Last month, the MTA announced the contemplatively triumphant return of Poetry In Motion to the subways. Unfortunately, buses were left out, forced to ruminate upon the aching chasm in their souls. But good news! Poetry In Motion IS expanding to yellow taxis...well, taxi TVs.
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Results tagged “cabs”
Poetry In Motion Arrives In Taxis, Starting Today
More Handicap-Accessible Cabs Hit The Streets
There is still an appallingly limited number of handicap-accessible taxi cabs driving around New York City but at least it is getting a teeny, tiny bit better? To that end, the TLC has again approved Viewpoint Mobility's vehicle conversions which make cab models, in this case the Toyota Sienna, rear-accessible to wheelchairs. Some of them conversions have already hit the streets!
Taxis Are Seriously Dangerous, So Buckle Up
It never occurred to us to buckle up in a cab because they never, ever get into accidents and nothing kills the buzz of having a personal chauffeur like a seatbelt. But the Daily News reminds us today that people often suffer serious injuries when their faces slam into the hard plastic partitions during an accident or when the cabbie has to make a sudden stop. "This is a New York City tragedy and public health issue that has not changed in almost two decades," Dr. Lewis Goldfrank, a chairman of emergency medicine at Bellevue & NYU Langone said. Another ER doctor agrees. "Ask any ER doc in Manhattan, and they will tell you they see it very frequently. People have a false sense of security in the backseat of a cab."
Good News Taxi Riders! No Fare Hikes Planned For This Year
The City Council's Transportation Committee meeting may have had grim news for straphangers yesterday, but it did have some good news for taxi riders. Though the MTA will most likely have fare hikes coming in 2013 and 2015, the TLC most likely won't be increasing the cost of a cab ride. Not in the next year at least.
"Confusing" Taxi Lights Are Being Kicked To The Curb
Well, the lights atop taxis were fun while they lasted. But, as threatened, they are soon to be a thing of the past. Starting in the fall taxi medallion owners will start taking down the old lights and installing less "confusing" lights with the binary option of being on or off duty.
Forget Taxi TVs, Taxi iPads Are (Probably) Coming Soon
The days of the Taxi TV, like the days of the "buckle up" celebrity announcements before it (Eartha Kitt, RIP), may be numbered. The Taxi and Limousine Commission is getting ready to vote on a pilot program to replace 50 taxi boob tubes with iPads equipped with credit card software from Square, a San Francisco company that just happens to share a co-founder with Twitter. Which is to say, don't be shocked when this program gets a green light on March 1. And don't be upset!
Receipt Advertising Coming Soon To A Cab Near You
Taxi drivers bothered by racy ads on top of their rides are about to have another thing to worry about. The Taxi and Limousine Commission today votes on whether or not advertisements should be allowed on taxi receipts [PDF]. We have a very strong feeling it'll pass.
Mr. Manners Thinks Upstreaming While Hailing A Cab Is A-Okay
Henry Alford, who has written for the New York Times and Vanity Fair, has just released his book on etiquette, titled, Would It Kill You to Stop Doing That: A Modern Guide to Manners... and the New Yorker has some tips for his fellow urban dwellers. Over at Thirteen, he got in to one of the most despicable actions one often witnesses on the streets of New York: upstreaming. You know, when you are trying to hail a cab and another person, or group of people, walk just ahead of you to hail one first (teenagers probably do this a lot).
Fare-Gouging Taxi Tip Default Settings Die This Week!
Good news for drunk taxi passengers (or just riders with bad math skills) is less good for taxi drivers. After this week the auto-suggested tips for rides under $15 in taxi cabs with VeriFone Taxi TVs will stop being $2, $3 and $4 options and instead resort to the standard 20, 25 and 30 percent defaults already available in the Creative Mobile Technologies Taxi TVs. Hurrah!
Do You Wear Your Seat Belt In Taxi Cabs?
According to the Taxi and Limousine Commission, if you aren't buckling up when you're a passenger, you aren't alone—around 65% of passengers don't bother with seat belts when they catch a cab (alternatively, 90% use seat belts in private cars). Maybe this is because we treat cabs like any other public transportation in this city—subways, buses, they don't even have seat belts. To combat this, the TLC announced yesterday that it will be running ads on taxi monitors to get riders to change their habit. Previously there have been announcements, but this one will be in your face—that is, if you don't automatically turn Taxi TV off when you get in (which... you do). You can watch their new video right here (the Cyclone even has a cameo!).
