Fareplay: An examination of taxicab drivers’ response to dispatch policy

Taxicabs are ubiquitous in urban centres around the world. Matching demand for taxicabs with the individual suppliers has evolved with the available technology. We explore how individual drivers respond to the specific dispatch policy employed and the implications for customer wait times. We also explore the opportunity to leverage the power of the available technology while understanding the incentives to individual participants to improve system performance. We examine the strategy that drivers favour under selected dispatch protocols. We show that there may be equitable dispatch policies that reduce customer wait times and, therefore, increase customer satisfaction. We suggest the creation of ‘super zones’ with secondary queues to reduce the incentive to wait at the boundary between zones. This research is, to our knowledge, the first to explicitly address the strategies of individual drivers in response to a dispatch policy and its effect on customer wait times.