The value of a yellow taxi medallion will remain strong even as new livery hails come to market. (Via Bloomberg News)

For millions of New Yorkers, Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s taxi bill compromise came as a welcome relief yesterday. For those who do not live in Manhattan south of of 96th St. or in select parts of western Brooklyn and Queens, finding a yellow cab on the streets is akin to winning the New York lottery. Under the new plan, though, access for everyone will be greatly expanded, but those disabled New Yorkers who have few transit options come out ahead.

First, the official details. Per Cuomo’s press release, the governor will approve the bill on Wednesday, and the legislature will approve an amendment next term. It allows for the Taxi and Limousine Commission to issue “up to 18,000″ new medallions of “hail-accessible inter-borough livery licenses.” The city must grant $15,000 per vehicle to retrofit old cars or purchase new handicapped-accessible vehicles. The city can also sell 2000 new medallions, but all of those must go to accessible vehicles.

“By working together and finding common ground, I am pleased that we have been able to reach a deal that will extend taxi and livery service to the outer boroughs and upper Manhattan, while ensuring full access for the disabled,” Governor Cuomo said. “The bill as originally passed failed to address the needs of individuals with disabilities and did not provide any incentive for the livery industry to ensure disabled New Yorkers had full access to the taxicab system.”

Accessibility issues, long assumed to be a front for the powerful medallion and taxi-owner lobby, have indeed been concerns for a while. The current fleet of taxi cabs in New York City are simply not handicapped-accessible, and the TLC’s Taxi of Tomorrow is not either, must to the concern of many. This new bill should address some concerns.

As I reported earlier on Tuesday, the new livery medallions will be phased in over three years. Apparently, the city is set to sell them for $1500 each while subsequent owners can hawk them at market rates, thus creating an absurd situation where the government is literally giving money away. Meanwhile, the city says it can generate $1 billion revenue from the sales of the livery and yellow cab medallions, and that’s money that is sorely needed in this economy.

For the city, this measure is something of a rebuke as the City Council failed to pass such an expansion of cab service, and the Mayor who has long championed this bill did not fail to notice his victory. “Last January, in my State of the City speech, I announced that our Administration would seek to achieve a goal that had eluded the City for three decades: bringing legal taxi service to the 7 million New Yorkers who live outside Manhattan’s Central Business District,” Michale Bloomberg said. “Today, we have achieved that landmark goal – and it is a huge victory for all New Yorkers who have ever sought to hail a cab outside of Manhattan and in northern Manhattan. The new law and the agreement reached today will also generate a much-needed billion dollars in revenue for the City through the sale of 2,000 new yellow medallions, all of which will be wheelchair accessible. In fact, today’s agreement, by increasing the number of medallions sold by 500, will provide even more revenue for the City than the original bill passed in June.”

Despite the mayor’s pronouncements, by going over the head of the City Council, the mayor sacrificed some elements of New York City homerule. The state now must approve a Disabled Accessibility Plan that will “through the gradual phase-in of accessible vehicles to the fleet.” Without such approval, the state can withhold 1600 new yellow cab medallions — or the equivalent of nearly another $1 billion in city revenue. Meanwhile, current fleet owners, somehow alleging a reduction in the value of their medallions, may try to challenge this new law, but city officials do not expect that challenge to succeed. This new bill is not a government taking, and current yellow cabs don’t serve the areas targeted by this new bill.

So the winners here are the vast majority of New York City residents who live where those yellow cabs will not go. Even as transit service is cut back through reductions in payroll tax revenue, the city’s taxi network is expanding, and that should allow some more New Yorkers to give up their auto-centric lives. After three decades, this new bill legitimizes and expands a practice that has been ongoing, and New York’s transportation policy should be better off for it. It’s now only a matter of time before green, hailable livery cabs start competing with the city’s extensive fleet of yellow cabs for the hearts of New Yorkers.

In a week or so, the ambitious plan to improve transportation options for New Yorkers who live north of 96th St. and outside of Manhattan will expire as it awaits Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s signature. The bill, finally presented the governor earlier this week, has been subjected to a tremendous amount of back-and-forth. Even though it has the support of the state Assembly and Senate, the governor has found ways to criticize it.

