A Charlotte cab booked ahead can now quote the fare before the ride starts. City Council let cab companies do it on Monday, Nov. 9, as ride-hailing apps do, in the first overhaul of the city's taxi and limousine rules since 2017. The rules passed without a hand raised against them, and the ordinance says they take effect on adoption.
The set fare came from a cab company. Mayur Khandelwal, vice president of Crown Cab, told council that over the weekend the father of one of his daughter's teammates said he prefers Uber because "I don't trust a driver who's fiddling with a meter."
Until now, a Charlotte cab had to run its meter on every fare, the agenda says. Under the new rules, a cab booked through an app can charge the app's set price. So can a cab booked through the cab company itself, under wording council adopted from a handout Khandelwal gave it. A cab hailed on the street still runs the meter, and so does a cab taking a fare from the airport taxi line.
What else changes
The overhaul began with an August 2024 letter from cab and car-service companies asking for 19 updates, the city's agenda says. Under the ordinance as presented:
- Cabs and other vehicles for hire can be up to 15 years old, up from 10.
- Drivers take a five-panel drug test instead of a 10-panel test.
- Black cars and other unmetered vehicles bill in 15-minute blocks instead of hour-long ones.
How the set fare got in
When city staff first walked council through the rules in April, they did not recommend upfront pricing across the board, as we reported then. By Oct. 26, the City Attorney's Office proposed allowing it, but only for cabs booked through national apps, with Curb and Arro named as examples; Council Members Dimple Ajmera and Reneé Johnson asked about local companies using their own apps.
Khandelwal used his three minutes on Monday to ask for the same thing for companies like his. "We would like to have clear pricing with our customers in the same ways that TNCs do," he said, using the industry term for ride-hailing companies. If the rules passed as written, he said, "taxicabs will be in the back of the line behind TNCs, limousines, and black cars."
He was not asking to get rid of meters, he said, or to let drivers and passengers haggle. Pressed on what he wanted, he said a company and a customer should be able to agree on a price: "your fare from A to B is going to be $30, end of sentence."
Council Member Joi Mayo moved to adopt the overhaul with upfront pricing through "national and independent" brokering apps, the services that send riders to licensed cabs. "This levels the playing field," Ajmera said. The City Attorney's Office marked Khandelwal's handout as an exhibit, and Mayor Rob Harrington said the motion adopts the wording in it.
The city had not posted the ordinance as adopted, or the handout, on its records site as of Wednesday.