Taxis

March 24, 2022

Uber will include NYC’s yellow taxis on its app

After years of competition, New York City yellow taxis and Uber are joining forces. NYC yellow taxi platform Creative Mobile Technologies (CMT) and Uber on Thursday announced a partnership permitting city taxis to be listed on the popular rideshare app, giving them access to a larger customer base. The combined service is expected to begin in beta this spring and will be made available to riders this summer, according to a press release.
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June 13, 2019

De Blasio plans to extend NYC’s limits on Lyft and Uber and make them permanent

As the city's for-hire vehicles (FHVs) rack up nearly 800,000 rides per day, Mayor Bill De Blasio announced on Wednesday the Taxi and Limousine Commission's new plan to extend last year's cap on for-hire vehicle licenses, the New York Post reports. A second cap will be placed on the length of time FHVs can let their cars cruise the city without passengers in the most congested part of Manhattan, below 96th Street. Last August, the city also suspended the issuance of new licenses. The new policies are expected to increase driver salaries by about 20 percent and make traffic in Manhattan below 60th Street six to 10 percent faster.
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August 15, 2017

Taxi map shows where New Yorkers take cabs and how they pay for them

Looked at from any distance, New York City may appear to be a honking sea of cars and taxis, with the latter making the biggest visual impact (and probably doing the most honking). Thanks to GIS gurus Esri via Maps Mania, we have a snapshot–an aggregate vision, if you will–of a year of life in the Big Apple made up of the city's taxi journeys. The Taxi Cab Terrain map allows you to zoom in and find out about the many millions of rides that start and end in the New York City and New Jersey metro areas based on data from the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission. Mapping yellow cab travel data covering July 2015 to June 2016, the map shows how different NYC boroughs use taxis and how they pay for their rides. Esri's John Nelson then takes a look at socioeconomic data to look for influences that might impact how different neighborhoods use and pay for cab rides.
More from the map, this way
August 4, 2017

Metered NYC taxis turn 110 years old this month

110 years ago on August 13th, one of the cornerstones of New York City life, the first metered taxicab, rolled into the city's streets. The metered fare idea was born, fittingly, in 1907 when Harry N. Allen was smacked with a five dollar fare ($126.98 in today's dollars) for being driven a quarter of a mile in a horse-drawn hansom cab. Allen imported 65 gas-powered cars from France, painted them red and green, and started the New York Taxicab Company. The elven hues were replaced by the iconic yellow shortly thereafter so they could be seen from a distance, and a year later 700 cabs were nowhere to be found when you wanted one.
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June 6, 2017

7,000 yellow cabs will offer pooled rides through mobile app Via

Starting today, 7,000 yellow cabs will begin offering pooled rides in Manhattan through a collaboration with the mobile ridesharing app Via. Despite the fact that the app is technically a competitor, the taxi industry hopes it will increase drivers' earnings, as they'll spend less time searching for fares and will keep the tips from all riders, as well as increase ridership since passengers will receive discounts of up to 40 percent.
All the details
March 15, 2017

Yellow is the best color to paint a taxi if you want to reduce accidents

It’s difficult to imagine the hustle and bustle of New York City without its culturally-iconic yellow taxicabs. And while it’s obvious companies chose the color yellow to be more visible to ride-hailers, a study conducted in Singapore found that not only are yellow cars harder to miss, they get in fewer accidents (h/t Mental Floss).
What are the origins of the famous yellow cab
February 21, 2017

Port Authority may add $4 curbside taxi fee at airports

Image by Grant Wickens via flick CC As far back as 2015, 6sqft reported that the Port Authority was considering fees for vehicles pulling up curbside to drop off or pick up passengers at New York City's airports as a way to reduce the congestion that has worsened since services like Uber and Lyft have arrived. The city's airports are among the only ones in the U.S. that don't charge curbside access fees. Now the Daily News has obtained a Port Authority draft proposal outlining the proposed fees. Taxi and hired car passengers could be hit with a $4 charge for each trip in and out of Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark airports as early as next year. The fee would be charged to the car operators and would presumably be passed to passengers
The idea is not getting a warm reception
January 16, 2017

With the rise of ride-hailing apps, daily yellow cab trips fell 27 percent since 2010

