Barcelona and its metropolitan area have had a public application to order taxis since this Wednesday. This responds to a demand from the sector, which had been asking for it since 2016 to be able to compete with other apps that have been created in recent years. The Institut Metropolità del Taxi (Imet) and the Àrea Metropolitana de Barcelona (AMB) have developed Picmi Taxi to be able to order a taxi through a mobile phone, without having to wait in the street for one to pass and raise a hand to request it. "It represents an improvement of the service for all taxis because it no longer depends on the client seeing the taxi driver, but rather, through a screen, they can know that there is a taxi available and encourage its use," explains the president of Imet, Laia Bonet. The initiative has involved an investment of 200,000 euros, with 80% of the resources coming from European funds.
The operation of the new public application, the first in Spain, is very similar to that of other apps for ordering taxis that operate in Barcelona, such as Taxi Ecològic, FreeNow or Cabify. "We have to take advantage of this unique opportunity to have access to a tool that does not exist anywhere else and that allows the entire taxi fleet to be digitized," says Tito Álvarez, spokesman for Élite Taxi, the most representative association in the sector. The more than 10,000 active taxis in the metropolitan area will have to compulsorily download the new app, which will allow access to a large volume of vehicles and reduce waiting times, in addition to avoiding having to wait to see a taxi pass by.
To be able to use the new application, users will have to download the AMB Mobilitat mobile application. Through it, access to the Picmi Taxi service will be possible, which will be available in the 36 metropolitan municipalities. Those users who already have AMB Mobilitat, about 175,000 people, will only have to update it to incorporate the new functionality.
Once inside, you will only have to order the taxi, being able to choose between a standard one, a large one or one adapted for people with reduced mobility. The application will geolocate the user, sending the notice to the closest taxi drivers and assigning the ride taking into account factors such as arrival time or whether they are parked at a nearby stop. In the event that the client is located in an area without taxis, the application will refer them to a radio station.
When the application has chosen the taxi driver and calculated the waiting minutes, the user can accept or reject it. They can also consult the approximate price of the service and the duration of the journey, under conditions of fluid traffic. As with other applications, the user will receive information about the taxi to identify it, such as the vehicle model and its license plate, and will be sent a notification when the taxi has arrived at the pick-up point.
One of the shortcomings of the new public app is that taxi reservations cannot be made for specific days or times, nor can payment be made through it. The latter would cause competition problems with other applications, considering that a public institution would assume the transaction. A fixed price will also not be offered, as applications like Taxi Ecològic do.
Deployment of a network of micro-stops
The app will prioritize taxi drivers waiting at a stop, thus reducing empty trips and pollution. According to AMB calculations, taxis travel 660 million kilometers a year, and almost half of them are empty.
For this reason, the City Council is deploying a network of micro-stops to ensure that all Barcelona residents have a nearby point where vehicles will always be available. The new micro-stops, with capacity for two or three taxis, began to be deployed this summer, and a total of 51 have already been implemented, distributed across the city's ten districts. By 2023, the remaining 140 micro-stops will be signposted. In the Cerdà grid, it is expected that there will be a micro-stop at a maximum distance of 120 meters.
The micro-stops will be combined with traditional stops, which have a greater capacity for vehicle parking and are more concentrated in the central neighborhoods of the Catalan capital. With the current 274 taxi stops, which reach 372 in the metropolitan area as a whole, more than 500 points where one can find a taxi will be exceeded, including stops and micro-stops.