Photos: Taxi Engulfed In Flames On Upper West Side
A dramatic inferno engulfed a taxi cab last night on the Upper West Side around 7 p.m. The taxi burst into flames on Columbus Avenue between 84th and 85th Streets; a witness tells My Upper West, "This is shot from the window at Tale Thai on Columbus Ave. We all looked up and suddenly the taxi was engulfed. The driver got out safely."
Cab Jumps Curb In Murray Hill, Sending Man Through Glass Window
A day after four people were injured when a cab jumped the curb in Midtown, another hack hopped the curb in Murray Hill this morning, hitting a man and woman and sending the man through a glass door of a nail salon. Around 9:47 a.m., "The taxi came up on the sidewalk and crushed the window," the owner of Hair and Spa Party told the Post. "It was kind of like a movie. He [the victim] was half in and half out." According to DNAinfo, four people in total were injured, and three were taken to Bellevue Hospital, two of them with serious injuries.
More Accessible Cabs And Legal Livery Street Hails Coming!
Taxis for everyone! Last night, Governor Cuomo announced that an agreement had been reached in the previously stalled plan to bring legal street-hail livery cabs to the outer boroughs and upper Manhattan. And while he was at it, Cuomo has strong armed the taxi industry into including more handicapped vehicles (even if the city says it doesn't have an "obligation" to serve them). The new class of livery cabs (with meters, credit card readers and roof lights) and the thousands of new taxi medallions the city wants to sell will hit the streets next year.
Cabs Where They Don't Belong: Up On The Sidewalk, Hitting Pedestrians
Around 8 p.m. last night this alert came in over the police scanner wire service: Car Vs. Building. (WHO WILL WIN?!) Unfortunately, this bout was more of a tag team Car Vs. Human Vs. Scaffolding Vs. Building. An unidentified woman was struck by a taxi driver that jumped in the curb at Sixth Avenue at 54th Street. She was pinned against the scaffolding, which partially collapsed, but fortunately she's going to be okay: the FDNY says she was taken to the hospital with a head injury, but in stable condition. (The cab driver was okay, and no charges filed.) Of course, as one sage bystander notes, all this could have been avoided if the cab had just stayed where it belongs.
Video: Fare Play, Forcing Cabbies To Answer Trivia For Tips
Discovery's long-running Cash Cab game show offers money to taxi fares who answer trivia questions correctly—so it is almost surprising it took so long for somebody to try the opposite. Enter Fare Play, a new webseries in which some cah-razy kids catch a cab and then torture their driver by making him answer trivia questions for tip money. And we thought you tipped drivers for their driving!
Hoping For Handicap Cabs, Cuomo Could Hold Up Livery Street Hail Bill
If Mayor Bloomberg really wants his plan to make it legal for livery cabs to pick up street hails to make it out of Albany, the TLC may finally have to do something about its horrendous treatment of the handicapped. Back in June the Mayor's plan got the go-ahead and just needed Andrew Cuomo's stamp. But now it seems the Gov is witholding approval unless the additional 1,500 highly-lucrative taxi medallions that would come with the bill are all required to be handicap-accessible.
Report Taxi Driver Misbehavior With New iPhone App
As a bunch of college kids recently proved (once again!), sometimes it can be absurdly hard to get a cab to take you from Manhattan to one of the outer boroughs. So what to do when you've been rejected for a ride? Call 311 before you forget the cab's medallion! But if you hate talking on the phone or waiting on hold, well, there's an app for that. And it's kinda slick.
Survey Says NYC Taxi Riders Are Mostly Loaded, Local, Lazy
Back in October those annoying TaxiTVs installed in every cab in the city started asking riders to answer a few quick survey questions and, shockingly, people answered them. According to the TLC, since the surveys started showing up, 113,000 of them have been taken—and taxi riders turn out to have a lot of dough!
Taxi TV, Now With Less Initial Volume!
The new surveys that greet you on Taxi TV aren't the only changes that have recently been introduced to the annoying backseat boob tubes. Four years after the TVs started being standard in cabs, The Times is reporting that the two major Taxi TV vendors have recently, and quietly, started to lower the initial volume on them. And that's not all!
Spotted: The Dark Knight Is Rising In Midtown And Near Zuccotti Park
After shooting scenes around the world, The Dark Knight Rises is officially filming in the real Gotham City, with production currently set up on 58th Street. A reader sent these photos in, taken this morning, telling us, "the cars in the pictures are on 58th between 5th and 6th right near the Plaza hotel," and trailers are set up on 56th Street.
