Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Cab cost

Need to take a taxi in the city and want an estimate of the fair? Go to boston.taxiwiz.com, plug in the starting point and destination, and you'll get the price of your ride. The calculation does seem to take into account that half the tunnel fare is charged to passengers going to Logan Airport, but not to those dropped off in residential parts of East Boston.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

One of the things I learned when I first moved here was that I had to trick taxi drivers to take me home when I was out after the T stopped running. I usually have to hop into the taxi, let it start rolling and then tell them where I want them to go and then get on my phone and call my husband. For some reason this works. Otherwise, taxis refuse to come to the residential areas of East Boston. I was later told that this was because taxi's are charged an extra $1.50 when they go through the tolls back into the city. As it was explained, that basically eats up a lot of their tip - if they even get one.

I assume the extra toll is basically a business tax, which I am not entirely against. But it appears that the people who are paying the tax aren't the companies themselves, but the drivers and the residents who have a hard time getting taxis to take them home in the wee hours of the morning.

With that said, I am open to the idea that perhaps the drivers are just whining about the extra fee. Perhaps they simply don't want to come to this neighborhood and the extra toll is just an excuse.