Las Vegas company poised to introduce e-hailing app

As a local company prepares to roll out a smartphone application that will enable customers to hail rides from regulated transportation companies in Southern Nevada, its CEO is thankful to Uber for raising awareness of the need for the service.

Mark James, who heads Integrity Vehicle Solutions, a technology company spun off from the Frias Transportation Management group, believes companies such as Uber and Lyft have cleared a path for his company to unveil the state’s first e-hailing app.

“We really appreciate how well Uber has set the table for us with all their whining and complaining,” James said in an interview preceding Wednesday’s introduction of the Ride Genie app. “They have really created a fervor around, ‘Why isn’t there an app here?’”

Representatives of Uber, a San Francisco-based ride sharing company, have stated publicly that they want to enter the Las Vegas market, but the state’s strict transportation regulations would make it difficult, if not impossible, for the company to be profitable under its current business model.

Uber’s reluctance to comply with those regulations opened the door to Integrity, which has had Ride Genie on the drawing board for months as a product to accompany Ride Integrity, a GPS-based tool for transportation regulators to monitor Southern Nevada’s fleet of limousines and taxis.

On Wednesday, Integrity will specify how many vehicles will be enabled with Ride Genie and other details about the service that is expected to be available next week when companies have their tariffs for the app reviewed by the Nevada Transportation Authority, which regulates buses and limousines.

James said it wouldn’t be long after that that taxi companies would seek approval from the Nevada Taxicab Authority for the use of the app to hail taxi rides. There are more than 3,000 cabs in Clark County’s cab fleet.

Integrity’s immediate mission will be to market Ride Genie, to the city’s 40 million annual visitors as well as to local residents who depend on local transportation to get around.

James is confident the word will get out.

He already has contracts signed with transportation companies across the country for Ride Genie, but wanted to roll out the product first in Southern Nevada.

The knock against Uber has always been about how private vehicles used to transport passengers are insured and whether they’re inspected by regulators. Local transportation regulations also require drivers to be registered, tested and monitored.

“Ride Genie is a product delivered to the industry that will allow our regulated companies to do what Uber is doing within the context of regulations they have to follow,” James said.

Ride Genie isn’t a ridesharing app like those offered by Uber and Lyft, but it works similarly to them.

Customers first download the free app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store. A customer must fill out a registration form, which includes providing a credit card or Pay Pal account number for ride payments.

When a customer requests a ride, the closest available vehicle is contacted and when the driver accepts the assignment, both the driver and the customer are notified and have screens with maps that show the location of each party.

If the closest vehicle doesn’t accept the assigned ride after 30 seconds, the system moves to the next closest vehicle until the ride is assigned.

So far, five companies have either signed on or made verbal commitments to use Ride Genie — Bell Transportation, which runs Bell Trans and Presidential Limousine; On Demand Sedan; Frias Transportation, which operates Las Vegas Limousines; the Alan Waxler Group; and Omni Limo. Each of those companies must have tariffs approved by the Transportation Authority, which meets next week. The authority staff reviews the proposed rates and the three-member board would give final approval.

Each company would likely have slightly different rate plans, but one charge that is expected to be universal across the fleet is the fee to the customer to access the Ride Genie system — $5 per ride. That’s on top of the rates and fees for hourly use.

The taxi model would be slightly more complicated because Las Vegas rates are based on metered mileage and wait time when a cab isn’t in motion.

Integrity is developing a program that would mirror the taxi metering system so that the Ride Genie app could approximate the cost of a ride for a customer.

James said that 95 percent of cab rides originate within the resort corridor, the Las Vegas Convention Center or McCarran International Airport, but the Ride Genie app would increase the percentage of rides from residential areas.

Because Ride Genie has a built-in fee and a credit card number to charge if someone who requests a ride fails to appear, drivers will be more receptive to taking residential calls in addition to trolling the resort corridor.