Results tagged “limousinecommissionermatthewdaus”

A federal U.S. district judge decided not to block the City of New York from requiring the installation of GPS and credit card equipment in taxis. The Taxi Workers Alliance went to the courts after a strike by its members earlier this month had a less than dramatic impact and failed to sway public and political opinions. Some drivers are opposed to the installation of the equipment because they say GPS tracking invades their privacy and that poorly designed credit card equipment and fare meters will cost them in lost revenues. The federal judge in the case ruled that the benefit to customers outweighed the privacy concerns of drivers.

The NY Taxi Workers Alliance says that its drivers will strike in September over GPS tracking systems will be coming to taxis starting in October. The city has said GPS systems will help passengers retrieve lost items (even if they don't have receipts or medallion numbers) because the Taxi and Limousine Commission will be able to find the taxi that dropped them off at a certain location.

As the City Council debated a bill that would open 10 taxi stands in the outer boroughs, the Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Matthew Daus said cabbies wouldn't be interested. Daus says that only 8% of cab rides outside of Manhattan are for non-airport destinations. In fact, his words were actually: "When there's an ocean of water to drink in Manhattan, why would they go for a puddle in the outer reaches of the city?"

sends each co-rider an e-mail and an SMS message with the phone number and first name of the other rider so they can connect to share a cab.

The police are looking for a man in his 20 suspected of a series of livery cab holdups. Since August 5, the suspect is believed to have robbed at least six cabs by threatening cabbies with a knife and demanding their money. All of the incidents have taken place in the Bronx up through last Thursday. No major injuries have occured during the robberies, though amNew York reports that the last cabby did "scuffle" with the robber.

Yesterday, the Design Trust for Public Space and Parsons held the Redesigning Taxi Cab discussion, and Newsday's Ellis Henican has a funny column about reactions and thoughts. He says that no one "seemed too eager yesterday to sing the praises the industry's current workhorse, Ford's 12-mile-a-gallon Crown Victoria, famous for its sunken seats and stringy legroom," but Taxi and Limousine Commissioner Matthew Daus said, "They're not that horrible. They're selling them on 42nd Street as Matchbox cars." Ha. Daus did emphasize "I feel very strong about the taxi staying yellow," and from Newsday's slideshow of images, it seems like most people agree. But this effort to discuss a redesign sounds lofty Gothamist, as much as we love it, because it seems that the TLC has some bureaucratic problems to deal with. Like auctioning discounted taxi medallions for fuel-efficient cars, but not actually approving fuel-efficient cars for use as cabs, as reported by the NY Times. That is seriously hilarious. Daus claims the TLC does want hybrids, just hybrids with lots of legroom, since passengers complain about legroom most, and not many of them have that much.