The private hire service.
ZeroLanes UK is the part of the group a passenger deals with. It takes pre-booked journeys, quotes them at a fixed price before anything is confirmed, and answers for them afterwards. It is live today at zerolanes.co.uk.
Three kinds of journey
All three are pre-booked and all three are priced the same way. What changes between them is what the booking has to carry.
Airport transfers
To the terminal, or from arrivals. A flight number added at booking goes to the driver, so the right arrival is met. Meet and greet and child seats are extras chosen when the journey is booked, not arranged with the driver on the day and settled in cash.
Business travel
Companies travel on an account, with their bookers, their travellers and their cost centres set up before the first journey. Someone booking a car for a colleague still sees one price, agreed at booking, on the company account rather than on a card at the kerb.
Point to point
A single journey between two addresses, quoted before booking, with no account needed to take it. The same licence, insurance and vehicle checks stand behind it as behind a corporate transfer.
What is checked, and what happens when it lapses
Verification sits with ZeroLanes rather than with the transport company supplying the car. It is a gate in the dispatch path, so passing it is not optional and cannot be waived for a busy night.
- Licence
- A current private hire driver licence, and a licence for the vehicle itself. Verified by ZeroLanes against the document, not taken on trust from the company the driver works for.
- Insurance
- Hire and reward cover on the vehicle. A policy written for social and domestic use does not cover a paying passenger, so the check is for the right policy rather than for the existence of one.
- MOT
- A current MOT certificate for the vehicle that will carry the journey.
- DBS
- A DBS check on the driver, held against the driver rather than against the company.
- Expiry
- Every document is stored with the date it runs out. When that date passes, the driver or the vehicle stops being offered work automatically. Nobody has to notice, and nobody can decide to let it run a week longer.
The quote is the price
One number, set before you book
The price is calculated and shown before the booking is confirmed. Traffic, a diverted route or a slower day does not change it, because it was never a function of time spent.
What the journey costs us is a separate question
Transport companies bid for the work inside a floor and a ceiling ZeroLanes sets. That negotiation sits entirely behind the quote and has no route back to what the passenger pays.
A floor no bid can go under
Every job carries a minimum. A bid below it cannot be accepted at all, so the work cannot be won by cutting the number until the journey stops being worth doing properly.
The award is not simply the cheapest bid
Price is one input. Punctuality, acceptance rate, proximity and trust tier are scored alongside it, and a company that runs well earns a wider bidding band as it goes.
One region at a time, so nowhere is covered on paper only.
A national map drawn on the first day would be a map of places where nobody has checked a licence yet. Regions open one after another, each with verified drivers and verified cars behind it before journeys are taken there. Greater Manchester is the first.
Book a journey
Quoted at a fixed price before you book, with no account needed. The rest of the group is described on the solutions page.