6sqft recently shared analysis that 3,000 ridesharing vehicles could replace the city's fleet of 13,587 taxis. And while this was more a comment on how carpooling can decrease congestion and emissions, it also points to a changing landscape for yellow cabs. In a piece this weekend, the Times looks at how taxis have fallen out of favor with New Yorkers since apps like Uber and Lyft came onto the scene; these vehicles now number more than 60,000. In 2010, for example, yellow cabs made an average of 463,701 trips, 27 percent more than the 336,737 trips this past November, which also resulted in a drop in fares from $5.17 million to $4.98 million. And just since 2014, the cost of a cab medallion was cut in less than half of its former $1.3 million price tag.
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January 4, 2017

3,000 Ubers could replace NYC’s fleet of 14,000 taxis

If the city is looking to cut down on emissions and reduce traffic, here is some food for thought courtesy of folks over at MIT. Researchers at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) have determined that 3,000 ridesharing vehicles have the potential to do the same amount of work as NYC's fleet of roughly 14,000 taxis—that is if New Yorkers are willing to use rideshare carpooling like Lyft Line and Uber POOL.
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January 15, 2016

Study Suggests Competition From Uber May Curb Cabbie Rudeness

Is the rise of car share services like Uber and Lyft making taxi drivers nicer? The Washington Post reports that according to research presented this week by the Technology Policy Institute's Scott Wallsten, complaints are down in New York and Chicago, including those about general rudeness, busted A/C, and that bit about the credit card machine not working. The drop in complaints corresponds with the rise of availability of Uber and Lyft in those cities, they claim.
What are New Yorkers complaining about less
November 19, 2015

Mapping All 1.1 Billion NYC Taxi Trips Since 2009

That's 183,333,333 trips a year; 15,277,777 a month; and roughly 510,000 a day. And it likely took software developer Todd W. Schneider a long time to put all of that data into this stunning map of taxi pickups and drop offs over the past six years. Green boro taxis are represented in their signature color and traditional yellow cabs in white, with brighter areas representing more taxi activity. As Gothamist first noted, "Yellow cab pickups are concentrated south of Central Park in Manhattan, while drop offs spread north and east into Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx; drop off and pickup activity snakes like a glowworm from Manhattan to the airports: along the Van Wyck Expressway to JFK, and by 278 and 495 to La Guardia." Using the TLC's public data, Schneider also created charts and maps that show taxi travel compared with uber rides; weekend destinations of bridge-and-tunnelers; a late-night taxi index; how weather affects taxi trips; weekday drop-offs at Goldman Sachs and Citigroup; airport traffic; cash versus credit card payments; and the dramatic increase in North Williamsburg taxi activity.
Get a look at the data here
August 17, 2015

Quirky Taxi Poster Illustrates the Designs of NYC’s Iconic Cabs

Although in daily life you're more likely to curse cabs than celebrate them, this cool print by illustrator James Gulliver Hancock highlights the charms of the city's yellow icon. Featuring the cab designs of today and yesteryear, this wonderful print is a work of art and a pretty accurate representation of just how nutty NYC traffic can get.
Where to buy one here
December 1, 2014

This Map Shows the Holiday Craziness of NYC Airport Taxi Trips

Still recovering from a Thanksgiving travel fiasco? Or maybe you haven't even made it home yet. Either way, this map is probably not going to make you feel better. It's a visualization of taxi trips from NYC-area airports between Thanksgiving and New Year's. The project was inspired by a previous mapping endeavor, NYC Taxis: A Day in the Life, and was created by designers at ImageWork Technologies. They looked at taxi trips originating from JFK and LaGuardia in 2013, and even have a feature that allows users to filter the results by individual airline terminals.
More details ahead
October 21, 2014

Why You Can’t Find a Cab in NYC When it Rains

Nobody likes getting stuck out in the rain especially when you've got places to go and people to see. This poses a problem for many New Yorkers because more often than not when its raining, finding a vacant taxi is damn near impossible. In a city that normally puts convenience at your finger tips, it's somewhat perplexing as to why this is not also true for taxi cabs in NYC. One would think that the number of taxis on the road would increase when demand for their services is at its highest. As it turns out the opposite is true, and there are many people looking into this peculiarity. In an attempt to find some answers, a recent article published on citylab.com examines a few theories surrounding the conundrum that have been developed by some scholars studying economic behavior.
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