New York City taxis to be added to Uber app

New Yorkers will soon be able to request an iconic yellow cab on the Uber app through a deal made public Thursday.

The agreement, first reported by The Wall Street Journal, will go into effect later this spring.

New York City’s licensed technology providers, Curb Mobility and Creative Mobile Technologies, will integrate their existing software for hailing cabs into Uber, opening up access to a much larger user base.

“This is a real win for drivers – no longer do they have to worry about finding a fare during off peak times or getting a street hail back to Manhattan when in the outerboroughs,” Uber’s director of business development, Guy Peterson, said in a statement. “And this is a real win for riders who will now have access to thousands of yellow taxis in the Uber app.”

The deal between Uber and New York City’s yellow cabs comes after the ride hailing app and others like it have quickly outpaced the taxi industry.

Ride sharing companies significantly undercut taxis when moving into cities in the early 2010s, heavily subsidizing customer rides and gaining loyal users in the process.

Under the deal announced Thursday, users will pay the same fare for taxi rides as they would for a standard Uber ride.

Fees for those trips are calculated using only the time a driver spends with passengers and Uber drivers often do not know how much they will make from a trip until they accept it.

Riders will only be able to book trips with taxis that are connected to the smartphone apps run by Curb Mobility and Creative Mobile Technologies, Curb and Arro.