Taxi, Limousine, and Transport Network Company Regulation: Recurring Challenges

The vehicle for hire (VFH) market - broadly comprising taxis, limousines, and app-based transport - has faced multiple and significant changes over the years, with the period since 2010 a time of major upheaval. This book documents the development of the market over time, examining its regulation and control structures, exploring its history, trends, and market theories, and discussing how these are both promoted and challenged by the changes affecting the sector.

This book reviews recent developments in the VFH industry, from the influx of new market entrants and the emergence of app-based services to their widespread use, comparing international markets and their regulation, and draws on a series of case studies in key locations in North America, Europe, and Asia. It establishes and details economic, market, social, and political theory affecting the VFH industry and devotes its second half to the definition and emergence of transport typologies and markets in which the sector has a role (or potential role). The book concludes, from a neutral standpoint, on the balance between market participants, addressing the immediate future facing the industry, including the impacts of Covid and other external factors. It considers the short- and long-term effects of market change, the role played by regulators, and the market conditions imposed upon them.

Written for industry practitioners - both suppliers and regulators - as well as the academic community, this book will inform the community and prompt further analysis of a significant and growing field in transportation.

Dr. James Cooper is the CEO and lead researcher at Transport Research Partners, a transatlantic research company specializing in the VFH sector and its regulation. Dr. Cooper has a long standing interest in the taxi and TNC sector, having worked as the head of the Taxi Research Group at the Transport Research Institute of Edinburgh Napier University in Scotland, and as Visiting Professor of Urban Transportation Regulation at the University of Missouri St. Louis, USA.

Jorgen Aarhaug is a Senior Research Economist at the Markets and Governance group at the Institute of Transport Economics, in Oslo, Norway. Aarhaug has worked with analysis of taxi and private hire markets in Norway and internationally and published about 20 academic articles and research report on VFH related issues.

John Scott has worked as taxi regulator in both San Diego California, and Washington DC, having recently retired from his role as Chief of Operations for the DC Department of For Hire Vehicles. He has hands-on and practical experience of the issues faced by the VFH market and has direct experience of the development of regulations to support and develop the sector.

Wim Faber is an international taxi journalist and Managing Editor of the Personenvervoer journal. Through his work as journalist, senior editor and publisher of several websites and magazines, he has built up a wealth of expertise specifically in the area of taxi, paratransit and smart mobility.