$3.75. Every trip. No exceptions.
No surge multiplier at rush hour. No per-kilometer amount that punishes people who live farther out. No “estimated total” that quietly climbs during the trip. One contribution, locked at booking.
This is the most common question we get: why a fixed contribution? Here's the math and the reasoning behind it.
The number
A single transit fare in Montreal costs $3.75. That's what it costs to take a bus, the metro, or the REM for one trip. We matched that amount deliberately.
A rider contributes what they'd pay for a bus ticket but gets a door-to-door trip. The difference is they get picked up where they are and dropped off where they're going, without transfers, without schedules, without waiting in the cold.
A driver receives a $3.00 contribution for every rider they pick up. The remaining $0.75 covers payment processing and platform costs. That's the entire breakdown. Nothing hidden.
Why not charge by distance?
Because distance-based charging creates the wrong incentives.
When a platform charges per kilometer, riders in suburbs and outer neighborhoods pay more for every trip. A 15-minute ride from downtown costs $12. The same 15-minute ride from a neighborhood farther out costs $22. Same convenience, different price — based entirely on where you happen to live.
Distance-based amounts also open the door to surge. If the cost is already variable, making it more variable during peak demand is an easy business decision. Riders have no predictability. A trip that cost $15 yesterday costs $35 today because it's raining.
A fixed contribution eliminates this entirely. The contribution is $3.75 whether you're going 3 kilometers or 15. Whether it's Monday morning or Saturday night. Whether there are 10 drivers nearby or 100.
Why it works for drivers
Rydze drivers aren't professionals waiting for requests. They're people going somewhere who pick up riders along the way. The cost of their trip — gas, time, wear — is already spent. Every rider they pick up is a cost offset on a trip they were already making.
$3.00 per rider. Three riders on a commute is $9.00. Five days a week, that's $180 a month in cost offsets from a drive they were doing anyway.
This only works because the driver's marginal cost of picking someone up is nearly zero. They're not detouring across town. They're not burning extra gas. Rydze matches riders along the existing route. The economics are fundamentally different from ride-hailing, where every trip has a full cost structure — fuel, time, vehicle depreciation — that needs to be covered.
Why the driver's contribution is protected
Promotions and subsidies are tools platforms use to grow. Discount rides to attract riders, subsidize drivers to build supply. The standard playbook funds both sides by squeezing the middle — taking a bigger cut from drivers to fund rider discounts.
We don't do that. When Rydze runs a promotion, we absorb the cost. The driver receives $3.00 per rider regardless of what the rider actually paid. This isn't a temporary policy. It's a structural decision baked into how the platform works.
Drivers should never open the app wondering if today's trips will yield less because of a promotion they didn't agree to.
The tradeoff
A fixed contribution means Rydze receives $0.75 per trip regardless of distance. We don't make more money on longer trips. We don't make more money during peak hours. Our incentive is volume — more trips happening, more seats filled, more cars off the road.
That aligns our business with our mission. We make more money when more people share rides. Not when we charge them more for the same trip.