As Kathleen Horan summarized for WNYC, the hangup seems to concern accessibility issues. Cuomo claims that stakeholders want more licenses for cabs that are wheelchair-accessible while also noting that no one will buy these expensive vehicles. In reality, the medallion owners are using their lobbying influence to sway the vote.

Horan explains:

Following the summit, Cuomo said “even though government comes with the best of intentions, to redesign a system, there can be unanticipated consequences.” He said one of the main sticking points in the plan to allow livery cars to accept street hails is wheelchair accessibility — and if anyone would purchase accessible permits since the vehicles are more expensive.

“The industry says that nobody is going to buy those permits because it’s not economically feasible. They can’t afford to buy the cars given the revenue. That’s a big hole in the current plan,” Cuomo explained.

He added another key issue to be worked out is how the plan would be enforced. The governor has until next week to veto or sign before the bill before it expires. If he does sign, it’ll likely to be contingent on significant changes to the bill happening through a chapter amendment.

By and large, these are red herrings designed to obscure the fact that medallion owners — and not taxi drivers or residents — are fighting against the bill. They have something to lose while the rest of us have something to gain. The Times urged Cuomo to sign off on the measure yesterday, and I could not agree more.

In other taxi news, check out this great story on what it takes to test drive a taxi. In the heart of Arizona, Nissan engineered have rigged up a course that approximates the bumps, bruises and potholes of New York’s suffering city streets. The Taxi of Tomorrow must be built to withstand the streets of today.

Whenever I’m driving somewhere and I’m in the car by myself, I like to turn up on the volume on the music I’ve taken with me for the ride. Maybe I’ll sing along; maybe I’ll just enjoy the background music. No matter what, though, it’s a time for me to control the soundtrack to my ride.

At all other times, though, we don’t want to hear any extraneous sounds during our commutes. For example, few things annoy commuters more than tinny music trickling through leaky headphones, and subway riders have had a very strident reaction toward the MTA’s ongoing attempts to bring cell service to its underground stations. In fact, in a recent poll, the Straphangers Campaign found that over 43 percent of respondents thought that allowing cell reception under was a bad idea. Elsewhere, we grow weary of the pre-recorded announcements that provide a noisy intrusion into a commute we want to be our own.

Driving these sympathies are feelings of self. We ride the subway with everyone else, but we want our commutes to be our own. We want to set the pace, the space, the time, the sounds, and this onslaught of other voices — from MTA warnings to cell conversations to music — grows annoying. Just as bad as the subways are taxis. Once upon a time, a variety of public figures from Elmo to Joe Torre told us to buckle our seat belts, and today, interactive TVs complete with ads and talking heads bombard us with sounds.

This weekend, when I got into a cab to head from the subway to Chelsea Piers amidst a strange bout of winter weather in late October, the TV started playing, and it would not stop. Five ads rolled before Brian Williams started yammering about NBC News. With the cabbie’s radio on, albeit at a respectful volume, the TV was just too much, and we scrambled to press the mute button. Now, though, we will soon gain a respite from the taxi noises.

As Christine Haughney reports in The Times today, quieter TVs are coming to a taxi near you. She reports:

The two major software providers of Taxi TV technology, Creative Mobile Technologies and VeriFone Media, have taken several steps designed for a quieter ride. In some taxis, the default volume has been lowered, and the volume button has been relocated; passengers will also get a quick tutorial on how to lower the volume or mute it altogether. And now, for the first time, passengers can even silence the introduction video that plays before the regular Taxi TV programming begins.

For many passengers, the changes are long overdue: in a recent survey of 22,000 riders, 31 percent said the televisions were the worst element of the ride. Cabbies also welcomed the changes, even if they cannot hit the mute button themselves.

“All day we hear it, same thing all day,” said Ghayyur Abbas, 34, a taxi driver who on a recent night blared Rihanna at an even higher volume to block out jokes that the comedian Jimmy Kimmel was making on Taxi TV. Mr. Abbas said he dreaded the coming weeks, when Taxi TV would start running a chorus of holiday-themed jingles: “Halloween is coming. Then it’s going to start. Then Christmas.”

