Taxi Rank recently launched a new mobile web application that provides a new way for Capetonians to order cabs in the Mother City. Cabs can be ordered from your web browser or smartphone whether Android, BlackBerry or iPhone.
The process is simple – you just have to go to the Taxi Rank website, enter your pick-up and drop-off destinations and an estimated quote will then be provided and listed by price for each taxi company that is available to service the much-needed trip. Once the desired taxi company and price has been selected, the order will be submitted. In addition, the taxi company will send an sms to your phone to confirm the pick-up time and cost.
The mobile site also has a quick pick-up form that uses GPS to automatically determine your location so a cab gets to you as soon as possible. If this isn’t something you want, you can change to the detailed order from to get quotes again.
Rhett Trickett, co-creator of Taxi Rank explains that “We (co-creators Rory Johnson and Tim Smith) just felt that Cape Town needed something like this. Catching cabs in the Cape Town city bowl is generally quite affordable, but most people don’t know that because there isn’t a convenient service to check prices and order cabs. We then started discussing what we could do with the web to build a service that could do this. It then became a passion project for us to create a quality app that we would want to use ourselves.”
Taxi Rank only partners with trusted and well established taxi companies operating in Cape Town including Rikkis, Unicab and SPORT although more providers will be added at a later stage as the service develops. Taxi Rank is also free to use and no mark-up is added to the quoted prices.
In terms of future developments Rhett reveals that “We would first like to see how the service takes off in Cape Town before considering bringing it to Johannesburg or Durban however, people can definitely expect to see more features added to Taxi Rank this year.”
With rumours of stricter drink driving rules circulating and the maturation of public transport in Cape Town with the develpoment of the MyCiti Rapid Bus System, Taxi Rank is set to be a great utility for commuters looking for a safe, affordable and efficient service at any time of the day or night.
Send the Taxi Rank web app to your mobile using the widget below:
For more information visit the Taxi Rank Blog, Facebook Fan Page or follow them on Twitter.
