Emmanuel Adu Poku
Professor Jonah Brucker Cohen
MCS 214
Final Project
The effect on technology in our world today is at an increasingly pace. This revolution is so great to the extent that, it affects virtually everything we see around us. There are several positive factors this new evolution has done to us as people. One of the great benefits is digitization (Computerized).
The next big thing we should expect to see in our transportation system is the Hover Taxi. Hover Taxi is a driverless electric vehicle that flies at a constant altitude above the ground. It similarly uses techniques automobile employs. The only difference is that, it cannot be operated without an app. Users will have to download the app online which comes with a monthly fee (monthly subscription). The app is customer friendly. It allows customers who travels to and fro schedule their pick-ups, drop-off times and destinations. One of the great features of the technology is the voice command that recognizes over fifty languages. This feature to some extent a great advantage to foreigners and tourists who visit New York City and are unable to express themselves in the English language. It also has some basic amenities like vending machine built at the rear for drinks, food, etc. (all transactions will be billed at the end of the month). Again, it has self-sanitizing equipment, which cleans up after each passenger’s exit.
The Hover Taxi is great technology that basically aims at easing vehicular traffic in New York City (Manhattan). As of February 2011, New York City had about 13,437 taxis in service. “Yellow taxi activity is centered on Manhattan, where 90.3% of taxi pick-ups occur. After Manhattan, the area with the highest percentage of pick-ups is at the airports, which together account for 3.5% of all pick-ups. Taxi activity in the boroughs outside of the airports is scarce: in total, about 6.2% of all pick-ups occur in these areas. The borough with the largest share is Brooklyn, where 3.1% of all taxi pick-ups occur, followed by Queens with 1.5%, the Bronx with 0.9%, and Staten Island with 0.8%. Looking at trip patterns by time of day and day of week, Manhattan continues to be the primary borough where pick-ups occur”. (NYC.gov/tlc). In this regard, Hover taxi will cut down the number of yellow taxis in Manhattan drastically and put fewer taxis on the streets to ease congestions. This effort will definitely boost up the growth in the economy and the transportation sector (Productivity).
Safety and security is the number one priority as far as using this vehicle is concern. After 9/11, United States especially New York became very particular with device that seems to be posing threat to lives and property. Hover Taxi will be built with sophisticated sensors that are able to detect any illegal substance or weapon whiles onboard; When the vehicle sensors anything suspicious, it will directly send alert to the police and also reroute to a nearby precinct to prevent any unlawful activities. According to PBS.org website, “The new TSA implemented procedures that included stricter guidelines on passenger and luggage screening. Only ticketed passengers could go through security, and an ever-changing array of machinery and procedures were introduced to scan for weapons and destructive items”. Again, a critical background check will be considered to each and every subscriber. These are extra safety measures for New Yorkers. The Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) with the support of New York Police Department (NYPD) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will be the managers of this new technology. Also, the built-in sensors will be able to detect possible collisions in less than a second to avoid crashing. The GPS equipment is also made for routes and tracking. “In February 2014 Mayor de Blasio released the vision zero action plan which outlines actions the TLC, the Department of Transportation, the Police Department, other agencies, the public, and the private sector can take to end traffic-related deaths in New York City by 2024. TLC Vision Zero initiatives range from greater education about street safety to incentives for safe driving and enforcement against unsafe behaviors. The City’s main vision zero is a trove of information about initiatives across the city targeting all drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists”.(Fatal and Critical Injury Crash Review and Enforcement Report for Cooper’s Law and Local Law 28 of 2014-nyc.gov). The Hover taxis are perfectly designed to support this initiative by the Mayor.
