I have lived in smallish cities all my life, and have taken a taxi exactly twice, once in Chicago with a friend who used to live there. So most of what I know about using taxis is from TV and movies.
Last night on Seinfeld two characters (strangers to each other) agreed to share a cab. How does that work exactly? Clearly they ride to whichever destination is closest, drop off the first person, and then the second person completes the trip. But how do you divvy up the fare? I’m thinking that when the first first gets out, they pay (to the first person? To the cabbie?) half of whatever the fare is up to that point (including tip). Then when the second person gets out, they pay the remainder.
It might be different in Chicago, but in DC, each person gets charged based on their final destination. There’s no actual splitting of the cost. So if I’m in a cab with another passenger and both of us are taking rides that would ordinarily be $6, we still pay our $6 apiece (plus tip).
Basically, the advantage is that even though cab drivers are allowed to pick up multiple fares (as long as they are going the same way), they don’t always do so. Splitting a cab is advantageous when it seems like it might be difficult to get one (i.e., bad weather, late-night event letting out).
However, if your final destination is close enough to that of the other passenger, you can pretend to be a duo traveling together, in which case you would only get charged a dollar extra. This works if you’re going to two destinations within a few blocks of each other and one passenger is willing to walk to his/her destination. This is the real advantage and quite feasible when, say, a theater production is getting out—people stand around and ask each other where they’re headed so that you can get a cab with someone going your way.
In the UK, the charge is according to distance travelled (plus a small amount to start with, and an even smaller amount for each additional person).
When sharing, you’re almost inevitable each travelling home. The person dropped off first is fairly familiar with what they’d have normally paid by themselves, and so gives that (calculated generously) to the second person. Any extra money from this just become the tip at the end - or the second person pockets it, in return for having put up with a longer journey.
Mind you, I always seem to be the first dropped off, so I can’t be too sure
I’ve done it a few times in Chicago, mostly coming from the airport. I don’t think there is really an official way to do it. I have always been the first dropped off, so I tend to pay about 3/4 of what the meter says and ask the co-rider if that is ok. Let’s say that my cab ride form the airport is usually about $35. The co-rider tells me that his normal amount (including tip, as does mine) is $40. So I try to work it out so we pay an even amount. So I will pay maybe $20 or $25 and then the person after me is left with about the same, figuring that the total will be higher than $40 but not too much higher. But I always check with my co-rider about what he thinks is fair.
My experience is similiar to what the OP described. Say two people are splitting a cab, person one pays half of the fare to their house and person two pays the other half plus the additional fare to their house. If there are 4 strangers in the cab and they’re all travelling to approximately the same place from my experience, cabbies will usually offer a deal. From the train station to their houses around a university, the cabbie will charge each one a flat rate. It’s a $12 trip from the station to my house, so the cabbie charged me and the other 3 students $7 each.
Do you mean that, in DC, if the two passengers are going to the same place, they’ll just pay one $6 fair plus tip between them, but if two people “split a cab” and get off at different destinations, only then does each person have to pay his/her full individual fare?
Works that way in Boston, as well, at least for every company I’ve ever traveled with. The rules are all printed up nicely and stuck to the back of the partition. Never quite seemed fair…
Here in NYC, whenever I’ve shared a cab, it’s worked more or less the way described in the OP. Which would make sense, because it’s Seinfeld. While I’ve never shared a cab with a complete stranger (more like the moderate stranger, say someone who I don’t know who attended the same work function), in my experience the person dropped off first might kick in just a little bit more than what he thinks would be half, sort of like a “just in case” something gets wacky with the fare.
A NYC cab must accept multiple stop fares, without turning the meter on and off. I have heard of some cases where the driver has tried to weasel around this one. As a courtesy, though, most people will tell the driver that there will be two or more stops when they are getting in the cab. If the meter goes on and off, it results in two fares that have a combined value that is higher than one long fare, if that makes sense. Sometimes, if the driver doesn’t realize that only one person is getting out, he will hit the meter. Once this happens, you (the passengers) are stuck with paying for two separate fares. There have been a few times that I suspected the driver knew only one person was exiting, but feigned confusion and reset the meter anyway (as well as a few times when I knew it was my fault for not being clear). Thus, I always state this up front, and repeat it several times.
In Japan, strangers usually don’t ride together, but if there is some reason why they would, each person is charged the full amount on the meter when they get out. (No tips.) For friends riding together, it’s the same as NYC, hence people will act like they know each other if they have to share taxis.
