Getting a Cab or Rideshare in Fredericton: The Honest Local Guide

So, does Uber work in Fredericton? (No.)

Let’s clear this up first, because it’s the question everyone arrives with: neither Uber nor Lyft operates in Fredericton, and neither operates anywhere else in New Brunswick either. If you punch in a Fredericton address, the apps will tell you there are no cars available, because there are none. This isn’t a temporary outage or a coverage gap you can wait out. Both companies have stayed away from the province for years, and local and industry sources point to the same culprit: New Brunswick’s insurance and regulatory framework for ride-hailing.

What Fredericton does have is Uride, a Thunder Bay-based ride-hailing app that launched here in the fall of 2023 after years of false starts. It was the first ride-share app to operate in New Brunswick, and it now runs in Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John. It works the way you’d expect an app to work: you set your pickup and destination, choose a vehicle, confirm, and watch the car come to you. The catch is supply. Uride depends on how many drivers happen to be logged on, so on a quiet Tuesday afternoon or a dead-of-winter night, you may find nothing available and end up phoning a cab anyway.

Bottom line: download Uride if you like app-based booking, but don’t rely on it as your only plan. Keep a taxi number in your phone. On a Friday or Saturday night, the local cab dispatchers are still the workhorses of getting around town, and plenty of longtime residents never bother with the app at all.

The local taxi companies worth knowing

Three taxi companies serve the Greater Fredericton area, and it’s worth having all three numbers, because on a busy night whoever answers first wins. Checker Cab (506-450-8294, which spells out 506-450-TAXI) is the veteran of the bunch, in business since 1973 and happy to tell you it has been at this for more than fifty years. It runs 24/7, takes bookings by phone, website or its own app, and it’s the company the airport lists first. Trius Taxi (506-454-4444), based out of 15 MacKenzie Road, is the other big name; it also runs around the clock and handles everything from a single fare to party shuttles and group runs.

Loyal Taxi (506-455-6789) rounds out the trio, with airport pickups, deliveries, longer out-of-town runs and accessible vehicles on its service list. All three are locally operated dispatch companies rather than national chains, which means service is generally friendly and familiar, but also that fleet size is finite. There’s no giant reserve of cars waiting in the wings, so at peak times you wait your turn.

A practical note on names: you’ll sometimes see Trius referred to as Trius ABC Taxi, which is the branding on its booking app. Same company, just a different label. If a number ever goes stale, the Fredericton International Airport ground-transportation page keeps a current short list of the operators serving the city.

How to actually book a ride

For a taxi, the phone is still king in Fredericton. Call the dispatcher, tell them your pickup address, where you’re going, and roughly when you need it, and they’ll give you a car number or a rough wait. You can book ahead for an early flight or a morning appointment, which is genuinely worth doing rather than gambling on a same-minute pickup at 5 a.m. Both Checker Cab and Trius also offer app and online booking (Checker through checkercab.ca and its mobile app, Trius through the Trius ABC Taxi app on the Apple App Store and Google Play), so if you’d rather tap than talk, you have that option.

For Uride, it’s app-only. Download the Uride passenger app, set up a profile with a payment card, and request from wherever you’re standing. Pricing is shown up front in the app before you confirm, which some people prefer to watching a meter tick. There is no phone line to call a Uride, so if your battery is dead or you have no data, this isn’t your friend.

Payment: the taxi companies take several forms of payment and some offer charge accounts, but don’t assume every car has a working card reader. If you’re only carrying plastic, say so when you book, and it never hurts to have a bit of cash as backup for a cab. Uride, being app-based, charges your saved card automatically.

What a ride costs: fares and the honest caveats

Fredericton taxis run on meters, and as a rough guide the meter starts around $4 and climbs roughly $1.90 per kilometre, with waiting time billed at about $30 an hour when the car is sitting still. Those are ballpark figures drawn from crowd-sourced fare data rather than a posted municipal tariff, so treat them as an order-of-magnitude estimate, not a quote. A short hop across downtown will land in the single digits to low teens; a cross-city run out to the north side or the suburbs climbs from there. When in doubt, ask the dispatcher for an estimate when you book, because they do this all day and can usually give you a fair number.

