If you're looking for a good place to stash some illicit substances, you can totally just hail a taxi now—the NYPD has been issued an order prohibiting cops from searching or pulling passengers from cabs. The operational order was launched by Police Commissioner Raymond "Stop Criticizing Stop and Frisk" Kelly two weeks ago, and came out of a lawsuit filed by two men who were reportedly pulled out of livery cars and frisked by police officers in separate incidents, one in Brooklyn and one in the Bronx. more ›

Unlike the manic, Brangelina-esque unveiling of the Taxi of Tomorrow earlier this month, today's debut of, uh, Our Lady of Livery, was decidedly more low-key. “Apple Green is very fitting for the new Boro Taxis,” TLC Commissioner David Yassky says in a release. “It’s pleasing to the eye, easy to see from a distance and blends well with the urban landscape." Presumably that "urban landscape" includes the puke-splattered sidewalks of Bedford Ave on a Sunday morning. Need a morning eye-opener but gave up caffeine? Hail a Boro Taxi! more ›

Last night Friend of Gothamist [FOG] Robin Wellington was headed home to Brooklyn in a taxi when she noticed her cab driver reading a newspaper while driving. She let it slide at first, because the cab was lurching through stop-and-go traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge. But as they left the bridge and merged onto the BQE, the driver continued reading, holding the newspaper on the steering wheel. In his defense, at least the paper wasn't blocking the windshield? But Wellington, fearing for her safety, had had enough. more ›

An app that allows you to report grievances against your cab driver shows that customers' number one complaint is refusal of service. A smartphone app called Report A Taxi (in which users plug in a driver's medallion number and then choose from a list of common complaints to, you know, report a taxi to the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission) was used by 814 passengers over a span of four months. more ›

Ever wanted eavesdrop on the semi-private conversations had by your cabbie in a language that you don't understand? The New York Post had a reporter who speaks Punjabi and Urdu (the two dominant languages spoken by the 38% of cabbies who hail from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh) listen in. It turns out they gossip, are wary of their superiors, and bitch about taxes. Cabbies—they're just like us! more ›

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. more ›

[UPDATE BELOW] A "highly placed" executive with Morgan Stanley was charged with assault, theft of services and second-degree intimidation based on race or bigotry after allegedly stabbing a cab driver in a dispute of a fare, the Stamford Advocate reports. On Wednesday night a reportedly intoxicated William Bryan Jennings, 47, hailed a cab in Manhattan and instructed the driver to take him to Darien, Connecticut, some 45 miles away. The unidentified driver insists he told Jennings how much it would cost, but when they arrived at his $3.6 million home, Jennings felt the $294 fare was "extortion." He's an investment banker, so we can only assume he knows what he's talking about. more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›

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! more ›

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! more ›

Cabbies really hate the outer boroughs it seems! But they also apparently have gotten quite good at spotting the TLC's enforcement agents whose job it is to ticket them when they refuse rides. So the TLC has gotten clever and hired a bunch of college kids for $10-an-hour to catch hacks who deny service. And the results are depressing—if not surprising to anyone whose ever tried to get a ride over the river. more ›

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! more ›

New Yorkers may not like those Taxi TVs in the back of every cab, but the backseat boob tubes are here to stay—so at least the TLC is finally going to make some use out of them? Yesterday the Taxi and Limousine Commission began adding mini-surveys to the mix of GPS, local and news and annoying videos that greet fares when they enter one of the city's 13,237 cabs. Is your driver talking on his cellphone? Are you riding a cab for business or pleasure? How much money do you make? Is this TV broken and impossible to turn off? The TLC wants to know! more ›

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! more ›

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. more ›

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. more ›

Not getting a ride to Brooklyn is annoying, being dragged hurts, and racial profiling is worse. But what really stings is being refused a life-saving ride to the hospital while you're gushing blood on the street. A 20-year-old Harlem man who was shot in his left arm in a housing project before running two blocks down 8th Ave to 150th street couldn't catch a cab to safety. A witness named "Strawberry" told the Post, "He tried to get a cab to take him to the hospital, but nobody was stopping for him. Four cabs passed him away." Note to the Post's editors: either her last name is "Shortcake," or someone may have counted on you not listening to a crucial line in a seminal N.W.A. track. more ›