Pittsburgh Transportation Group, Yellow Cab’s parent company, will hold a soft-launch party tonight for its zTrip app, and make the app official with a general launch on April 1, said company president Jamie Campolongo.
“We will start small and give good service,” Mr. Campolongo said. “This is kind of a rebranding of sorts, and we’ve learned that people who use handheld devices want convenience.”
That learning experience came by way of Uber and Lyft, the two San Francisco ride-sharing companies that moved into the Pittsburgh area last year. The companies connect drivers in their own cars with passengers via smartphone apps, and raised the ire of Yellow Cab and other taxi companies when they launched here, just as they’ve done in almost every other city where they operate.
Both are currently operating under two-year experimental licenses from the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission, after months of battling over regulatory issues.
Yellow Cab’s zTrip is owned by Transdev North America, the parent company of the Pittsburgh Transportation Group. Transdev North America used to be called Veolia Transport, but the name was changed not long after a 2011 merger. The Paris-based company, which has its North American headquarters in Lombard, Ill., operates transportation services in 20 countries.
Using zTrip, passengers in Pittsburgh will have two options: summon a black car service called zCar or request a taxi, which will either summon a traditional Yellow Cab taxi or one of the company’s new Yellow Z cars, depending on which is available.
Yellow Z is the closest to Uber and Lyft. It uses independent contractors vetted by Yellow Cab but driving their own vehicles, which must pass the cab company’s inspection process.
The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission approved Yellow Cab’s application to establish the experimental transportation network company in May. Technical glitches in previous iterations of the app led to months of delays.
“We could have launched earlier, but we didn’t think we were ready and we’ve been under enough scrutiny,” Mr. Campolongo said.
The zTrip app is already operating in Denver, the Kansas City area, Phoenix, and Tampa and Orlando in Florida.
Yellow Cab’s insurance will go into effect as soon as a Yellow Z driver logs in to the app, Mr. Campolongo said. The issue of insurance has been a point of contention for the ride-sharing companies.
Mr. Campolongo acknowledges that part of the app’s success will depend on dispelling Yellow Cab’s image of being unreliable. The company’s Yelp.com reviews show a pattern of customer dissatisfaction dating back to at least 2009.
But he thinks adding the Yellow Z cars to the mix will help improve availability. There will only be 47 Yellow Z cars available at first, but when Yellow Cab has an overflow of calls, such as on a Friday or Saturday night, Yellow Z cars will be able to pick up the slack, Mr. Campolongo said.
The app has a lot of the features that Uber and Lyft have: the interface has a map that tells riders how many cars are available and how far away they are, which will be familiar to ride-sharing app users. But zTrip has additional features that Mr. Campolongo believes improve on its rivals.
Cash payments are possible, and users having problems can call a customer service line. And while passengers will be able to rate drivers post-trip, as they can with the other services, drivers won’t be able to rate passengers. Mr. Campolongo believes that such a system contributes to passengers feeling pressured to give a driver a higher rating.
In addition, passengers will be able to reserve a ride in advance, unlike the other ride-sharing apps.
There will be no fluctuations in the cost of the rides. Uber and Lyft have both faced criticism for their pricing mechanisms, which increase prices for passengers when demand increases as a way to incentivize drivers to work during busy periods.
“We are going to purge the surge,” Mr. Campolongo said.
For now, he said, zTrip will not be available at Pittsburgh International Airport.
Allegheny County police have cited numerous Lyft and Uber drivers for picking up passengers at the commercial curb at the airport, a violation of airport rules. At present, only traditional taxi companies and vehicles with the requisite PUC certificate of public convenience and an airport permit can pick up passengers at the commercial curb area.
Yellow Cab plans several zTrip launch parties around the city, including one tonight at Mario’s East Side in Shadyside. People can check out the app and sign up for free rides, similar to the launch parties Uber and Lyft held when they arrived in Pittsburgh.
A Uber representative declined to comment for this article.
A request for comment to Lyft was not returned Wednesday.
Transdev has a formidable fleet behind it as well. It owns the airport van service SuperShuttle, the ExecuCar black car service, taxi companies in a half-dozen American cities, and operates public transit systems in countries around the world.
For his part, Mr. Campolongo hopes the pivot from the traditional taxi service to the app-based model will help revive both local interest and ridership for Yellow Cab.
“We’re hoping that Pittsburghers will give a Pittsburgh company another try,” he said.
©2015 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
