Terminal tab not opening in same directory

I think you are dealing with this bug. You will find there in the comment #2 the following workaround (thanks to Tim (darkxst) for it):

add the following line to the end of ~/.bashrc file:

. /etc/profile.d/vte.sh

The

. /etc/profile.d/vte.sh

workaround did not work for me. However, what did work is: I finally discovered that in the Profile Preferences' "Command" tab (right click in the terminal->Profiles) unchecking "Run a custom command instead of my shell", if it is checked, can also solve this issue.

In 16.04 a symlink may be missing. The file can be found at /etc/profile.d/vte-2.91.sh

Source