Calculate taxi fares using Bing Maps

I’m really starting to fall in love with Bing Maps. Last week, I was blown away by the preview of the slick new Street Slide feature in Microsoft’s online mapping tool. This week, Microsoft has added another great feature to Bing Maps – a taxi fare calculator.

The Taxi Fare Calculator is available now on the Bing Maps web site, appearing in the sidebar of the map page. All you need to do is select a city and  enter your start and destination points. The app will calculate how much the total fare will be, factoring in initial charges, waiting time fees and the price per mile for taxis in that particular city.

Luckily, my city is one of the 48 in the World covered by the Taxi Fare Calculator, and I’ve been finding the Bing app very useful. Results aren’t always completely accurate, but they’re not far out. It’s perfect for figuring out if it’s worth being lazy by not walking somewhere.

It’s a bit clunky to use at the moment, but Taxi Fare Calculator is the exactly the kind of simple, useful innovation that Bing Maps needs in order to compete with Google Maps. However, I would love to see the app added as a feature to the Bing Mobile app too, because it would really come into its own out on the sidewalk.