Results tagged “taxis”

Taxi owners won another round Monday in their fight against the city's efforts to turn its yellow cabs green. Saying that emissions- and mileage-related laws were only for Congress to make, U.S. District Court Judge Paul A. Crotty blocked a new set of city rules that would have allowed fleet companies to charge fuel-efficient cab drivers higher rental rates for their vehicles. The higher rates would provide a strong incentive for those companies to switch to only greener, hybrid vehicles and phase out old gas-guzzlers. Despite rejecting the plan, Judge Crotty still praised the city's intent in his ruling: "Increasing the number of hybrid taxicabs is an appropriate and important governmental priority." And though this is the second time Judge Crotty has struck down the city's attempts to convert its taxis to a more fuel-efficient fleet, New York City Law Department Counsel Michael Cardozo says the city's not giving up yet: "We do not believe that Congress intended to prohibit local governments from implementing incentive programs ... that encourage the purchase of environmentally friendly taxis. We are exploring our legal options."

A cab driver going after four fare-beating young women was intercepted by a second group who beat him to ground until he was bleeding from the face by a group who thought that the ladies were being mugged. The driver had picked up the women at the club Bogart's on Park Avenue in Midtown and driven them down to the Staten Island Ferry Terminal around 3 a.m. When the women tried to make a run for it towards the ferry, the driver chased after them and grabbed at their purses when a second car pulled up and intervened. The driver was beaten so bad that he had to be taken to Bellevue Hospital. Police gave the group of women summonses when they came off the ferry in Staten Island. The attackers, who fled the scene, have not been found.

Like Melissa Plaut before them, it's being reported that "thousands of New York City residents laid off in the financial crisis have turned to driving taxis." One problem: now there are too many cabbies and not enough cabs. Harlem Yellow Cab says they're "sending people home every shift without a car. It's a very bad situation." City officials report 45,805 taxicab drivers, 13,000 taxis, and "the number of new hack licenses the city issued rose 19% in the past three months." The Daily News points towards one driver, who turned to the profession a few months ago after being a successful realtor and mortgage broker for 20 years. He told them he wanted to remain anonymous for the article: "not because I am ashamed, or embarrassed, but my children are. We are very well-known in our community and lived a good life for so many years." But with the economic crisis hitting just about everyone, are people even taking cabs anymore?

Last week we learned that all New York taxis will soon be held to higher fuel efficiency standards; starting next October new cabs must get at least 25 miles per gallon. But the cab changes don’t stop there – in addition to upcoming GPS and touch-screen video technology, the Taxi and Limousine Commission is considering selling an unlimited card for cab riders, which may feature “fare integration” with buses and subways. Over half the city’s 13,000+ cabs are equipped with credit card readers; the TLC expects all of them to take your plastic by spring ’08 – and Metrocards are being proposed as a next step.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a person under a train at East Fordham Rd. and Jerome Ave. in the Bronx, a shooting on Henry and West 9th Sts. in Brooklyn, and a homicide on Roosevelt Ave. in Queens.
• New Yorkers found guilty of repeated incidents of ignoring recycling laws may be required to throw out their trash in see-through bags for easy inspection.
• Ads soliciting the perfect ass might not make it onto city buses, but the company that sells Georgi vodka will put its bikini ads on city taxis.
• A high-end steakhouse and retailers of luxury goods are on slate for Adams St. near the Brooklyn Bridge.
• That's not Che Guevara in Times Square; it's Rambo. John Rambo. A marketing exec at Lionsgate says "You have to scream loud when you're screaming."
• Scaffolding outside the offices of The Observer was dislodged by high winds. A block of Broadway was temporarily closed this afternoon.
• The Daily Show with John Stewart may return to the air as early as January 7, whether the writers guild strike is settled or not.
• Curbed surveys how "hip" Williamsburg, Brooklyn is in the eyes of a PR Newswire release. Its findings: Williamsburg is very very very hip.

The New York Times recently dispatched no fewer than five reporters to the streets of the city in order to uncover the latest piece of breaking news: cab drivers can be rude and will attempt to take financial advantage of you if given the opportunity. The investigation uncovered a citywide fleet of yellow taxis in which just over half are compliant in installing credit card readers, and many that did have them falsely told passengers that using a credit card would result in additional charges.

