At the end night with friends, taking a cab is common.
This Gothamist article summarizes this WSJ article's split strategies well:
- trip-leg
- proportional-savings
- game-theories
- Talmudic
My friends and I don't do any of this. Typically, we split the fare by the number of humans in the car along with drunk approximations of distance & cost.
Is it fair? Well, sorta 😅 ... but the 'trip-leg' strategy sounds like an awesome replacement. Every time the cab stops, all riders in the cab split the cost up to that point.
Let's assume Alan, Beth & Carl take a cab where the total cab fare was $100:
- At Alan's stop, 30% of the trip, the fair => $30 / 3 => A,B, & C contribute $10 to the 'pot' -- OR -- Alan pays $5 to both Beth & Carl
- At Beth's stop, 50% of the trip, the fair => $50 / 2 => B & C contribute $25 to the 'pot' -- OR -- Beth pays Carl $40 after getting $5 from Alan
- At Carl's stop, 20% of the trip, the fair => $20 / 1 => C delivers the pot & his final contribution of $20 -- OR -- Carl pays $100 after getting $5 from Alan & $40 from Beth
...with final totals of:
- Alan paying $10 instead of $30 by himself
- Beth paying $35 instead of $50 by herself
- Carl paying $55 instead of $100 by himself
FFS helps you calculate your shares based on the 'trip-leg' theory.
FFS...
- is VERY NYC focused on standard (non MTA strike) days. FFS does not consider any zones
- doesn't take any special rules (like airport or group ride flat fees) into account.
- doesn't take traffic into account. If the Westside Highway becomes a parking lot cost percentages get weird in this version.
FFS is very much a work in progress with more features coming like...
- WIP: Removing the ugly blue report box 😅
- Auto fare calculations assuming perfect traffic conditions.
- A map showing the routes taken. (It's good to see what routes are assumed)
- Adding time taken between stops. (Following the perfect route doesn't take traffic into account)
- Venmo integration to make getting payment easier. (Get your money )
Other feaures, if desired, should/will be added as issues to this repo 😎