AUTOMOTIVE NEWS – FEBRUARY 22, 1907 - TAXI CABS

A taxicab, also known as a taxi or a cab, is a type of vehicle for hire with a driver, used by a single passenger or small group of passengers, often for a non-shared ride. A taxicab conveys passengers between locations of their choice. This differs from public transport where the pick-up and drop-off locations are decided by the service provider, not by the customers, although demand responsive transport and share taxis provide a hybrid bus/taxi mode.

There are four distinct forms of taxicab, which can be identified by slightly differing terms in different countries:

·        Hackney carriages, also known as public hire, hailed or street taxis, licensed for hailing throughout communities

·        Private hire vehicles, also known as minicabs or private hire taxis, licensed for pre-booking only

·        Taxibuses, also come in many variations throughout the developing countries as jitneys or jeepney, operating on pre-set routes typified by multiple stops and multiple independent passengers

·        Limousines, specialized vehicle licensed for operation by pre-booking

Although types of vehicles and methods of regulation, hiring, dispatching, and negotiating payment differ significantly from country to country, many common characteristics exist. Disputes over whether ridesharing companies should be regulated as taxicabs resulted in some jurisdictions creating new regulations for these services.

"Taxicab" is a compound word formed from contractions of "taximeter" and "cabriolet". "Taximeter" is an adaptation of the German word taxameter, which was itself a variant of the earlier German word "Taxanom". "Taxe" (pronounced tax-eh) is a German word meaning "tax", "charge", or "scale of charges". The Medieval Latin word "taxa" also means tax or charge. "Taxi" may ultimately be attributed to τ?ξι? from τ?σσω meaning "to place in a certain order" in Ancient Greek, as in commanding an orderly battle line, or in ordaining the payment of taxes, to the extent that ταξ?δι (taxidi) now meaning "journey" in Greek initially denoted an orderly military march or campaign. Meter is from the Greek μ?τρον (metron) meaning "measure". A "cabriolet" is a type of horse-drawn carriage, from the French word "cabrioler" ("leap, caper"), from Italian "capriolare" ("to somersault"), from Latin "capreolus" ("roebuck", "wild goat"). In most European languages that word has taken on the meaning of a convertible car.

The taxicabs of Paris were equipped with the first meters beginning on 9 March 1898. They were originally called taxibread, then renamed taximètres on 17 October 1904.

Harry Nathaniel Allen of The New York Taxicab Company, who imported the first 600 gas-powered New York City taxicabs from France in 1907, borrowed the word "taxicab" from London, where the word was in use by early 1907.

An alternative, folk-etymology holds that it was named for Franz von Taxis, from the house of Thurn and Taxis, a 16th-century postmaster for Philip of Burgundy, and his nephew Johann Baptiste von Taxis, General Postmaster for the Holy Roman Empire. Both instituted fast and reliable postal services (conveying letters, with some post routes transporting people) across Europe.

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