Many cabbies, it seems, will use the card swipers only sullenly, and only after a resistance that can be as ingenious as it is misleading. Excuses range from, “There is a minimum cab fare for credit card use” to “The device doesn’t have to be activated until the new year” to “It’s too short a ride.” (Not true, not true, and not true, say city officials.)

The Taxi and Limousine Commission has made it official: Cabs purchased after October 1, 2008 must get at least 25 miles per gallon. Then, after fall of 2009, newly purchased cabs must get at least 30 miles per gallon. As the AP puts it, this means "taxi fleet owners, who must replace their cabs every three to five years, will probably be forced to buy fuel-efficient hybrids, which run partly on electricity." The Taxicab Board...

It's good to see that not all New Yorkers are out to run wheelchair riders off the road. The Taxi and Limousine Commission voted this week to create a new special service that will allow wheelchair users to order cabs by calling 311.

News that the same man may have raped women he stalked outside the downtown club The Box is alarming New Yorkers who regularly hang out on the Lower East Side. The police released a sketch of the suspect, a white man between the ages of 25 and 40, up to 200 pounds, and taller than 5'8".

Taxi workers held another strike starting at 5AM this morning over demands to remove the new GPS systems, for there to be a healthcare and retirement pension fund, and union recognition. However, it's unclear how many of the tens of thousands of taxi drivers actually struck.

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.

Reader Ben sent us this picture of a cab on fire at West 42nd Street and 8th Avenue. This is odd, but made odder by the fact there was a taxi fire outside Rockefeller Center on West 50th on Tuesday. What's going on with the Crown Victorias?

Here we are - day two of the taxi strike by a group of taxi drivers upset with the changes that the Taxi and Limousine Commission has enacted. The New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which organized the strike, claimed that 90% of -owned cabs were on the streets (versus 93% last Wednesday), but that doesn't include owner-operated cabs (fleets comprise only 30-40% of cabs). A taxi industry group reported that 72% of the city's 3,200 cabs were on the road.

Mayor Bloomberg announced that the city was prepared for the possible two-day taxi strike that some taxi driver groups have threatened for tomorrow morning, starting at 5AM. About 7,000 of the city's 44,000 taxi drivers (there are about 13,000 cabs in total) have reportedly promised to strike over new technology that the Taxi and Limousine Commission wants to install in all cabs. Some drivers' issues with the technology, which includes GPS tracking systems and credit card payment systems, are that (a) the GPS has no navigational capabilities and (b) when the technology breaks down, the taxi fare meter breaks down, too, costing them money. The city,though, views these measures as necessary customer service initiatives.

If you rely on taxis, you may want to adjust your transportation plans: The Taxi Workers Alliance says that drivers it represents will strike on September 5 and 6 to protest the Taxi and Limousine Commission's decision to add GPS systems to all yellow cabs. But then the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, another advocacy group, said that there would be no strike (with spokesman Fernando Mateo saying, "Read my lips: There will be no strike."). Our thoughts: Pray there's no unusual weather event and take mass transit or your bike.

While this morning's commute seems better, most mass transit riders are still confused, frustrated and even betrayed by the subway system and other rail service coming to a stand still during the Wednesday morning rush hour. The MTA admitted that the service was not acceptable on many accounts, from the flooding to the fact that the MTA's website was overwhelmed. Then there's also the fact that the MTA was urging people not to take the subways and opt for a bus instead, only for buses to be (A) few and far between and (B) crowded as anything.

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.

After the success of our Gothamist-A Hamburger Today QBQ BBQ last year (that's quality before quantity), we've decided to team up with Serious Eats/A Hamburger Today for another burger event at Water Taxi Beach in Long Island City. At last year's event, Chef Harry Hawk served up four regional burgers from around the nation. This year, you get to choose what burgers are served, with the top three vote-getters across Gothamist, Serious Eats, and A Hamburger Today making the menu.

Holy smokes! Giant fish on the MTA, Paris Hilton in jail, then out, then in again, Al Gore, goatses, blumpkins, Matt Damon, and baby art critics! It's been a busy week across the Ist-A-Verse, and here's a smattering of what's been going on.

They might lack the plush interiors with overstuffed seats and satellite television, but a NYC taxi may be the most expensive ride you'll ever sit in. A Pakistani man who'd owned a cab for 25 years recently auctioned its medallion off and the winning bid came in at $600,000. The medallion was originally purchased in 1981 for $30,000. That's almost a 13% annual return on the owner's investment, which isn't outrageous, but pretty darn good for a quarter century. When one factors in the cash that the medallion generated over the same period, that yellow taxi is actually golden.

