The taxi strike is over and rates are back to normal, but many people may have discovered that ride-sharing in a cab is a great way to save money. Fortunately, there are a few online services that can facilitate sharing a cab and splitting the fare to the airport or around town with fellow New Yorkers. Consider it yellow-carpooling. Last year we wrote about hitchsters.com, the online service that formalizes ride shares by matching users through its database. Hitchsters.com works by matching flight information with time, dates, and locations of passengers to make splitting a cab to the airport easier. Similarly, the recently launched SplitaCab.com also focuses on sharing rides to the three major area airports using a GoogleMaps mashup. Both services focus on rides to the airport to and from Manhattan, although hitchsters.com has a beta version that includes Brooklyn.
Rideamigos.com offers a wider variety of ride-sharing. In addition to New York, it also includes splitting fares in San Francisco and Chicago. And beyond just rides to the airport, the site allows people to share rides on a semi-regular and regular basis. This presents the possibility for people who use cabs every day to commute to work or take their kids to school to actually carpool with cabs. Almost all of the sites tout reducing pollution as a benefit of sharing rides in addition to saving money.
The Taxi & Limousine Commission's page on taxi fares, including a detailed breakdown on how much it costs to get to and from airports depending on how many passengers and the point of origination or destination can be found here. Pictured above is the new NYC Taxi logo, which all cabs must feature starting next month.
