Transportation Challenge at the X-Culture Symposium

As we are preparing for the upcoming X-Culture Symposium in Miami, we encountered a peculiar problem:

Transportation from the airport to the JWU where the Symposium will take place. An Uber will cost abouut $15, and a regular taxi can be up to $25 for the ride, quite expensive for a student. Public transport (bus, metro) is very limited and hard to navigate for a newcomer.

We thought about centrally arranging for transporting our 150 attendees from the airport to JWU, but they all arrive at different times during the day or two preceding the opening ceremony. We would need to arrange for a shuttle at least every two hours, which means about 10 trips. Very expensive and still a significant wait for some.

A simple, cheap, and still viable and efficient solution seems to be the following:

All we have to do is agree on a particular meeting spot at the airport. In fact, most airport have a single meeting point designated specifically for this purpose.

When you land, you just go to that spot, wait until other 2-3 X-Culture students join you, and then take Uber or taxi to the campus.
With 150 students and 20 professors arriving during the 15 hours of so preceding our opening ceremony on July 15, that’s about 10 people every hour on average.
So the wait time until four or so X-Culture students come together should not be more than 15-20 minutes.

Then you just take an Uber or taxi in groups of four, which will cost only about $4 per person. A very affordable rate.

If the group is larger, you can even ask for a minivan taxi to further cut the cost.

Will it work?
Is there a way to solve the problem better?

By Vas Taras