Taxi fares always increase, both when the price of petrol increases (for obvious reasons) and when it decreases (then other reasons for the increase take over: tolls, compensation to taxi drivers or whatever). Cases where tariffs go down are as rare as whiteflies. But such a fly was seen in Rio de Janeiro. On fixed-price routes, many fares have been drastically reduced: for example, to go from Santos Dumont airport (for internal flights) to Santa Teresa, the fare, which cost 50 real (18€) has been reduced to 15 (5,4, XNUMX€).
The fixed-price routes had been introduced to overcome the prevarications of many taxi drivers, who chose longer routes to get from A to B in order to raise the price on the meter. But the method of calculating these prices must have left much to be desired: the newspaper O Globo demonstrated, with data and field surveys, that on many routes the metered rate would have been cheaper than the fixed one. For example, from the domestic airport to Copacabana the fixed fare was 29,50 real (€10,6), while the metered ride would cost 20 (€7,2).
Rio Times Online
