Interactive Cabs Hit the Streets

Taxi trips in some of the major metropolitan areas of the U.S. are about to get much more interactive, thanks to a New York advertising company that plans to roll out hundreds of wireless multimedia systems in cabs across the nation over the next few months.

Interactive Taxi, a subsidiary of Targeted Media Partners, based in New York, plans to install interactive devices in the back seats of more than 600 cabs in Boston, Chicago, and San Francisco, according to company Chief Executive Officer Corey Gottlieb.

The units consist of a wirelessly networked multimedia computer controlled by a touch screen.

Interactive cabs have been available in the U.S. for years now, but technical limitations have curbed their popularity, Gottlieb says. "We used to have 40GB hard drives in the trunk, but they were too big and also vulnerable to bumps," he says. "Upgrading and updating was also complicated without a working wireless system."

Today the whole unit is mounted in the partition between the driver and the back seat and offers passengers news, movie trailers, and restaurant listings. The touch screen is connected to a 2GB flash drive running on Windows Embedded XP that receives wireless updates from a central database every five minutes.

Interactive Taxi is rolling out more than 600 interactive media units in cabs this year, Gottlieb says. His company rents the space for the unit in the vehicles and sells ads displayed in multimedia, including video.

More Practical Plans

But advertising is not the only force driving multimedia devices into cabs. By this fall, another 12,000 cabs in New York will have similar interactive devices, thanks to new regulations from the New York Taxi and Limousine Commission. "In November this year, each medallion cab must be equipped with vehicle location technology and an interactive passenger information monitor," says Allan Fromberg, public relations chief of the City of New York Taxi and Limousine Commission.

The devices will help the Commission keep tabs on the location of New York's cabs, which will enhance the security of cab drivers and also make it easier for passengers to recover items left behind. The Commission receives more than 1000 lost-property calls each month, and trying to find out which of the thousands of cabs the customer actually rode in is like looking for a needle in a haystack, Fromberg says.

So, what do the drivers themselves think about all of this high-tech gadgetry?

"It's cool," says Ted Ross, a driver at the Boston Cab Company for the past two years. "It strikes up conversation between the passengers and with me," he says. "If they read about a restaurant that looks interesting, they ask me if I've been there."

"And late nights, the drunks, instead of hassling me, they are tuned to the screen."