Taxi Medallions Really Are A Better Investment Than Gold
We've said it before and we'll say it again: The humble NYC Taxi medallion continues to be the best investment a person could have made way back when. How good? A man who bought two medallions for $80,000 apiece in the 1980s just sold them for $1 million dollars each. By the numbers, over the past 30 years the taxi medallion has outperformed the Dow Jones, gold, oil and the American house. No wonder some cab companies are so opposed to Bloomberg creating a new tier of medallions for the outer boroughs!
Taxi Light Confusion Could Soon Be A Thing Of The Past
Fans of finding a free cab, this could be awesome: The TLC is seriously considering completely overhauling the way taxis display if they are on- or off-duty. Gone could be the days of being unsure if that cab is done for the day or able to pick up one last fare. In the new world order that TLC chair David Yassky is proposing, a taxi's status will be a binary thing, either available or unavailable. Yes please!
Conservative Cab Drivers Can Now Ax Racy Taxi Ads
Taxi drivers who own their own cabs but not their own medallions won a big victory for their souls yesterday. The TLC unanimously approved a regulation that would prevent medallion owners from forcing drivers to carry advertisements that they might "reasonably" deem inappropriate. Because really, who wants to have an ad for a "gentleman's club" on top of their office all day—especially an office you drive home with you each night.
Taxi Fares Jacked Up On Irene-Induced Zone System
Now that your mind and your monthly Metrocard has been blown by the MTA's closure at noon, you'll have to settle for a taxi. But the impending hurricane has transformed the meter into a mysterious "zone" system (no relation to the evacuation zones), full of cryptic "letters." However, the changes aren't nearly as byzantine as DC's old zone system, and the new regulations will even force livery cabs to charge the same as the yellow ones. Strange times, indeed.
Video: Cabbie To Brooklyn-Bound Fare: "I'm Gonna Break Your Face!"
Despite increased fines and enforcement for cabbies who break the law and refuse to take customers anywhere in the five boroughs, one hack clearly states that he "doesn't give a f*ck" if a fare takes down his number after he refuses to drive to Williamsburg from Manhattan. When the customer declines to leave the car, the cabbie tells him, "Get the f*ck out or I'm gonna break your face." While the last video we saw of cabbie discrimination against Brooklyn was "deeply disturbing," this one guarantees that tears of indignation will be pattering steadily upon the pages of your moleskine.
Bloomberg's Taxi Plan Stalls As Livery Drivers Face Ticket Blitz
Mayor Bloomberg's plan to circumvent the City Council and get his plan to let livery cabs legally pick up street hails running via Albany is, like so many things, stalling in the State Senate. At the same time, livery drivers are bemoaning a two-month ticket blitz that they claim Bloomberg ordered to strong-arm support for the bill.
Cantankerous Cabbies Invade Albany, Get Ticketed
Over the weekend, rather than push it through the City Council, Bloomberg slipped his controversial-to-cabbies plan to let livery cabs accept street hails outside of Manhattan up to Albany. And while the bill, which just passed in the Assembly, likely won't be voted on in the Senate before this session is over—it increasingly looks like marriage equality might not even see a vote!—that doesn't mean that hacks aren't furious about the plan to flood the streets with 30,000 additional fare-accepting vehicles. Yesterday cabs and cabbies lined up to protest by City Hall and today they've taken their chants of "Hail, No!" to Albany.
Bloomberg Skips City Council, Takes His Livery Street Hail Idea To Albany
Mayor Bloomberg is done playing nice regarding his idea to allow livery drivers pick up street hails. Rather than keep tossing around concepts for "borough only" taxis and seeing if they'll stick with the City Council, the TLC and livery owners, Bloomberg this weekend went and slipped a bill into the docket in Albany that'll get it done without a Council vote. And depending on how much the legislature wants to avoid voting on marriage equality it might even get voted on before the presumably-extended legislative session ends. If it goes through, the proposal could have a massive effect on how New Yorkers taxi around town.
Bloomberg Gets Help For His Outer Borough Livery/Taxi Plan
A group of livery cab drivers protested Bloomberg's proposed outer-borough taxi fleet yesterday but rather than scrap the plan (for the second time) the mayor's office is reportedly enlisting former Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz, Jr., to be an "honest broker" in the ongoing battle.
Do NYC Taxis Discriminate Against the Disabled?
The US Attorney's office has jumped into the fight over the Taxi of Tomorrow by opening an investigation into whether the lack of wheelchair-accessible taxicabs in New York City amounts to a violation of parts of the Americans With Disabilities Act. Though one of the initial goals of the Taxi of Tomorrow program was "universal accessibility for persons with disabilities" the TLC eventually settled on a Nissan model that is not wheelchair accessible (versus the Karsan design, which is), a development which irritated many.
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