The New York Times Book of New York

by The New York Times

  Taxis a Traffic Plague

  February 24, 1924

  NEW YORK, FROM ALL INDICATIONS, IS suffering with a plague—a whirring, rattling, noisy plague, not of locusts, but of taxicabs. Nightly, at the hours when the theaters are discharging their audiences and the amusement district for a score of blocks is crowded by a mass of pleasure-seekers and homegoers, there appears a legion of taxicabs, thronging in from north and south and east and west to complete with another for fares. Almost the entire 18,000 taxicabs of the city, it would seem, are bent on pressing into the jam of Broadway.

  This is but one of the many angles of the taxi problem with which New York is confronted. Twenty-seven thousand men, almost a full army division, are engaged in driving it night and day. It appears prolifically in the newspapers and traffic court records in cases of accident, and when a crime wave is afloat not infrequently in the commission of serious misdeeds.

  Twenty-seven thousand men … are engaged in driving [taxis] night and day.

  “There are too many taxicabs in the city,” is the declaration of Deputy Police Commissioner John A. Harriss, in charge of traffic. “There are not 30 days of bad weather in the year that call for the number of taxis now running about the streets. The city would be better off it they were reduced to 12,000. That is what we want—just about 12,000 taxicabs.”

  Tips and Taxicabs

  October 9, 1907

  TO THE EDITOR OF THE NEW YORK TIMES:

  In reply to the letter of Oct. 4 regarding the question of tipping the driver of the taxicab, I should like to make the following remarks:

  It is not the intention of the New York Taxicab Company to force the public to tip the drivers. They are not paid wages, but receive a percentage of their takings; each man is thus put in a position of being a partner in the enterprise, and it is to his interest to work as hard as he can and give the best of satisfaction, as his takings depend on these two items.

  It would be absurd for us to ask the American public to refrain from tipping; this has been tried in many enterprises and has never succeeded; the American public are always apt to express their satisfaction at good treatment at the hands of any employees, and it is more or less as a token of appreciation that this custom has become prevalent.

  At the same time, our drivers are under strict orders to give the best attention and care to all passengers, whether they expect to receive gratuities or not, and I shall take it as a favor if the public will complain to me if they do not receive such treatment.

  It is very customary in France for drivers to try and bargain with a passenger as to what tip they will receive before they will accept him as a fare. This will not be permitted on any account in the New York Taxicab Company, and a report of such an offense, if sustained, is sufficient cause for the instant dismissal of any driver.

  NEW YORK TAXICAB CO.,

  H. N. Allen, President.

  New York, Oct. 8, 1907

  Cabdrivers Sweat It Out Bidding on Medallions

  By WINTER MILLER | November 2, 2007

  There are over 13,000 licensed, yellow cabs currently operating in New York City.

  “DROPPED, DROPPED, STILL GOOD, DROPPED, dropped.” Gary Kanterman was talking to himself as he ran his pen down his list of taxi drivers.

  Mr. Kanterman, 41, a taxi broker, was assessing the bids of his 35 clients—most of whom were out driving fares—at an auction yesterday of 63 medallions by the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

  About 13,000 cabs honk and swerve through the streets of New York City, yet even with recent strikes over the cost and purview of new technology mandated in the cars, owning a medallion remains a shot at independence and equity for many drivers.

  “This is one of the best investments—better than Merrill Lynch,” said a driver, Mahmoud Sadakah, 42. “This is a guaranteed investment, because it will never go down.”

  The auction by the commission was the first of two offering a total of 150 medallions. Most are for the opportunity to drive wheelchair-accessible taxis.

  The trick of this sealed bid auction was how much over the commission’s minimum bid of $189,000 to go. To compare, the market value of an independent medallion sold in October was $426,000. Medallions are perceived as low-risk investments because resale prices have continued to rise and there is a fairly stable cap on the number of new cars allowed on the streets.

