6,000 Cabs Dedicated to the Outer Boroughs?
Info is starting to leak out about the city’s plans for retooling how taxis operate, according to a post on City Room, and the buzz is that beyond adding more than 1,500 new medallions, there’s talk of establishing “a parallel class of cabs only allowed to make pickups outside Manhattan” that would number around 6,000….
Info is starting to leak out about the city’s plans for retooling how taxis operate, according to a post on City Room, and the buzz is that beyond adding more than 1,500 new medallions, there’s talk of establishing “a parallel class of cabs only allowed to make pickups outside Manhattan” that would number around 6,000. Gothamist notes that the way this might play out is that individual medallion buyers would also receive a free set of “borough only” medallions. Meanwhile, an association of livery cab drivers isn’t too thrilled about the not-yet-official plans, and Gothamist quotes a statement from them saying the following: “The reality is that yellow cabs are not serving this population and we have for 30 years. We are willing to work with all parties to find a plan that does not cut out the little guy and allows us to compete.”
City Considers Adding 1,500 Yellow Cabs [City Room]
Will New “Outer-Borough Only” Taxi Fleet Kill The Livery Cab? [Gothamist]
Photo by David Berkowitz.
Seems like this would just give regular cabs even less incentive to pickup passengers in Manhatten heading to the other boroughs.
bxgrl, I heard something about them actually being a different color, maybe orange. Otherwise you’re right, they’d all stay in Manhattan and be indistinguishable.
What needs to be done in Manhattan is to change the rules about when they can do shift changes. There are never enough cabs at ruch hour.
What problem is being solved here? Say, Mayor Free Market, the car service / taxi market works just fine over here. The only issue is getting a yellow taxi to leave Manhattan, but this Rube Goldberg proposal doesn’t really address that. Why not just add an outer-boro surcharge and start enforcing the laws that are already on the books?
1500 Medallions at 750K… 1.125 Billion… who gets that money?
silly idea. so i couldn’t take one of the outerboro cabs to manhattan? or the driver would have to drive back to an outer boro before picking up a fare?
seems to me like they’d just stick to the neighborhoods close to the bridges. and there’d be NO WAY a manhattan based cabbie would take you to brooklyn if they weren’t allowed to pick up another fare.
Who’s going to make sure those yellow cabs are actually operating in the outer boroughs? I think its a rotten idea and I have no idea why Bloomberg has it in for livery cabs. I like them and considering how they took up the slack for over 30 years, why should I stop using them for a yellow cab?
Yellow is the right color- they were too chicken to come to Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx.
I probably haven’t called a livery service in over a year. I just hail them on the streets, even in toney Park Slope.
So what happens to these cabs when they drop you off in Manhattan? Can they pick up any rides? More moronic solutions from Bloomberg’s dream land. How about cabs dedicated to Manhattan above 125th Street?
Solution is simply to promote the currently existing livery fleets and allow them to pick people up off the street in the outer boroughs. Solution without more city bureaucracy.
Livery cab guys better gear up for a battle. Sounds like someone’s trying to take their lunch.