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Comment by dmonitor | Hacker News Reader

> By comparison, the base fare for a yellow cab from Manhattan to JFK Airport is $70, according to NYC’s Taxi and Limousine Commission.

This makes $52 (which includes the driver tip) seem pretty reasonable. Am I missing something?

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Unless I've read the article wrong, the $52 journey was "to travel a short distance through downtown Manhattan to Uber’s corporate offices to interview him back in May."

The airport stuff was a different trip/person.

that was for a different ride. The comparison was with 113$.

>>> ”I got in the Uber to go to JFK. I was on my phone so I wasn’t paying attention. When I got to JFK, I looked to see what the price was to see what I’d tip. I saw $113. I was shocked. I was annoyed,” she told The Post Wednesday.

Also, PSA: Not sure it is still uptodate but years ago, official taxicab had set prices (~60$) to all NYC airports (JFK,LAG).

Yes I was going to bring this up. The NYC airport taxi fares are fixed price ($70). There are additional smaller fees applied based on time of day, tolls, etc, but a ride to/from Manhattan to JFK shouldn't be more than $85 or so inclusive of tip.

JFK/EWR have the flat rate, but LGA does not. However, it winds up costing about the same to get to any airport from midtown since LGA is closer but you don't get the flat rate.

My understanding is that EWR doesn't have the flat rate because it is outside of NYC (and is also so far away that I cannot imagine how much a cab would be for that destination)

Yeah they seem to have diferent fares based on the street you go to. https://www.newarkairport.com/to-from-airport/taxi-car-and-v...

EWR is actually faster to get to from certain parts of manhattan over JFK.

JFK is usually a speedy trip. Take the LIRR from Grand Central or Penn Station and it's 22 minutes to Jamaica, then about 10 minutes to the terminals.

If it's rush hour, the train pretty much always beats driving. Off hours, consider the $70 to be home in 10 minutes.

Yeah, I wish LGA would get the subway connection because the LIRR to JFK is usually faster and much cheaper than a taxi during rush hour to LGA.

Thanks, I didn't realize that. Good to know!

It is just clickbait. Everyone knows that the time the driver has to spend has to be incorporated in the cost, so omitting the time it took for the trip is an overt attempt at making something out of nothing. There are also tolls.

And the fact that no one forced them to pay $52, they could have used a taxi in midtown Manhattan.

I am guessing traffic was particularly bad or something, or the supply of drivers was more constrained for whatever reason.

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