There was a time when hundreds — okay, more like 1,600 — cabdrivers roamed Minneapolis roads. They picked up riders who had either called a company dispatch center or stood on a curb, raised a hand and shouted "taxi!"
Not so anymore.
These days we're used to opening a rideshare app and having a driver arrive within minutes. Upward of 12,000 Uber and Lyft drivers work within city limits, according to the companies. Now, the two biggest players in the rideshare game are threatening to leave the city over a new City Council ordinance hiking driver pay.
That would leave the nine remaining taxi companies, which employ 14 drivers, to pick up the slack. What does it look like to hail a taxi in Minneapolis these days? And how does it compare to using the Uber and Lyft apps to order a ride? We took two trips to find out.
For the first, reporter Eder Campuzano and news intern Alex Karwowski rode from Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport to the Seven Points shopping mall in Uptown. The second trip was a ride from the Whittier neighborhood to downtown St. Paul, simulating a night of drinks followed by an event at Xcel Energy Center.
Here's what we found:
MSP to Uptown
Our reporters began their journey at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport where we synced up our watches, figuratively speaking, in front of the Delta Air Lines kiosk in Terminal 1. From there, we went our separate ways.
Alex set off for the airport's designated rideshare area and Eder took another escalator up to the taxi waiting area. There were three cabs parked in the waiting area, and two drivers immediately acknowledged the waiting reporter. He was in a Classic Travel taxi within seconds.
Alex hailed an Uber and waited about five minutes before his car arrived.
The drivers took nearly identical routes. Eder's dropped him off at the entrance to Curioso Coffee Bar 16 minutes and 59 seconds after he got into the vehicle. Alex's left him between Girard and Fremont Avenues on 31st Street 22 minutes and 43 seconds after pickup.
While Eder's ride was about 25% shorter, it was much more expensive. The fare alone was $39.50, while Alex paid $26.97 before tip. Taxis that operate out of MSP automatically charge $6.50 — that's $4 for an airport access fee and $2.50 for a flag drop (a minimum fee).
Uber charged Alex a $2.75 booking fee and a $3.62 airport surcharge, or $6.37 in mandatory fees. His driver, Greg Lasica, said he does the gig full-time. He works for both Uber and Lyft in a bid to "maximize my efficiency."
As he ferried Alex to Uptown, Lasica received a notification for a potential rider from the Uber app. The trip would take 13 minutes and pay $5. Lasica did some quick mental math — that amounted to a rate of a little more than $22 an hour. He declined the job.
"It'll fit for someone else," Lasica said.
Lasica likes the relationship he's built with Uber and Lyft. He's figured out a system that maximizes his profits. Lasica drives customers between MSP and downtown Minneapolis, picking up spare rides between the destinations.
Lasica believes the Minneapolis City Council should "stay out of it." Eder's driver declined to speak on the record. While the taxi and rideshare service models differed in price, the experience of traveling from the airport to Uptown was nearly identical.
But it's not every day that Minneapolitans are landing at MSP and shuttling home. Sometimes, they're merely looking for a ride to another neighborhood or to visit that other city across the river. And hailing a cab from one municipality to the other can prove to be a baffling ordeal.
Minneapolis to St. Paul
While Minneapolis proper has its fair share of venues for concerts and major league sports, a pair of notable destinations reside within St. Paul: Xcel Energy Center and Allianz Field. How much would it cost, and how long would it take, to take a taxi from a bar in the Whittier neighborhood in Minneapolis to downtown St. Paul?
We chose Mortimer's Bar and Restaurant as the starting point for our experiment. Unsure of whether any of the myriad taxi apps in Apple's App Store would be of use — many had one- or two-star ratings — we turned to Google.
A quick search for a cab company yielded several results, two of which allowed online booking and a quote for the ride. Blue and White Taxi estimated a cost of $28.50. Transportation Plus offered a lift for 60 cents less and a wait time of 23 minutes, so at 8 p.m. we prepaid for that trip.
The company texted a link to a map that tracked the driver as he left Golden Valley. At 8:15, the vehicle icon disappeared from the map, as did the estimated time of arrival. It popped back up at 8:21 with a new ETA, this time 11 minutes.
The driver arrived at Mortimer's at 8:33 p.m. and dropped off at Xcel Energy Center at 8:47 p.m. All told, it took 47 minutes to get from Whittier to downtown St. Paul. Lyft, by contrast, quoted a $16.90 fare at 8 p.m. with an estimated arrival at Xcel of 8:18 p.m.
Heading back to Minneapolis
While the trip from Minneapolis to St. Paul proved relatively easy, if a little long, returning to the Whittier neighborhood was something of a fiasco. Wary of the web-based taxi ordering systems, we went old school and dialed up three cab companies at about 10:05 p.m.
One of them quoted a fare of $60 and a pickup time of about 20 minutes.
A call to another went to voicemail. A dispatcher for a third company quoted a fare of about $40. There was just one problem: He didn't have any drivers available to make the trip from the St. Paul Grill back to Mortimer's.
We ended up ordering a Lyft at 10:17 p.m. The driver arrived at 10:19 p.m., just as the app advertised, with the $14.99 fare. We arrived at Mortimer's 14 minutes later.