There are several pros and cons this technology (Hover Taxi) will bring forth especially to the people of New York. Hover Taxi technology strictly works through a designed application (app) with a monthly fee. It will require a bankcard or bank account and one additional credit card which technically it’s quite unfriendly to people who do not poses the requirement. The application can only be operated when connected to the Internet. People without internet will not benefit from this technology. Another major significant effect will be high rate of unemployment. Even though, Hover Taxi technology will offer several thousands of people jobs in New York City, It will also increase the unemployment rate. According to Taxi and Limousine Commission’s website, There are over fifty thousands drivers where drive taxis in New York City. “TLC-licensed drivers come from all five New York City boroughs, 31 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, and more than 175 countries around the world. A handful of these countries have only one driver in the fleet, whereas other countries have tens of thousands. The highest concentration of yellow taxi drivers comes from Bangladesh, with over 10,250 drivers. Drivers from Bangladesh now represent 23.1% of all yellow taxi drivers. Pakistan comes in second with 5,850 yellow taxi drivers (about 13.2% of all yellow taxi drivers). This represents a shift from 2005, when the highest concentration came from Pakistan (14.4%), and Bangladesh was second at 13.6%. The concentration of drivers coming from the U.S. and associated territories has also decreased from 9.1% in 2005 to 6.0% today. For FHV drivers, the number one place of birth is the Dominican Republic. Drivers from this country represent 19.5% of all FHV drivers (over 9,000 drivers in total). The second highest concentration of FHV drivers comes from the U.S., representing 9.6% of all FHV drivers (about 4,500 drivers)… Although female drivers have been behind the wheels of New York City cabs since the 1940s,1 the taxi industry continues to be nearly all male. This trend has held firm for many, many years. Around 49,500 (98.9%) of today’s yellow taxi drivers are male, whereas just 536 are female. The percentage of female FHV drivers is slightly higher, with a total of around 2,300 female drivers (just under 4% of all FHV drivers). TLC-licensed drivers range in age from 19 years (the youngest age allowed by TLC Rules), to the oldest, who turned 94 in August 2013. The average age for a New York City yellow taxi driver is 46 years old, up from 44 years old in 2005. For FHV drivers, the average age is 47 years. Looking at the age distributions for yellow taxi and FHV drivers, a larger share of yellow taxi drivers are younger in age than FHV drivers, with about 21% of yellow drivers under 35 years old and just 19% of FHV drivers. The largest age cohort for both groups of drivers is those between 50 and 54 years of age. Around 14% of yellow taxi drivers and 15% of FHV drivers fall into this age group”.(NYC TLC Licensing Data, September 2013 page 9). Base on this Statistics released by the TLC, this new technology (Hover Taxi) will affect many people from all walks of life.
The core idea for the invention of this vehicle is to ease the congestion in the city (Manhattan). According inrix.com, “New York City, often referred to as the City of Dreams, ranks number five in the top 10 worst traffic cities in the U.S. right behind Austin. New York commuters spent an average of 53 hours sitting behind the wheels hopefully paying attention to surrounding traffic and not day dreaming. New York City commuters experienced a 20 percent increase in overall travel time due to bad traffic. So what used to be a 45 minute drive from Manhattan to JFK Airport on a good day is now closer to an hour”. This is a very serious issue that needs to be fixing by this great technology (Hover Taxi). “… in New York, approximately 4,000 New Yorkers are seriously injured and more than 250 are killed each year in traffic crashes. Being struck by a vehicle is the leading cause of injury-related death for children under 14, and the second leading cause for seniors. On average, vehicles seriously injure or kill a New Yorker every two hours” (NYC.gov/visionzero). Hover Taxi’s supper sensors will prevent collisions. It will cut down the number of fatality in New Yorkers City. Air pollution in New York City is a significant environmental threat which according to NYC.gov website “contributes to an estimated 6% of annual deaths. Improving our city’s air quality is a difficult task because there are many types of air pollutants that can come from millions of sources, inside and outside city boundaries. PlaNYC was released in 2007 and is the city’s unified strategy to bolster economic development, improve the environment, and better the quality of life for all New Yorkers”. For New York City to actively take measures to reduce emissions from our motor vehicles, it needs to embrace the Hover Taxi technology, which is electric and eco-friendly.
A new transportation system of this kind needs a thorough study. A pilot research will be done in New York City (Manhattan) to gauge the success of the Hover Taxi.
References
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAVVL5wgYx8. Retrieved April 11, 2016
http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/html/industry/vision_zero_tlc.shtml. Retrieved April 14, 2016
http://www.nyc.gov/html/tlc/downloads/pdf/2014_taxicab_fact_book.pdf. Retrieved May 1, 2016
http://inrix.com/new-york-city-ranks-5-in-the-top-10-worst-traffic-cities/. Retrieved May 7, 2016
http://www.nyc.gov/html/visionzero/pages/home/home.shtml. Retrieved May 17, 2016
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/html/air/index.shtml. Retrieved May 17, 2016
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/911-to-now-ways-we-have-changed/. Retrieved May 17, 2016