Fredericton is compact, which is your friend here. Most trips within the city core, from downtown to the university hill, to the north side over one of the bridges, or out toward the Regent or Prospect Street shopping strips, are short enough that fares stay reasonable. There’s no sprawling zone system to decode; you pay for distance and time. Uride prices dynamically through the app, which means a quiet afternoon can be cheaper than a cab and a busy Saturday night can be pricier, sometimes noticeably so.

Getting to and from the airport (YFC)

Fredericton International Airport (YFC) sits about a 15-minute drive southeast of downtown, off Lincoln Road, and a taxi is the default way in and out unless someone is picking you up. The airport’s own ground-transportation page lists all three local cab companies: Checker Cab (506-450-8294), Trius Taxi (506-454-4444) and Loyal Taxi (506-455-6789). Checker is flagged as offering accessible vehicles on request. Uride is also listed as available at the airport, though as always, whether a car is actually there depends on driver supply at that moment, and post-midnight arrivals are exactly when the app is thinnest.

For a departing flight, book your cab the night before. YFC is small and calm, but taxis don’t idle in a rank out front the way they do at a big-city terminal, so a pre-booked pickup saves you standing in the cold. If you’re arriving, cabs generally meet the scheduled flights, but a busy arrivals bank can mean a short wait while cars cycle through. There is no published flat rate to downtown; expect a metered fare in the ballpark you’d guess for a trip of roughly 15 kilometres.

If you’d rather drive yourself, five rental agencies operate at YFC: Avis, Budget, Enterprise, National and Hertz. Worth knowing if you’re landing for a few days and would rather not cab everywhere. For getting around without a car once you’re in town, see the wider transport options over on our guides hub.

Wheelchair-accessible taxis

Accessible cab service in Fredericton has improved recently, and the rules are now firmly on the side of riders who need it. In late 2024, city council moved to require every taxi company operating in Fredericton to keep at least one wheelchair-accessible vehicle available during its operating hours, with the change slated to take effect in the spring of 2025. The same package of updates also raised the maximum age for a licensed taxi from five to nine years, bringing Fredericton in line with other Maritime cities.

Checker Cab led the way here, adding an accessible vehicle to its fleet ahead of the requirement. Company president George Youssef noted the accessible van cost the business somewhere in the range of $30,000 to $40,000, and, importantly, that riders pay the same fare as they would in any regular cab. There’s no accessibility surcharge. As of that council discussion, two of the three local taxi companies had already bought accessible vehicles.

The practical advice: call ahead. There are still only a handful of accessible vehicles across the whole city, so availability is best when you book in advance rather than requesting one on the spot. Ask specifically for a wheelchair-accessible cab when you call. If you rely on accessible transport regularly, it’s worth knowing which company currently has a van in service and building a relationship with their dispatch.

Late-night rides and tipping

The good news is that Fredericton’s cab companies run 24 hours, so a ride home from the bars is always theoretically available. The less-good news is that everyone leaving downtown at last call wants the same thing at the same time. Friday and Saturday around 1 to 2 a.m. is the crunch, and that’s exactly when both cabs and Uride get stretched thin. Your best move is to call before you actually need the car, not after you’re already shivering on the sidewalk. If you’re in a group, one person phoning dispatch fifteen minutes early beats four people all opening the Uride app at once and watching the price climb.

Downtown Fredericton is walkable, and plenty of nights out end with a stroll home rather than a ride, which is part of the charm of a small city. But if you’re heading over a bridge to the north side or out to the suburbs, line up your ride ahead of time. On the coldest winter nights, demand and wait times both spike, so patience helps.

On tipping: the local norm for a taxi is roughly 10 to 15 percent of the fare, the same ballpark you’d tip in a restaurant, rounded up to something tidy for a short trip or a driver who helps with bags. Uride handles tips through the app after the ride. Nobody will chase you down over a couple of dollars, but drivers here are neighbours doing a real job, and a fair tip is simply good manners.