NYC yellow cabs now offer a ticket 2 ride

Carpooling has come to New York City’s yellow cabs.

Two rival local ride-sharing apps teamed up on Tuesday to allow yellow-taxi users to share their ride with a passenger or two — in exchange for a 40 percent cut in the fare.

Those interested in sharing a back seat of a cab can use either an app from Curb — a ride-hailing service operated by Verifone that’s used by roughly 65 percent of the city’s 13,500 yellow taxis — or from Via, whose algorithms are adept at mapping out efficient routes for picking up and dropping off multiple passengers.

When requesting a ride share, passengers will only get the discounted meter fare if a second passenger en route shares the ride, the companies said. Customers willing to share pay a $1 booking fee instead of the usual $1.95 fee even if the ride isn’t shared.

“Just as we route the vehicle in the most efficient way, we’ll route an additional pas- senger,” says Daniel Ramot, Via’s cofounder and chief executive. “For example, if a passenger’s on 45th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, we might say walk to the northeast corner of Sixth Avenue, and we’ll pick you up there.”

For drivers, the Via-Curb partnership could deliver what Verifone marketing VP Jason Gross calls “an endless fare.”

“Drivers spend about 50 percent of their time looking for fares,” he explains. “This allows them to string those fares together in a very efficient way.”

Initially, the service will only be offered for rides between 32nd and 110th streets in Manhattan, but plans are afoot to expand it throughout the borough and the rest of the Big Apple.

The carpooling idea — which mimics similar services on tap from Uber and Lyft — is being touted by the likes of Meera Joshi, chair of the city’s Taxi & Limousine Commission.