demographics towards denser urban populations by creating systems that instead of side stepping this inevitable evolution, leverage it for positive solutions.
The idea of this communal sharing of cabs is very appealing can make a large city such as New York more friendly and manageable.
, cab rides , new yorker , pollution , shuttles , transportation option
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