The present paper focuses on the study of taxicab services in Barcelona and its metropolitan area. This zone involves a 28 municipalities in 475 km2 and it has nearly 3 million inhabitants. Within the Barcelona Metropolitan Area taxi service are reulated by the IMT ( Institut Metropolità del Taxi). Taxi licenses, vehicle standards (vehicle models, colours, taximeters) and fares are controlled by the IMT. In the recent years, the taxi sector has offered good economic perspectives and the number of drivers has gown considerably. Hence, taxi supply is 17% hiher than 5 years ago. However, demand has been affected by the economic crisis and the increase of fares during the last years. These two factors have caused and imbalance between supply and demand, and significant reduction of taxi driver’s income. This fact has made more relevant the inefficiencies on the system.

The Centre for Innovation in Transport (CENIT) is carrying out a project of diagnosis of the taxi sector in Barcelona for the IMT. We have developed a methodology to obtain certain Key Performance Indicators of the taxi sector from data recorded by 30 taximeters during the year 2009. KPIs are essential in order to assess the overall performance and to identify its inefficiencies. In addition, Decision Support Systems will use these variables to evaluate the optimization and improvements of the system. This paper aims to describe the methodology followed and the main results obtained as well as to discuss where the main inefficiencies lie.