  In the second row, Mohammad Islam, 32, was leaning forward in his chair, eagerly watching the bids land. “I put $341,000,” he said, explaining that he had borrowed $20,000 from relatives and 90 percent from the broker, who also agreed to finance the cost of a new car.

  As the 155th bid hit the screen, brokers jumped to their feet to compare notes about who got what. The highest bid was $384,999, and two of Mr. Kanterman’s clients made the cut with matching bids of $277,777.

  “I got a deal. I’m happy,” said Vladimir Nisanov, 34.

  But he did not look happy. He was already tabulating his worries: What if the car he buys breaks down? What if medallion prices fall?

  All Licensed Cabs Must Be Yellow by Jan. 1

  December 17, 1969

  MAYOR LINDSAY REMINDED THE CITY’S taxicab operators yesterday that all city licensed cabs must be painted yellow by the first of next year to make it easier for customers to distinguish between licensed and unlicensed, or “gypsy,” cabs.

  At the same time, he pointed out that a local law that becomes effective Jan. 1 requires all gypsy cabs, known legally as “private livery vehicles,” be painted “some color other than yellow.”

  “Since the service provided and the rates charged by licensed taxicabs and private liveries may vary considerably,” the Mayor said, “the public must be provided with an easy means of rapid identification to distinguish between the licensed taxicabs and the non-licensed private liveries. The new coloring law will serve that purpose.”

  Mayor Lindsay’s statement repeated the city law requiring cabs with the Police Department medallion to respond to hails by the public and to take passengers to any location within the city for the amount shown on the meter.

  All city cabs must be painted yellow to distinguish between licensed and unlicensed cabs.

  He also pointed out that nonmedallion cabs are prohibited by law from cruising and responding to hails. He said gypsy cabs could only be retained in advance, “normally by telephone.”

  Calvin Williams, who operates the Black Pearl Car Service, a Brooklyn gypsy cab system, questioned the legality of the new law but said his company would not challenge it if the city would allow gypsy cabs to be painted part yellow in combination with other colors

  It’s Fall in New York, and Cabs Are in Bloom

  By JENNIFER 8. LEE | November 6, 2007

  MANY NEW YORKERS HAVE BEEN DELIGHTED this fall by the florid colors coursing through the city streets. Like real flowers, the petals and pistils painted by some 23,000 schoolchildren flourish in the sunshine. That is thanks to the work done at night by Garden of Transit workers, who coax drivers into allowing the flowers to be applied to their cabs.

  Garden in Transit—a project of the community art organization Portraits of Hope, founded by Bernard Massey and his brother, Ed—persuaded the Taxi and Limousine Commission to approve the privately financed $5 million public art program a year ago to mark the centennial of the metered taxi in New York.

  Their goal is to decorate 50 percent of New York’s cab fleet, but they are lucky if one out of seven drivers says yes. When they do get a yes, the workers swoop in and apply the adhesive sheets in just a few minutes.

  “It’s almost like a Nascar pit stop,” Ed Massey said. “They are out of there in three and a half minutes.”

  But workers also have to dispel the rumors heard by the drivers: That the flower project has something to do with the taxi commission’s mandate that global positioning devices be installed in every cab. Or that it is a protest against the war in Iraq. Or a huge, rolling advertisement for a new Austin Powers movie. Or a celebrat
ion of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s birthday (it is on Valentine’s Day). Or even that Upper East Side residents just want to look down from their apartments and see something pretty.

  Taxi TV, Brisk as the Traffic You’re Stuck In

  By ALESSANDRA STANLEY | December 15, 2007

  Taxi-TV screens, like this one in Ahmed Zaheer’s cab, include a live GPS map and can be used to pay for rides with a credit card.

  WHERE ONCE THERE WAS ONLY PEELING vinyl, printed fare rates and the cabdriver’s ceaseless cell phone chatter, there is now a television screen.

  Suddenly, brash ads for banks and credit card companies (“Your morning mocha could be on us”), an almost endless supply of health tips and features about family-run bagel factories and cookie drives to cure cancer, and even, in some cases, movie times and restaurant reviews, are all part of the Manhattan cab ride experience.

