Cabbies ramp up technology
Aurora Taxi drops $45,000 for a wheelchair-accessible van
while City Cab rolls out mobile app and starts accepting debit and credit cards
Karen K. Ho
Northern News Services
Tuesday, May 19, 2015
SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
After six months of planning, Aurora Taxi recently acquired its own wheelchair-accessible van.
Aurora Taxi vice-president Shams Atroun stands in front of his company's new wheelchair-accessible van. Atroun said the price of installing the ramp and other modifications, including round-trip transportation from Edmonton, pretty much doubled the cost of vehicle. However, he said acquiring it was considered a crucial part of the two and a half year old company's services. - Karen K. Ho/NNSL photo
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What vice-president Shams Atroun calls an essential service came with an approximate $45,000 price tag.
That's to purchase and customize the Chrysler mini-van, including round-trip transportation to and from Edmonton, Atroun told Yellowknifer .
"Sometimes it break our hearts actually when we didn't have the handi-van," he said, citing Aurora's contracts with establishments such as the Vital Abel Boarding Home and the Department of Health and Social Services. "There's a very high demand for it."
He emphasized that unlike the other vans in Aurora's fleet, customers who require the modified vehicle would not be charged the typical $6 additional fee.
"We price them normal, we start at $4.50," Atroun said. "This person, they didn't choose to be in a wheelchair."
While acknowledging the costs of acquiring the van were much higher than other vehicles in Aurora's fleet, and demand was high enough the company could charge a premium for the service, Atroun said it wouldn't be fair.
"You can't benefit from someone's disability," he said. "Providing the handi-van service is part of our job. We know that we have to have it, period."
The van is also part of Atroun's greater strategy of anticipating customers' needs through technology. He said Yellowknife's location doesn't make it exempt from the current fight going on between Uber and the traditional cab industry in Toronto.
"You can't fight technology," Atroun said.
He said Aurora Taxi also plans on introducing an app later this year.
Competitor City Cab is also actively thinking about how to incorporate more technology into its services. After introducing a $100,000 app-and-tablet dispatch system, the company recently partnered with GataHub, a mobile application company that provides services to local merchants.
City Cab has started advertising in establishments around Yellowknife, encouraging residents to download Gata's app, which uses a mobile phone's tracking services to connect to City Cab.
General manager Nero Mohamed said currently customers can order a cab, track its movement and receive texts when it has arrived.
The simplicity of the system also helps free up dispatchers to fulfil other duties at the company. However, City Cab hasn't yet implemented the option allowing customers to pay directly through the app. Mohamed said that will be brought in later this year and pointed out that in the meantime, the entire fleet is now equipped with payment machines that accept debit and three kinds of credit cards.
Still, the City Cab manager said that the response so far has been good, with about 100 people using the app on a daily basis out of their 1,500 calls. The demographic is definitely younger as well, which Mohamed said was expected. But there are definitely big goals for it to become a more significant portion of City Cab's overall business.
"We would like to increase that by the end of the year, at least 20, 25 per cent," he said.
