#gogreenride

Recently, I've had to take a few more taxis than I normally do, so I tested a few interesting apps I've heard about.

Way2Ride: If you can look past the horrible name, the clunky design and the really lame taxi-rooftop ads that don't really explain the value proposition at all, this is actually a pretty awesome little app. Way2Ride is an iOS app that lets you check in to a yellow cab and pay (automatically) via the app.

Most of us are pretty annoyed by the clunky dance you do at the end of the ride:

taxi driver presses "trip ended" button on his state of the art Taxitronic device from 1975

you see the amount on the touchscreen in the back seat that uses technology from 2004 and runs Windows NT (seriously)

you tap "credit card", then with way too much effort attempt to tap "$2.00" as the tip but instead tap $200.00" and have to start over

you swipe your card and wait for the smoke monster from "Lost" to connect to the mainframe on a 2400 baud modem

then if all works out, you can get a legible receipt if you're lucky that you'll promptly attempt to stuff in your wallet while jumping out in midtown traffic

but you'll probably drop it and be unable to expense that ride for work after all

all while a guy is standing beside the taxi waiting for you to GTF out

Oh, and this is all happening with a honking car behind you.

There's a better way.

You see, the value of these taxi apps like Uber and Hailo is actually the last part of the trip where you get to your destination and get out. The least compelling part of these apps tend to be the actual hailing part. (And the part that, surprise, barely works at all - in June there were only 20,000 e-hail pickups, which is less than .25% of the daily number of yellow cab rides.) 

The e-hail apps claim that walking outside and physically putting up your hand to summon a car is so barbaric and crazy in this tech-driven age.  Yet most of the time in most places in NYC, that is a far more efficient way to do it. Wait a second: I can walk outside and put up my hand and in less than 15 seconds I can get a car to pick me up? That's amazing! PS. In rush hour, (basically) no one gets a taxi - these apps fail (I've tried many times), my hands fail, and that sucks.

But most of the 500,000 taxi rides each day are hailed almost immediately, without having to pull out a clunky phone on a busy street, with just a hand. (So that's what we're all used to and most NY-ers know that's pretty easy in most places when it's not raining or snowing, and not during rush hour.

Which leaves the last part of the trip. That's the real pain point, I have found. And this shitty little app actually does an incredible job of solving it.

You hop in the cab, open the app and hold it to the TV. It checks you into that cab by using an inaudible audio signal! That's pretty neat for an old and crusty taxi POS company to pull off. You just hold up the app and it verifies which taxi you're in. You connect your credit card with the app (just like every other taxi app) and then you're ready to rock.

When the cabby presses the "end of ride" button, the app immediately pays (using whatever tip % you've set - which can be 0 if you feel like it! and can be set for each ride). It automatically charges your card, you get an emailed receipt plus the ride is saved in the app. It's an incredibly seamless experience.

One downside is it only works with taxis that use the VeriFone point of sale system - this is the credit card and shitty touch screen in the back of the cab that was obsolete and shitty the day it came out and the iphone and capacitive touch screens were already mainstream. But that's a different gripe.

The other major company in the back of cabs is the ironically named Creative Mobile Technologies, which I don't think I have to mention... is anything but. So it's annoying when you hail a cab and want to use Way2Ride but can't because Creative Mobile Technologies - neither creative, nor mobile - has yet to build a mobile app. I think I mentioned this was ironic, but this is a really good example.

Go Green Ride: This is another really poorly named service that comes with the worst app you've ever seen. They're basically a scheduled car service. That's it. But the amazing thing is a) the cars are really nice (complete with iPads mounted in the back), b) the drivers are good and c) the prices are nearly identical or lower than yellow cabs! So it's like a half-priced Uber.

I couldn't believe this so when we had to go from our apartment on the Upper West Side to Westchester, I booked a Go Green Ride. It quoted me $53. To put that in perspective, an UberX would have cost at least $120, and I even used a yellow cab calculator to discover that a taxi would run us about $70.

The car showed up early and I could track him from the app (clunky but it worked). The ride was perfect, the driver was great, the car was a brand new hatchback hybrid (I think). We drove nearly 40 minutes and yes, they charged me what they quoted.