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Safer Travel at Night

Mayor of London, Transport for London and the Metropolitan Police have teamed up with mobile marketing agency Incentivated to provide the world's first text messaging service, which uses location based mobile phone technology to promote safer travel in mini cabs at night. A key piece of feedback was that there was no easy way for Londoners away from home to locate and contact the nearest taxi company. The service developed is very straightforward text the word 'HOME' to 60835 (the TfL shortcode, which spells '60TFL' on the keypad) or 62967 (spelling 'MAYOR'). Moments later, users receive a text message with contact numbers for two licensed minicab companiesin their vicinity which they can then phone to order a safe cab journey home, as well as a general number for ordering Black Cabs from any of the pre-existing booking services. The database of minicab companies used for this service is supplied by the Public Carriage Office (PCO) - who regulates taxis and minicabs in London and are part of Transport for London - and is updated every day to ensure that newly licensed firms are available viathe service as quickly as possible. Firms that have broken any regulations are removed and not supplied to customers. Only minicab companies operating services at the time of request are supplied, e.g. whether they are 24/7 - which is especially important for people wanting to get home at 2:30am on a wet Saturday morning. When a user sends their request by text, their mobile network passes on the time of the request, the mobile number used, and the location of the cell-site in which the sender is located. The cell location is the grid reference of the mast that transmits the message from the handset. This information is then compared with the live database of licensed minicabs and in real time a 160-character text message is composed and sent by reply. Updates to the Public Carriage Office's database of licensed minicabs are replicated on the HOME service making sure it remains correct. A nominal sum of 35p is made for a successful look-up in order to cover the charges from the networks as well as Incentivated's costs. If details of licensed minicabs cannot be found close to the user then they are not charged. A nominal sum of 35p is made for a successful look-up in order to cover the charges from the networks as well as Incentivated's costs. If details of licensed minicabs cannot be found close to the user then they are not charged. Within three weeks of launch, 4,000 people had participated, resulting in details of 252 different licensed minicab companies being returned. Since then another 144 minicab companies have registered and their details are all served to the public on request.For the covering abstract see ITRD E134522

  • Corporate Authors:

    Metropolitan Police

    ,    

    Transport for London

    Windsor House, 42-50 Victoria Street
    London SW1H 0TL,   England 
  • Publication Date: 2007

Language

  • English

Media Info

Subject/Index Terms

Filing Info

  • Accession Number: 01081950
  • Record Type: Publication
  • Source Agency: Transport Research Laboratory
  • Files: ITRD
  • Created Date: Nov 29 2007 2:35PM