What a wonderful visit to Winnipeg last week, where we met with Duffy’s Taxis and City of Winnipeg government officials. Ram Valluru and the team at Duffy’s have used iCabbi to build a Central Dispatch program for delivering Wheelchair Accessible Vehicles (WAV) to the people of Winnipeg with striking results. A bespoke iCabbi booking system is used to capture all bookings and then dispatch these WAV trips to drivers of Duffy’s taxis and many other smaller independent companies.
Social responsibility is at the core of this initiative and to this end the results have been striking. Booking volume has risen from 2500 in the first year to over 20,000 in year 3. Previously wheelchair users could not rely on taxi transportation and frequently had wait times of more than 2 hours. That has all changed. Several incentives from the city of Winnipeg means that supply has increased, and the Central Dispatch system allows people to access the entire pool of WAVs. Wait times have reduced dramatically. This has made a big impact on the quality of life for wheelchair users who are now increasing their taxi use to non-required travel. According to the iCabbi system reports, restaurants, cinemas, sports games, and casinos are all becoming popular destinations for WAV.
It’s a true win-win situation!
- Residents of Winnipeg get an improved quality of life.
- Drivers earn more money due to the financial incentives provided by the City. This in turn puts more money into the local economy. Drivers also get to support their community in an impactful way.
- Duffy’s Taxis increases their revenue by driving more bookings through their iCabbi platform
- Smaller taxi fleets get to digitise their offering for the first time. Until now, they may be too small to avail of cloud technology, but as participants within the Central Dispatch scheme they get access to iCabbi, including the iCabbi Driver App.
- The City of Winnipeg delivers on its social goals. The success of the WAV scheme under the stewardship of Grant Heather, won the Regulator of the Year award at the International Association of Transportation Regulators last year.
Are you interested in learning more about how the WAV program works and how Duffy’s taxi built the Central Dispatch function using iCabbi? Watch our full video case study below!