  But is there anything on Taxi TV worth watching? Stay tuned.

  As it turns out, there is a ferocious network battle for backseat viewers. Of the four companies that have contracts with the city, there are only two major providers who together control most of the taxi programming, and they offer starkly opposite philosophies. VeriFone Transportation Systems, which has an alliance with WABC-TV, calls its system Taxi-TV, and favors aggressively interactive content: Alongside ads and news briefs, its touch-screen monitors offer gallery listings, restaurant reviews and ads disguised as quizzes. (“What is Donald Trump’s rank in the Forbes 400?” asks Forbes magazine.) Its monitor even comes with a dimmer to soften the screen’s brightness after dark.

  Creative Mobile Technology Inc., which is in league with Clear Channel and NBC Universal, and which offers NY 10, the Taxi Entertainment Network, believes that less is more: Its screens are designed to encourage passenger passivity; the main choice is whether to turn the crawl under the screen from sports to entertainment news.

  Taxi-TV, via WABC and VeriFone, offers more consumer information, but is also more demanding, and sometimes more enervating. The screen does not always instantly respond to touch (“Please be patient while data is loading”), and trying to scroll through the Zagat Guide’s restaurant listings while the cab maneuvers potholes and stop-and-go traffic is a little like trying to thread a needle on horseback.

  The programming provided by Clear Channel and NBC is more prosaic and tightly bound to corporate sponsorship, including its own. NBC provides promotional clips from “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno” and “Saturday Night Live” and many, many ads for “The NBC Nightly News With Brian Williams” and the next season of “The Apprentice.”

  At the moment, the cab tube has novelty, but that can wear off pretty quickly after one too many loops of Chase credit card ads or movie reviews from NBC’s “Reel Talk.” But the technology allows for more and better programming, and viewers do have a voice in what they watch while traveling. All taxi television sets are equipped with an off button, and that is the captive cab rider’s last resort.

  New York’s Cabbies Show How Multicolored Racism Can Be

  By THOMAS J. LUECK | November 7, 1999

  IT MAY BE THE MOST BLATANT FORM OF RACISM in New York City: a cab driver refusing to pick up someone who is black.

  Former Mayor David N. Dinkins says it has even happened to him. And now the actor Danny Glover has gone public over what he described as a string of such slights.

  “I was so angry,” Mr. Glover told a news conference, recounting how several empty cabs had refused to stop for him, his college-age daughter and her roommate. Later, when one finally did, the driver refused the “Lethal Weapon” star access to the front seat even though he has a bad hip and is entitled under taxi industry rules to stretch out in front.

  A simple case of traditional American racism? Perhaps. But in New York such incidents often have the distinct flavor of the melting pot: In this case the driver was nonwhite, too—apparently from southern Asia, Mr. Glover said.

  And so the actor’s experience may illustrate not just continuing American racism, but one way it is subtly changing with demographics: As recent immigrants from Asia, the Middle East and Africa come to dominate the taxi industry, they are bringing with them new strains of bigotry. Most often, according to people in the taxi industry, racism is perpetuated by cabbies whose attitudes have roots not only in colonial rule and the strict social stratification of their native lands, but also in the more recent distorted images of the global media.

  Randolph Scott-McLaughlin, a lawyer who accompanied Mr. Glover at the press conference and a 20-year veteran of civil rights litigation, said drivers like the one who antagonized Mr. Glover “have adopted the same patterns of racial profiling that emerged when most drivers were Irish, Italian-Americans, or from somewhere else in Europe.”

  Acts of racial discrimination by cabbies are illegal, punishable by a fine or the revocation of the offender’s taxi-driver license.

  But Mr. Scott-McLaughlin, who himself is black, said Mr. Glover did not intend to pursue a formal complaint with the Taxi and Limousine Commission because he had no interest in punishing a single driver.Instead, the actor spoke out last week to focus fresh attention on racism in the taxi industry.

