For decades, yellow taxis have ignored an ocean of street hails outside Manhat tan’s core. Livery cars, which are legally permitted to take only prearranged radio calls, bent the law to pick up the street-hail demand.
For years, no one really cared. Liveries were performing a service the yellows wouldn’t. The city looked the other way.
That’s changing. The Taxi and Limousine Commission has begun a huge enforcement effort against illegal street hails, making life in this underground economy less and less sustainable.
More important, the “gray” arrangement left livery drivers stuck working in the shadows and risking their lives for limited economic opportunities. Drivers have been assaulted, robbed and killed; all they had to show for it was a beat-up town car.
Mayor Bloomberg is floating a five-borough taxi and livery-service plan that aims to end this injustice. The city would auction 1,500 yellow-taxi medallions — each linked to one or several “borough taxis” that could pick up street hails only in the boroughs and Upper Manhattan.
The new class of cabs would have partitions, global-positioning systems and other safety features. Drivers could convert their livery licenses into legal “borough” street-hail licenses and pick up passengers in shopping and transit hubs — without fear of a fine or vehicle seizure.
But, for it to work, it must be done on their terms. These drivers provided service when no one else would; they should be guaranteed jobs and special financing if they choose to buy medallions linked to “borough” licenses.
The livery bases need to be strong participants, too — and a simple modification of the mayor’s plan would do the job: Let “borough taxis” continue doing radio work and the livery bases will be automatically included in any legalized street-hail service. They’d also be able to purchase or manage medallions and their linked borough taxis.
Indeed, to ensure fair access, the city must set aside half of the medallions for first-time buyers, such as most livery bases, so they can compete with taxi fleets.
Finally, the city has made its point with the ticketing blitz against the illegal livery pickups. Enough: As a gesture of good faith, forgive these summonses and ease up on the crackdown. We should be converting illegals to legals — not running them further underground.
But the status quo must change. Preserving it would be a great disservice to the mostly Hispanic livery drivers and to riders in the boroughs — as well as to the whole city, which would gain tremendous revenue from a medallion sale.
A sale of 1,500 medallions linked to at least 6,000 “borough taxis” would bring an estimated $1.5 billion in revenue to the city — plus millions in recurring tax revenues to the city, state and MTA. That’s 30 percent of next year’s projected budget gap — and a lot of money to keep day-care centers open in needy neighborhoods, save firehouses, save teachers’ jobs and keep libraries open.
Fernando Mateo is founder of and spokes man for the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers.