Tried and true, the subway is the workhorse of the city. The system is composed of 34 lines and 469 stations, covering 233 miles and carrying just over 5.6 million people a weekday. That’s like putting every man, woman and child living in Chicago, Boston, Washington D.C., Baltimore, and San Francisco onto the city's subways every day. And, often, it feels that way.
So, what do you do when you just can't bring yourself to descend into the packed, subterranean bowels of the city? Grab a car, of course.
New York City is home to a dizzying array of car-hailing services and schemes. It can often feel like it's harder to pick a car-hailing option than it is to simply walk. To help you out, we thought we'd try and make a little bit of sense out of it all. Here goes:
Obviously, at this point, you’re very well acquainted with Uber. The San Francisco-based giant operates in New York City in a big way. They offer UberPool, UberX, UberBLACK, UberXL, and UberSUV. They also have services that allow you to hail a car that is wheelchair accessible or equipped with a baby seat. They even have a service that lets you send something to anyone in the city with UberRUSH — a sort of messenger service. One of the biggest pain points people have with Uber's service is surge pricing, which can make an otherwise normal ride nosebleed expensive.
Uber drivers took 4.7 million trips in April.
Lyft is a pretty straightforward competitor to Uber that came out about three years after Uber launched. Their service is similar to Uber’s and in New York, they offer four service levels: Line, Lyft, Plus or Premier. Savvy ride hailers will often switch between Lyft and Uber to see which service has a driver closer or which one does not have surge fees.
Lyft drivers took around 750,000 trips in April.
Via is an import from Israel — sort of. The company is headquartered in New York City, but the service started in 2012, the same year as Lyft, by two Israeli entrepreneurs who styled the service after Israel's Sherut taxis. The service works by matching multiple passengers headed in the same direction with a driver. Think of it like a bus and an Uber had a baby. Via offers $5, flat-fee shared-rides anywhere in Manhattan below 125th Street and recently expanded their service to include Williamsburg. Pricing can get a little complicated, but you can get all the details here.
Via drivers took almost half a million people in April.
Gett is an actual import from Israel in that the company is headquartered in Tel Aviv. Gett’s big thing is that they offer a ‘surge-free guarantee’ and black car service. The company received a huge vote of confidence from Volkswagen in May, who invested $300 million in the service, acquiring a controlling stake.
Gett took just over 130,000 rides in April.
Juno is the new kid on the block. The FiDi-based company is trying to take on Uber in an interesting way — by winning over all of their drivers. Juno is trying to capitalize on Uber driver discontent, by offering drivers some impressive perks and incentive structures. From a consumer’s standpoint, Juno is great because they don't charge surge fees, but they do pay their drivers extra when demand is high. Drivers get paid more, while riders never even know the difference.
The Yellow Cab
Yellow cabs, or medallion taxis, are the only taxis allowed to pick up passengers who hail them in any of the five boroughs. There are also green taxis, but they’re only allowed to pick up passengers in the outer boroughs and Upper Manhattan. Yellow cabs are everywhere, and around 51,000 people are licensed to drive them. Despite competition from ride-hailing services, yellow cabs are still ubiquitous in Manhattan, competitively priced and easy to hail. Outside of Manhattan, that's a different story.
According to Recode, there were over 11 million taxi trips this last April.
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