Friday, February 28, 2020

There's one less taxi in town

18 months ago, there were two cab companies in town. By the time Black & White Taxi called it a day last year, the hometown didn't have any taxi service based in the city at all.

Capitaland Taxi, Black & White's sole competitor within the confines of the Collar City, had closed its office on Ferry & 4th Streets several months back While the company sign is still on the windows, the building was leased out to a pop-up restaurant operated by the owners of nearby Sunhee's Farm & Kitchen.

Today comes word that Capitaland has closed its one remaining central office in Colonie, eight months after ending a temporary rental of a kiosk at Albany International Airport.

Capitaland Taxi goes out of business

The above image was acquired from WNYT's website.

What did in Black & White and Capitaland? The emergence of ridesharing services such as Uber, which has an app customers can put on their phones. I don't know if the local cab services have gotten that far.

Black & White's office on Fulton Street remains empty as of press time. There are still cabs, based out of town, that pass through the city limits of the hometown, but hiring one of these cabs may very well now be pricey, as they're trying to compete with Uber.

Let's face it. An era is over, or soon will be.

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