TIT4TAXI

TIT4TAXI is a collaborative coordination protocol and ledger system designed to resolve resource-allocation conflicts and market imbalances between competing transport groups sharing common transit infrastructures.

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💡 Core Principles

1. The Common Pool Resource (CPR) Problem

In metropolitan transportation, high-demand transit hubs—such as airport pickup terminals, train stations, and designated taxi stands—act as Common Pool Resources (CPRs). These hubs are highly subtractable (one driver picking up a passenger leaves fewer passengers for others) yet difficult to exclude drivers from. Without a structured coordination mechanism, these hubs suffer from the Tragedy of the Commons: chronic congestion, long idle times, predatory competition, and a degraded experience for both commuters and drivers.

2. Market Asymmetry, Territorial Licensing & Reciprocity

To establish a functional cooperative framework, the system must recognize and counteract the inherent market asymmetries and territorial licenses governing the transport cooperatives:

• Territorial Boundaries & Travel: While vehicles are permitted to travel freely between different territories (e.g., driving a passenger from Territory A to Territory B), a Cooperative is entitled to load/pick up passengers only in its home territory.
• Reciprocal Loading Rights: To prevent inefficient empty return trips, the system mediates the rights for drivers of one Cooperative to load passengers in the opposite territory.
• Token-Weighted Markets: Since different territories (markets) have unequal sizes, demands, and values, a naive 1:1 exchange is unsustainable. TIT4TAXI regulates reciprocity using a ledger with a token weighted by the established economic values of the respective markets. This ensures a balanced, fair, and proportional exchange of cross-border passenger-loading rights.

3. Elinor Ostrom's Governing the Commons

The theoretical foundation of TIT4TAXI is inspired by Elinor Ostrom's seminal work on Governing the Commons. Ostrom demonstrated that common-pool resources can be sustainably managed by the users themselves without relying solely on state regulation or privatization. TIT4TAXI operationalizes Ostrom's design principles by:

• Defining boundaries for resource access.
• Matching rules to local transport demand and hub conditions.
• Allowing collective modification of operational rules.
• Enabling low-cost conflict resolution through the ledger system.

4. The Role of the Controller

Trust in a self-governing commons is maintained through active verification. TIT4TAXI incorporates a Controller role responsible for ensuring rules are respected. The Controller:

• Monitors compliance with queueing, pickup, and token-spending rules.
• Verifies real-time event logs and check-ins at transit hubs.
• Audits ledger balances to prevent double-spending or unauthorized transactions.
• Applies graduated adjustments or flags violations when deviation from the rules is detected.

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A youtube link that explains the problem (in Italian, only audio) (Note: A.I. generated)

Paper/Preprint (with some A.I. assistance) Beyond the Tragedy of the Alleged Monopoly: A Commons-Based Cooperation Model with Weighted Reciprocity in the Taxi Sector

A youtube link that explains the paper (Tools: NotebookLM)

📄 License

This project is licensed under the Business Source License 1.1 (BSL-1.1).

• Before June 21, 2030: Licensed for non-production, evaluation, testing, and development use only. Commercial production use requires a separate license.
• On/After June 21, 2030: Automatically transitions to the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (GPL-3.0+).

For more details, see the LICENSE file.