As the GPS debate simmers in Bermuda, cab companies in Canada claim their business has become more profitable and efficient after installing it.

The Casino cab company in Halifax, Nova Scotia, put GPS in its cars a year ago to speed up service. The majority of cabs in the city operate by a voice dispatching system, but Casino decided to adopt the technology to stay ahead of its two dozen competitors who operate by voice.

Operations manager Brian Herman told that drivers initially resisted the technology but it has increased call volume by 50 percent. The company?s 260 drivers own their individual cabs, as do all drivers in Nova Scotia, and pay a weekly fee for dispatching service. He paid $250 to install the terminals in each cab.

?People have made general comment that the service is better and more efficient,? said Mr. Herman.

Mr. Herman said he has been following reports of the Bermuda taxi drivers? job action and does not believe the system should be made mandatory.

?The nature of this business is that drivers would be apprehensive, but I don?t think mandating is the way to go.

?It?s each person?s choice whether or not they want to better themselves to make more money and feel safer,? said Mr. Herman.

He said drivers in Nova Scotia were wary of paying any extra costs and were hesitant about using the technology since some cannot read.

In Halifax, GPS works by dividing the city into 21 zones. Taxi drivers in each zone have the names and addresses of the customers dispatched to the digital terminal in their cab. There are roughly 1,200 cabs in Halifax, a city of 370,000 people.

Calls to the main office come in on a first come, first serve basis and are dispatched digitally in the same manner. If a driver wants to wait in a particular area for a call he can choose to do so, and he is registered by number in the system. If a driver chooses to accept business in another area the calls are listed and the decision can be made to drive to a particular zone for business.

Mr. Herman said a thief who stole one driver?s car was apprehended by Police within the hour when the exact location of the car was revealed. Another driver who was stabbed by a passenger was able to hit the panic button, located on the peripheral arm outside of the customer?s view, to alert the authorities immediately.

Drivers can also enjoy a chatter free ride which the company claims reduces driving-related stress.

?They can talk to customers without the voice chatter from the dispatcher,? said Mr. Herman. ?Half didn?t want this originally but after two years they say they will not go back to voice.?

Mr. Herman said the company does not have an internal meter in each driver?s car so their earnings are kept private.

General manager of Aero Cab, Tim Auld, told that he cannot afford to install the GPS system.

?It?s speedy if you can afford it,? he said. ?For a smaller company, it?s not feasible, it would depend on your revenues.?

He said taxi drivers in his company, with a fleet of 76 cabs, would probably want GPS as long as they didn?t have to pay for the technology.

Rather than focus on the system itself, Mr. Auld said the issue is not the technology.

The issue is how to service customers efficiently at peak hours, such as on Friday and Saturday nights, when there is an overload of calls and not enough taxis to send out to the calls immediately.

?The dispatchers are dispatching as quickly as they get the calls, but the problem is that sometimes there are too many calls and not enough taxis.?

In 2001 the Toronto City Council ruled that all drivers had to put GPS technology in their cabs for driver and customer safety. Jim Bell, the general manager of Diamond Taxi in Toronto also said he has been following the Bermuda taxi drivers? dispute.

?Someone?s done a real bad sales job,? he said. ?It doesn?t sound as if there?s enough information.

?With a system like this you should be able to sit down with the drivers, present your information, listen to what they have to say and have enough information about the efficiencies of the system to counter their arguments.?

Mr. Bell said the company?s fleet of 450 cabs were outfitted with GPS terminals in addition to new software for the main office for a price of approximately $650,000. Drivers, who own their own vehicles, were not required to pay for GPS.

?If they had to pay they would be very reluctant. It?s money out of their own pocket without them being able to see the immediate return of the investment,? he said.

Mr. Bell claimed the company?s call count has increased and the time it takes from when a customer calls for a cab to actually being seated in the backseat has decreased. The technology has reduced the time it takes to get a cab from 12 minutes before 2001 to seven minutes today, he said.

?What would happen before is a cab would go to low call areas like the suburbs or an area that is typically not busy and return.

?Now with the system we can offer them a call four or five kilometres away and give them a fare on the way back. From an efficiency perspective it reduces the amount of dead miles they drive everyday.?