Buses, Taxi Cabs

A share taxi is a mode of transport that falls between private transport and conventional bus transport, often with a fixed or semi-fixed route, but with the added convenience of stopping anywhere to pick or drop passengers and not having unfixed time schedules. more...

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The vehicles used range from standard 4 seater cars up to minibuses.

Share taxis are the main system of public transport in many countries (especially developing countries) and are know by make different names around the world (see table). They are often privately owned and have an operating style which does as they require no central control or organisation and in many countries they create problems that are due to the ways in which they are driven and the conditions of their almost always old, polluting and often dangerous vehicles, indeed in many places such services are illegal on banned.

Over the last few years the attitudes of planners and policy makers is beginning to look on them as solutions as well as sources of problems. This interest is also starting to take shape in the more advanced economies which are looking more closely at movement solutions where regulations have changed to allow such services, many of which are supported by advanced information technology, including GPS tracking, internet booking systems and mobile phones to coordinate passengers and vehicles.

Types of vehicle

Share taxis come in various vehicle types, including minibuses, midibuses, covered pickup trucks, station wagons, or lorries.

Operation

Vehicle ownership

Share taxis are operated under two main models:

Operated by a company, or subcontracted by a public transit authority. Often, individual vehicles are owned by individual drivers but operate under the same company name. Alternatively, the cars are owned by a single company that pays the drivers.; Private vehicles. These tend to be more overloaded than company vehicles, sometimes with passengers sitting on the roof, on the bonnet, and in the boot. They are usually owned by individuals, who do not involve themselves in the day-to-day running of the taxi. Instead they either employ a driver and a conductor, who maintain and operate the vehicle, or they rent it out for a daily fee, allowing the renter to keep all profits. In some countries these private vehicles are illegal, but often operate anyway, attracting customers with lower prices.;

The terminus

A given share taxi route usually starts and finishes in central locations known as taxi parks, lorry parks, motor parks, garages, autogares, gares routières, or paragems. These are usually located near the centre of a town or near a major market. Larger towns often have several taxi parks, one for each road out or for each major destination. Other towns have no centralised taxi parks, with taxis departing from the roadside. There will also be smaller taxi parks in the suburbs of large towns, which serve as the terminus for urban share taxis to that destinaion.

Read more at Wikipedia.org