Several years ago when the rideshare companies started to take over the taxi business, a flat rate was established from the airport to the Strip hotels. Each hotel has a zone and a set price. There was talk of setting a flat rate for the ride to downtown hotels, but to this day I still have to request the taxi driver take Paradise Road rather than get long hauled. Has there been any further discussion on this?
Information on the fare-zone scheme for downtown is pretty thin and in this case, no news is bad news for cab passengers.
The most the Taxicab Authority would tell us is, “There was some initial discussion about designating a fourth zone encompassing downtown, but the idea didn’t advance beyond that.”
Long hauling is still in practice, at least to a certain extent, but we can say that, thanks to rideshares like Uber and Lyft, the cab companies and drivers may be experiencing some karmic payback for the scam. As veteran investigative reporter George Knapp told us, “Long hauling is one of the reasons the taxi industry collapsed here, whittled down to a few remaining companies. A Taxicab Authority license was once like a license to print money, but the fact that so many drivers screwed over visitors and refused to service locals who needed a ride from somewhere other than the Strip essentially decided the industry's ultimate fate.”
Rideshare platforms added another nail in that coffin. As evidence, the number of taxi trips has fallen from nearly 28 million rides in 2014 to just over 13 million in 2025. That's more than half. Meanwhile, the number of registered cabs has been reduced by only around 5%, from 3,430 in 2011 to 3,250 today. Cab drivers are working longer hours to make much less money than they used to.
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