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What is the most popular ride-hailing service in NYC?

Answer: Taxi cabs.

Person calling a ride through a smartphone app
Shutterstock/lzf
There’s a new contender for the ride-hailing throne: good old-fashioned taxi cabs. According to data from Superfly Insights, the number of cabs hailed through an app far outpaced those for companies like Uber and Lyft.

Curb, which provides a mobile app specifically for hailing and paying for taxi cabs, reported a 152 percent increase in use in New York City between April and July of this year. The company also reportedly doubled its user numbers during the same period, while Uber and Lyft only saw an increase of about one-third. Curb said it has seen a 70 percent increase in monthly average downloads of its app from 2018.

One likely reason for this increase in popularity is pricing. Average New York City ride prices on Curb dropped from $16.46 to $13.63 between January and June of this year. Meanwhile, average ride prices for Uber and Lyft in the area went from $22 to $27 during the same period. Those companies said that a drop in the number of drivers, as well as difficulty hiring more, has affected their pricing.