Local taxi services may depend on phone calls, street-hailing and manual records, making it difficult to maintain a shared view of vehicle availability and booking status. This paper presents a code-level case study of an educational PHP and MySQL cab-booking prototype considered as a starting point for digitalizing local taxi operations. The study examines the supplied source files, SQL schema and main passenger, driver and administrator workflows. The system uses a browser interface, PHP request handlers and a MySQL database with six principal tables. The reviewed code supports passenger registration, cab search, pickup and drop-off entry, booking history, driver-side status updates and administrative maintenance of cabs and categories. The review also identifies important limits: no live GPS tracking, automated fare calculation or online payment is implemented, and no user or performance study is supplied. Security inspection finds inconsistent use of parameterized queries and MD5-based password handling. The contribution is a transparent artifact analysis and improvement roadmap, not a claim of a novel dispatch algorithm or proven service impact.

Afzal Ahmed Shaikh, Miss. Maya Nair, "Digitalizing Local Taxis: A Code-Level Case Study of a Web-Based Booking System" International Journal of Scientific Research and Engineering Development, V9(5): Page(1759-1763) September - October 2026. ISSN: 2581-7175. www.ijsred.com. Published by Scientific and Academic Research Publishing.