Services like Lyft and Uber hit NYC cabs hard over the last few years, but our struggling Yellow cabs were thrown a lifeline this week thanks to two popular apps.
Ridesharing is just a wonderful thing. Passengers, usually strangers, share a single vehicle to reduce the price of their journey. The secondary, and less evident, effects of these services are a reductipon in traffic congestion and automobile emissions… Maybe that’s what tipped Uber (UberPOOL) and Lyft (lyft line) over the edge of their humble competition, yellow cabs.
It seems that Yellow Cabs aren’t going down without a fight though. New York Post reports that once competing hailing apps, Curb and Via, have gotten togerther to bring ridesharing to over than 7,000 of yellow cabs. together they will give users to option to rideshare with other yellow cab passengers for a cheaper fare.
Using either Curb or Via can enable the option to share a taxi in exchange for a cheaper booking fee ($1 as opposed to $1.95) and enjoy their trip for 60% of the total price of the journey. The passengers are paired with nearby app users with carpooling enabled who are trying to hail a yellow cab. Daniel Ramot, the co-founder and CEO of Via, told the New York Times:
“I think New Yorkers may be more willing to share than we give them credit for, especially if the price is right,”
The service officially launched on Tuesday, only on routes between 32nd Street and 110th Street in Manhattan. All being well, the service will expand to the rest of Manhattan and the other four boroughs in the very near future.
Featured image source [Flickr | Asim Bharwani]