What’s the Best New Ride Services App to Get Around Austin?

Digital savant Omar Gallaga and his team at the Austin-American Statesman tested seven of them.

By Alain StephensJuly 28, 2016 12:27 pm

On-demand ride service companies Uber and Lyft decided to leave the Texas capitol city almost three months ago. This after a public vote over whether drivers should be required to have fingerprint background checks. The two ride hailing giants decided they’d be better off packing up their bags and moving on. Uber has a track record of this: they left Midland, Corpus Christi and Galveston, but are continuing to spar with regulators in the bigger profit centers like Houston and San Antonio.

Omar Gallaga, of the Austin American-Statesman’s 512 tech, says there are alternatives to fill the transportation vacuum.

“There was sort of a panic, an apocalyptic ‘How are we gonna get around?'” Gallaga says. “There’ve been a couple of home-grown one that have popped up that are based in Austin. But then there have been other ones that were already operating in other cities in Canada, in Phoenix, Arizona, that have expanded their services to Austin.”

Gallaga says he did a test of seven apps: Fare, Fasten, Getme, Hail-a-Cab, InstaRyde, Ride Austin and Wingz.

What you’ll hear in this segment:

– How they tested the apps
– Which apps have the fastest, cheapest rides