The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality is launching an ambitious Taxi Call Center project in a bid to reduce congestion and take vacant taxis hunting for fares off the roads.

“We consider it a positive development, as it will solve many of our problems. For instance, taxi drivers spend 35 kilometers of every 100 kilometers of driving searching for customers,” Yılmaz Yahya Uğur, chairman of the Istanbul Taxis Tradesmen Chamber, told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review on Wednesday.

The move will result in 2,500 empty, roaming taxis being taken off the road, Anatolia news agency reported Wednesday.

The project will institute a citywide hotline to connect passengers needing a taxi with vacant cabs via central dispatchers at call centers.

Incoming calls will be directed to a call center which will then dispatch taxis in the most convenient location to the waiting customer, daily Vatan reported Wednesday.

“These were projects we have wanted for a long time, but we could not implement them in daily life,” Uğur said. “Thanks to this system, our incomes will increase and our expenses will decrease as we are directed to customers nearby.”

The intensity of traffic will also be alleviated with the call center system as taxis will wait at taxi stops instead of crowded main squares around the city. “Many taxi drivers hire their taxis per hour and they lack social security. If they earn 80 Turkish Liras a day, their expenses increase to 130 liras with fuel prices and maintenance work. As a result, they cannot meet their demands. They prefer routes where the traffic is dense. Thus this application will also ease the traffic,” Nadir Yayla of Turkey’s Traffic Accidents Prevention Association recently told the Daily News.

Source: here