Here’s How Much It Cost Us To Take A Yellow Taxi 3000 Miles From New York To Los Angeles

Hopefully, you’ve all been following the saga of the $800, 375,000-mile ex-NYC taxi that we pulled out of a Copart yard, where it was leaking every possible fluid (I think somehow there was actual bile in there, even) and was so neglected and filthy that it had a biohazard sticker on it. It was a basket case. But a bunch of us here at the Autopian pulled our time and skills and resources and superstitious rituals together and got this thing not just running again, but able to drive all the way across the freaking continent.

But that’s just one part of the story! Driving a once-effectively-dead NYC taxi across country just because is certainly plenty of reason to do that, but we actually had another reason, a scientific reason, because we had a question we wanted to answer, and the only actual way to get an answer was to just actually do it, and doing it meant driving across the country.

The question was a simple one, one a child might ask, but not a childish question: how much would it cost to take a NYC Taxi all the way across the country?

 

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And by all the way across, I mean from New York all the way to Los Angeles, a full coast-to-coast run. Actually, we did even more, as I drove the taxi from Chapel Hill, NC to New York, but we’ll include that as a separate callout when we reveal the Total Cost, which I promise we’ll get to soon.

Incredibly, it doesn’t actually seem that anyone has done this before, which surprises me. But also delights me, as I would be proud to have driven the definitive NY-LA taxi run.

So, let’s get into how our taxi fare was computed. We wanted to go by the book, which in this case is the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission, who has this complex set of rules for how taxi fares are calculated:

• $3.00 initial charge.

• Plus 70 cents per 1/5 mile when traveling above 12mph or per 60 seconds in slow traffic or when the vehicle is stopped.

• Plus 50 cents MTA State Surcharge for all trips that end in New York City or Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Dutchess, Orange or Putnam Counties.

• Plus $1.00 Improvement Surcharge.

• Plus $1.00 overnight surcharge 8pm to 6am.

• Plus $2.50 rush hour surcharge from 4pm to 8pm on weekdays, excluding holidays.

• Plus New York State Congestion Surcharge of $2.50 (Yellow Taxi) or $2.75 (Green Taxi) or 75 cents (any shared ride) for all trips that begin, end or pass through Manhattan south of 96th Street.

• Plus MTA Congestion Pricing toll of 75 cents for Yellow and Green Taxi for the area of Manhattan south of and including 60th Street, excluding the FDR Drive, West Side Highway/Route 9A, and the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel connections to West Street. For more information on the MTA’s Congestion Pricing toll, please visit: : https://new.mta.info/tolls/congestion-relief-zone/taxi-fhv-tolls

• Plus tips and any tolls.

• There is no charge for extra passengers, luggage or bags, or paying by credit card.

• The on-screen rate message should read: “Rate #01 – Standard City Rate.”

• Make sure to always take your receipt.

We got a taximeter – a swanky Pulsar Taximeter 2030R, widely considered to be the Cadillac Cimarron of taximeters, with a built-in thermal printer and everything – that is calibrated to current NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission rules and standards, so we know we’re getting the proper tally for everything.

That basically means a $3 initial charge at the start of each day’s trip, then 70 cents per 1/5 mile above 12 mph or every 60 seconds when sitting or stuck in traffic. With the trip now over, we’re adding the standard fees/taxes. Things like rush hour surcharges we’ll skip since we drove out of the city before they were in effect. LA is way south of 96th street, so that charge is going to remain in there. Tolls were calculated using Matt’s EZPass, which we borrowed. Additional tolls were calculated based on plate readers capturing us along the way (specifically, in Kansas).

I had to keep an eye on the taximeter pretty regularly because, perhaps unsurprisingly, the thing only goes up to $999.99 before it rolls over, like an old video game. So, every time I saw the thing roll over, I made a note on a scrap of paper I kept by the meter, indicating how many thousands the tally was at. Fancy, right?

Here’s the actual scrap of paper in-situ, on the dash, by the taximeter:

Fascinating, right?

I also used the little thermal printer in the taxi to get printouts of the day’s drive (except for the first NC to NY run, because I was exhausted and forgot, okay, but I wrote it all down), and you can see what that looked like here, on the back of my cat Tomato, because, let’s be real, everyone knows what a printed receipt looks like and I needed to goose up that image, somehow:

Here’s a close-up of the note paper and the receipt tape, if you’d like to start evaluating yourself:

Of course, that doesn’t show the full story. Happily, we have the full story right here, with all of the relevant charges and fees and everything. Are you ready to see how much it costs to take a NYC taxi from the Bronx all the way to Los Angeles? Too bad, I’m showing you anyway!

NY/NJ/PA Fees:
$19.29
$1.50
$5.54

CHARGES
$1.00 Improvement Surcharge
$2.50 New York State Congestion Surcharge
$0.75 Cents MTA Congestion Pricing toll (since LA is way south of 96th Street)

Kansas Tolls:
$5.09

OTHER TOLLS:
$31.42

FARE:
$11,852.6

SURCHARGES
$4.25

Total:
>>>>>> $11,888.27 <<<<<<

Holy crap. Almost $12,000! I mean, it was a private trip in your own little air-conditioned compartment with a genuine Atari 600XL computer to provide all the entertainment you need, but that’s still a crapton of money.

I mean, if I were to try and find one of the most expensive commercial flights from NYC to LA, say a first-class flight that leaves tomorrow, even that is a fraction of the cost of this taxi trip, at about $1,500 to $2,800:

Of course, chartering a private jet from NYC to Los Angeles is a good bit more expensive, at about $35,000, but considering that the private jet takes about five and a half hours instead of the, oh, six days or so the taxi trip took, perhaps you might feel that it’s worth the triple cost.

You could also consider a train, but Amtrak doesn’t have a direct route, so you’d need to take a train like the Lake Shore Limited to Chicago, which takes over 19 hours and costs about $200, and then a 44-hour train from Chicago to LA, but you can get a private room at least for about $1,124. Still way cheaper than a taxi, and you can pee en route without the aid of an empty Gatorade bottle.

I’m starting to think that taking a NYC taxi across the country may actually not be a great use of one’s resources, both relating to time, money, and general sanity.

If we add the costs of the NC to NYC leg of the trip, which showed up on the meter at about $2,780.50, then that would bring the total to $14,668.77, but a lot less people care about the Chapel Hill-New York-Los Angeles taxi trip cost than just the NY to LA one. Still, you have a right to know.

Overall, though, I’m pretty delighted that we finally solved this mystery! We can now definitely say that if one were to hail a taxi in New York City and demand the driver ferry them to Los Angeles, post haste, you can expect to drop about $12,000, and that’s not counting food, gas, or hotels. Maybe you packed your own food, maybe you stole your uncle’s gas card, and maybe you’ll just sleep in the taxi, spooning with the driver, but even with all of those accommodations, you’re still dropping an absurd amount of money. Also, this doesn’t assume a tip. However, if you’re making someone drive you from The Bronx to Los Angeles and you’re not tipping at least 10% you’re going to have one angry cabbie cursing you the entire way back from LA to NY.

The important thing is that we now, finally, have an answer! A hefty $11,888.27 of money very poorly spent! What a terrible idea; I’m so glad we did it.