Tag taxis

Having failed to deregulate New York City’s highly restrictive taxicab market, it looks like City Council and Bloomberg are opting for the populist reaction to NYC cabdrivers’ frequent refusal to take you anywhere outside Manhattan and, if you’re lucky, northwest Brooklyn: fines. Quoteth the Wall Street Journal: The bill passed Wednesday increases the fine for a cabbie’s first offense from $350 to $500. If he gets caught again within the next two years, he’ll have to pay $1,000—double the current fine. The bill also adds a $1,000 fine for the third offense, on top of the license revocation already required. Unfortunately for New York, I think it’s gonna take a lot more than a few hundred more dollars in fines to have any effect on this problem. And if it does somehow work, then I fear that it will actually be counterproductive and encourage cab drivers to discriminate. They won’t even bother pulling over for people think aren’t traveling within Manhattan for fear of either having to take them or be fined – in other words, it will become even harder for people of color, who are less likely to live in Manhattan, to hail cabs. And then there’s this gem from the hack union, which reminds me of David Yassky’s “the city should be circumspect about substituting its judgment for the judgment of business people” comment: Bhairavi Desai, the director of the Taxi Workers Alliance, a drivers’ group, said she was disappointed in the vote. Drivers sometimes refuse to take people to faraway places because they’ll get stuck in traffic before they can get another fare, she said. She said the city should find an “economic solution” to the problem. “Otherwise, you’re just scapegoating people,” Ms. Desai said. It’s interesting that she even admits that there is even a problem – I guess […]

Well that was quick: Mr. Bloomberg made the so-called “five-borough taxi plan” a centerpiece of his State of the City address in January. The proposal called for creating a new class of livery cabs, with meters and, perhaps, a single color, that would be allowed to pick up passengers on the street outside of Manhattan who hadn’t arranged a ride ahead of time. Currently, such pickups are illegal but widespread. Only yellow taxis—whose numbers are limited to the 13,237 medallions in circulation—can pick up passengers who hail them. But now talks between the Taxi and Limousine Commission and the taxi industry are focusing on a series of plans that would use yellow cabs—not livery cars—to expand taxi service outside of Manhattan. “I believe we are completely off the mayor’s original plan,” said one person familiar with the talks. “I would go as far as calling it dead.” As it stands now, the vast, vast majority of yellow cab pick-ups are in Manhattan or at airports, and it’s pretty much impossible to get a cab in Brooklyn, Queens, or the Bronx to take you anywhere but Manhattan. The silver lining is that the number of medallions might be increased, but it’s not clear by how much. I’d also like to point out that this is yet another transit failure for the Bloomberg administration, which only seems to be willing to go to the mat for bike lanes in wealthy, white neighborhoods. (To say nothing of transit advocates – I could be wrong, but I don’t think Streetsblog ever found time amidst its daily barrage of bike agitprop to come out in favor of outer borough taxi deregulation.) The private van plan was poorly thought-out and from what I can tell has been forgotten, the physically separated 34th St. Transitway was defeated, […]

The NYT has an absolutely boneheaded article about the shortage of taxicabs in Manhattan during the evening rush-hour. They blame rising Manhattan rents and cabbies’ schedules, but the statists at the New York Times don’t see the obvious glaring issue: controlled prices and a taxicab cartel! They cite it as an “apparent violation of the laws of supply and demand,” without recognizing that for supply and demand to work, you need drivers to be able to charge their own prices and enter markets at will. Aside from that supply and demand bit, I’d say the second stupidest quote comes from David Yassky, leader of the cabbies’ cartel: Mr. Yassky said the city “should be circumspect about substituting its judgment for the judgment of business people.” Hmm, that’s odd, because last I checked, Yassky was in charge of a state organ devoted to protecting incumbent taxi drivers from the judgment of business people.

The New York City MTA is starting a paratransit pilot program whereby it seeks to control skyrocketing Access-a-Ride costs by basically handing out unlimited vouchers for cabs for handicapped residents traveling below 96th Street in Manhattan, who would only have to pay $2.25 for each ride. I’m no fan of enormous and amorphous unfunded mandates like the ADA in the first place, and it does seem very unfair to force cities to offer huge public transit subsidies to the elderly and disabled, while not forcing towns without transit to do a damn thing to increase mobility for those who can’t drive. (I should note that the pilot program only applies to the 75% of Access-a-Ride users who aren’t in wheelchairs.) But if we’re going to have these mandates, it seems to me that a better way to achieve mobility for those who cannot climb steps or walk long distances is to simply hand out cash grants. This pilot program brings us closer to that ideal, but there are two main problems with it: the scope of alternatives offered, and the unlimited manner in which they’re offered. Let’s start with the unlimitedness. This was clearly already a problem with Access-a-Ride, as its costs have been exploding ever since it was implemented, but it will be an even bigger problem when using the subsidies becomes even easier. My understanding of Access-a-Ride is that it’s unreliable and difficult to use – while not an ideal rationing device, at least this gave people an incentive to limit their use of it. But when claiming the subsidy is as easy as hailing a cab, I can foresee some definite abuses and overuses. The current program is incredibly expensive ($49 for each door-to-door ride!) compared to estimates for taxicabs ($15/ride), so it probably won’t become more […]