Recently I have had the great opportunity of experiencing a company paying for a flight to make an onsite interview. This may be common in the US, but not where I am or the people I work with, it was a great experience.
Unfortunately they decided they wanted to keep looking for candidates.
Now a new company has contacted me, they seem to be in a bit of a hurry. We are trying to set a day and hour for the onsite interview. The problem is, they have the same working hours I do, and neither of us can effect the interview during our working hours, so in order to arrive to their location by public transport, I would take one hour. They would need to leave work to their home 1 hour + time of the interview late.
Is it reasonable to ask for a paid taxi or uber, since on car, it is a 15 minutes journey? I do not own a car, but I could pay for it myself, and am unsure how will that be viewed, i.e. asking for a paid taxi instead of paying my own trip.
Is this somewhat normal/acceptable? Would I be too unreasonable? My objective is to arrive early so I am accomodating to what I guess are their needs (they have asked a couple times if it could be sooner and so on, which could not be, unless I do not work that day and risk being rightfully fired...)
Also, how should I ask for this option in order not to sound rude?
Thank everyone in advance, this place is always helpful
UPDATE:
At the end I did something very similar to the answer by @davnicwil since me and a couple of IRL colleagues thought the same, I thought that was consensus enough. I did not expect this many people helping and pouring their thoughts and experience, so I ended up asking about the possibilitie, and turns out they are not in such a hurry and have re-scheduled for next week, and we are currently working out which day and hour works best for both parties.
Probably next time I will act differently, but just wanted to update that this one time it does not appear, so far, to have hurt that badly (it is possible the HHRR person has acted as a shield since is the only contact I have with them, and acts as a mediator, but this I will never know).