Yesterday in Bed-Stuy, the NYPD arrested a man accused of robbing eight cabbies in a two week period. Earl Evans, whose driver's license said he was from Nashville, is described as a "hulking country bumpkin" by the Daily News. For good reason too - his license said he's 6-foot-3 and 320 pounds. As if his size wasn't intimidating for the cab drivers he robbed, he also had a very realistic looking 9mm Glock. Evans would allegedly hail the taxis and get in the front seat before demanding money. All told, $1,000 was stolen in the eight robberies.

A bicyclist and three pedestrians were injured as a man driving a stolen van jumped a curb in an attempt to escape the police. The incident occurred on Eighth Street, as the police - driving one of those undercover patrol cars that look like taxis - were pursuing the van up University Place. The driver "made a hard right onto Eighth," according to the Post, which also has pictures.

Yesterday afternoon, Mayor Bloomberg announced that every yellow taxi on the streets of NYC will go green under the hood in five years. His latest implementation of PlaNYC involves using requirements set by the Taxi and Limousine Commission to have cab owners upgrade their hacks to hybrid vehicles so that the entire fleet will be hybrid by 2012. Yahoo! exec Patrick Crane was on hand at City Hall to donate ten of the new hybrid vehicles as part of Yahoo!'s green initiatives, which seemed pretty nice, but proved that purple interiors can be a matter of taste. Council Member David Yassky (Brooklyn) has been hailing this issue for the last five years. We're glad he finally managed to flag it down.

New York City could be considered the Big Green Apple for the rest of the week. Bill Clinton and Mayor Bloomberg are hosting an international climate summit this week, beginning today and running through Thursday. And as part of other environmentally friendly festivities, Matt Dillon was on hand for the issuance of a challenge from Yahoo! to see which U.S. city was the most green.

Come October, your experience in the backseat of a taxi could be a little more high-tech. The Taxi & Limousine Commission unanimously approved touch-screen "passenger information monitors" for all 13,000 yellow cabs on the streets. In addition to showing information, entertainment, and advertising, these monitors will show a map of the taxi's current location using GPS. The new systems would also accept credit card payments. Some cab drivers expressed their opposition to the systems, citing the large costs and privacy issues of the GPS systems. The systems (medalion owners have 4 to choose from) are supposed to have a maximum three-year cost of $7,400.

"Our taxicabs will be getting a makeover with graphics that communicate passenger information in a better and more uniform way," Taxi and Limousine Commission Chairman Matthew Daus said.

Continue reading "Clarifying Taxi Charges"

Car makers are flocking to the city with the New York International Auto Show opening this weekend (media previews start tomorrow) at the Javits Convention Center, and there's one particularly NYC-focused exhibit: Taxi '07.

The NY Sun reports that doctors believes less people will suffer "craniofacial injuries" during cab accidents because many new cabs, such as the hybrid taxis, don't have the bullet-proof partitions. Drivers of hybrid cabs, especially luxury ones, have been opting for security cameras. Which could mean less business for plastic surgeons, who say that they see some people with "crushed noses, fractured cheekbones and eye sockets, and 'stellate,' or burst lacerations" after accidents.

New York magazine has an extensive New York vs. London features package. Apparently, now is the time to wonder which city is better, although the International Olympics Committee decided that almost two years ago. There are immediately controversial stories like where is the sex better, where real estate obsession is greatest, which lit scene is more stuck up and who is having more fun. There is an obligatory London sucks essay, but regarding which city is a bigger terror target, our guess is wherever Rudy Giuliani is.

Hybrid taxis are more and more common these days, but one hybrid model is represented by just two taxis. It's the Lexus RX400H, and Samuel Pekoh and Cliff Hammon-Adler are the only hacks with them. Even though the cars cost $46,000-52,000 each, Pekoh tells the NY Sun that his gas costs have dropped $45 to $20 daily. (Still, insurance is more expensive on the hybrid.) The cars come with DVD navigation systems and sun roofs, and neither driver has installed a partition. Hammon-Adler says, "Anyone who's going to buy a Lexus, they'd be crazy to put a partition in." Instead, they have a security camera.