September 5th, 2007
NYC cabbie strike: Try an ad share
New York City cabbies launched a two-day strike on Wednesday to make life difficult to millions of New Yorkers. The fix? An advertising revenue share.
Here’s the deal: New York wants cabbies to install GPS systems, video screens and touch screen credit card processors in their cabs. This is great for riders like me since a) I never have cash on me; and b) a little Web and tourist information may distract me from the fact I’m spending way too much to be stuck on a side street.
In fact, this post written on Tuesday would have been a “cabbies dragged into the 21st century” tale. And then I took a cab to Penn Station about 9 p.m. and had a change of heart. I’m siding with the cabbies. The fix is obvious: Cut cabbies in on some ad revenue.
Now this cab ride was arguably one of that last before the strike (which may not be effective) so I just had to ask what the deal was. New York has its contingency plan and a strike sounded like a done deal.
Here’s the conversation:
Me: “What’s the deal with the strike tomorrow. Is it on?”
Cabbie: “We have no choice.”
Me: “Sucks to be New York tomorrow.”
Me: “So what’s all this GPS and credit card processing mumbo jumbo going cost you?”
Cabbie: “$3,000 to $5,000 to install and then a monthly fee.” Reports indicate more like $1,200 a year. In any case, it’s a lot of money for a working stiff driving seven days a week.
Me: “But the GPS would be nice. And I’d love to just give you a debit card. What would ease your pain.”
At this point he gets agitated. Traffic is more annoying than my question, but the poor guy is getting rooked. I ask, “so what would make it better?”
Cabbie: “We get no advertising revenue. This GPS information will be given to riders and we get no cut of the revenue. We just get charged more.”
Who can blame these guys? Cabbies are getting dogged on fuel, ridiculous riders and now newfangled technology that yields no benefit to them.
Me: “Would a revenue share make this easier?”
Cabbie: “Sure, at least we’d get something.”
Me: “Good luck tomorrow.”
Now it seems clear to me that New York City simply needs to share a little bit of the wealth like Google does with its affiliates. This seems like a no-brainer. Life in New York will could grind to a halt all because of an ad share. Go figure.
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Smart Planet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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