Taxi hailing enters 21st century

With the ability to hail and pay for yellow or green taxis via an app on your phone, Way2ride is out to make the taxi experience competitive with Uber.
The app allows users to hit a “HAIL” button to request a ride. Much like UberT, the closest cab around comes to the location, which can also be manually entered. Way2ride gives you an ETA in the number of minutes before your cab arrives, and syncs you up with the cab number, so when you’ve reached your destination and the meter is turned off, your phone pays it with the credit card you’ve put on file.

Much has been made of Uber’s dominance in the taxi arena, but it’s worth remembering that the vast majority of rides each day in New York City still occur in traditional taxis. In a recent Slate article, Alison Griswold explains the numbers:

According to the [Taxi & Limousine Commission], yellow cabs make an estimated 175 million trips each year, or about 485,000 per day; the average driver works 9.5-hour days. Uber, by contrast, averaged slightly more than 34,000 trips daily in New York City last fall—less than a tenth of the taxi industry’s ride volume.

The app is only available for VeriFone taxis, which make up about 10,000 of the city’s roughly 13,000 yellow and green cabs.
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