  “No one is educating these people that we are not dangerous criminals,” said Mr. Scott-McLaughlin.

  An A.P.B. For Yo-Yo Ma’s Lost Cello

  By KATHERINE E. FINKELSTEIN

  October 17, 1999

  YO-YO MA, THE WORLD’S MOST FAMOUS living cellist, could not have planned a more dramatic or nail-biting performance. And an array of New Yorkers, including a phalanx of police officers and city officials and a cabdriver in Queens, could not have composed a more gracious finale: the safe return of his $2.5 million cello.

  It was 1 p.m. when Mr. Ma, still exhausted from playing at Carnegie Hall some 16 hours before, got into a yellow cab at 86th Street and Central Park West, putting his 18th-century cello in the trunk.

  Eighteen minutes later, when he got out at the Peninsula Hotel on 55th Street, he forgot the cello, made in 1733 by Domenico Montagnana, one of the greatest luthiers of his age.

  What followed—an all-points search for the rare instrument—was more Hollywood than Haydn.

  All the thunderstruck musician had was the receipt for his ride, which had the taxi’s medallion number on it, which he gave to hotel security officers.

  They alerted the Midtown North precinct on West 54th Street, which put out a bulletin to patrol cars around the city to hunt for the taxi.

  Around 3:30 p.m., the 108th Precinct in Long Island City, Queens, sent a patrol car to the taxi’s home base, the Maria Cab Company at 44-07 Vernon Boulevard. The taxi driver, Dishashi Lukumwena, was scheduled to get off work at 4 p.m.

  When he pulled in, he opened his trunk as worried police officers and curious taxi drivers stood by. There, in its oversize blue plastic case, was the cello.

  Back at the hotel when cello and cellist were reunited, Mr. Ma was asked why someone so famous was taking a regular yellow cab.

  “I’m like a regular person,” he said. “I like to hear Jackie Mason tell me what to do.”

  Yellow Taxis Battle to Keep Livery Cabs Off Their Turf

  By RANDY KENNEDY | May 10, 2001

  A FORMER NEW YORK CITY POLICE DETECtive stood on the corner of 67th Street and Central Park West the other morning trying to hail a taxi. What made this unusual was that he was not going anywhere.

  Instead, the former detective was working as a foot soldier in a war being waged on the streets of Manhattan, one whose battle lines became apparent the minute he raised his hand: the cabs that raced to his side were not yellow. They were livery cabs, from sleek corporate sedans to battered gypsies, and they arrived in a virtual procession, rushing over and stopping illegally to haggle over a price.

  Turf wars are nothing new between the medallion and livery cab industries—the complex two-class taxi system that has evolved in New York since the 1930’s. Medallion taxis were always supposed to be restricted to picking up s
treet hails. Liveries were to be restricted to pre-arranged calls—though they have always picked up street hails on the sly, usually in neighborhoods where yellow cabs have no interest in going. But over the last two years liveries have increasingly invaded the yellow cab’s traditional stronghold, south of 96th Street in Manhattan, cruising around business areas, hotels and restaurants and illegally taking hails.

  Liveries have increasingly invaded the yellow cab’s stronghold.

  The reasons they say this is happening now more than ever include a dearth of yellow cabs, especially during the day; more people in Manhattan trying to hail them; and what yellow cab owners see as a lack of enforcement by the taxi commission against liveries.

  But both yellow taxi fleet owners and livery owners say that they think the problem will persist because the agency has only about 200 taxi officers to cover all five boroughs and those officers usually must concentrate on more pressing public safety problems. And the Police Department, though able to respond to illegal pickups, almost never does.

  The other day on Central Park West, it was not easy to find anyone who really cared one way or the other so long as he could find a cab. And if a yellow one wasn’t around, he did not hesitate long to hop into a livery.

  BRIDGES AND TUNNELS

  Brooklyn Bridge At 100, Embodies the Spirit of an Age

  By PAUL GOLDBERGER | May 24, 1983

  Contruction of the Brooklyn Bridge, 1878