So far, says Haughney, approximately half of the city’s taxis are now quieter with more changes on the horizon. “We’ve had to balance the interests of the advertisers and the passengers and the drivers,” Jesse Davis, head of a company that has outfit 6600 taxis, said. “The advertiser or content provider wants the sound as loud as possible. The drivers, for the most part, would rather not hear it.”

One of Davis’ co-workers from Creative Mobile Technologies noted that fewer customers were muting the quieter TVs, but drivers still find the volume intrusively, repetitive and annoying. So do I, and the mute button is the first thing I find after telling the driver where I’m going.

New York is known for its noise. Horns blare; trains rumble by. We want quiet as we ride. We want to control the volume. We want to pick the music. Maybe one day, we will, but for now, a quieter taxi ride is a step in the right direction. If only we could do away with those TVs for good though.

An NYC taxi medallion has been a better investment than gold or a house since 1980. (Via Bloomberg News)

Getting stuck in Albany is no one’s idea of a good time. It’s even worse when the thing stuck is not a person but rather a bill designed to improve transportation options in New York City, but that’s exactly what’s happened with the Mayor’s plan to expand livery cab access outside of the core area of Manhattan.

The plan, as we know it, is not without controversy. Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who has made it a goal to improve taxi access for everyone who wants to travel from one point outside of Manhattan to, well, everywhere. With 97 percent of yellow cab rides originated within Manhattan south of 96th St. or at an airport, millions of New Yorkers are left searching for cabs in vain. In April, Bloomberg proposed a plan to legitimize street hails for livery cabs. By granting 30,000 limited medallions to livery cabs, Bloomberg’s plan would allow these cabbies to pick up passengers anywhere in the city but in Manhattan south of 96th Street. It would raise $1 billion for the city — a key point — and provide increased transportation access.

But the best laid plans often run into politicians beholden to powerful lobbyist groups, and the City Council, under the influence of medallion owners, was destined not to pass the bill. Bloomberg went to Albany, and while the Assembly and Senate approved the bill, they have reportedly yet to present it to Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his signatured. Residents want to see the changes, but fleet owners have been looking to kill the bill since mid-July. After all, if a taxi medallion is a better long-term investment than gold, why would these medallion owners — who generally are not the drivers — want to risk competition even if the 30,000 new medallions would go to drivers who wouldn’t compete with the yellow cabs?

The bill’s opponents have mounted some rather convoluted offenses as well. Take, for instance, this letter from Public Advocate Bill De Blasio. As Public Advocate, De Blasio is supposed to advocate for the people of New York City, but it appears as though he’s trying to shore up support from powerful and wealthy medallion owners as he eyes as the 2013 mayor race. He says:

This plan likewise threatens the livelihood of livery cab base owners and drivers. For decades, livery cab companies have offered reliable and legitimate pre-arranged cab service throughout the five boroughs of New York City. However, the current taxi plan will place substantial barriers in front of those providing legal, prearranged car services. If the Mayor’s plan becomes law, the existence of newly-permitted livery cabs capable of picking up street fares will no doubt significantly decrease the demand for prearranged car service. This plan will also likely increase the incentive for non-permitted livery drivers to pick up street hails illegally.

Apparently, De Blasio seems convinced that limo companies that guarantee pick-up service will find their customers waiting endlessly as drivers get needlessly distracted by street hails instead. I’m not entirely positive how one draws that conclusion from a plan that would allow street hails; it seems anathema to the workings of the car service market which relies upon good service and good word-of-mouth to gain popularity. But De Blasio’s words suggest exactly who is opposing the taxi measure.

As recently as ten days ago, it appeared as though the bill would die a death at the hands of powerful interest groups who have been lobbying Albany for months. Yet, the allure of the dollar is a strong one indeed, and Gov. Cuomo is pushing Bloomberg and the bill’s opponents toward a compromise. If the city could indeed realize $1 billion from the sale of new medallions, it is better to find a solution to the impasse than forego easy money in tight times. “When you can find revenue without raising taxes, grab it,” Cuomo said last week.

For now, we can glimpse the basic contours of a potential resolution. Facing criticism by U.S. Senator Tom Harkin, an Iowa Democrat who has championed the rights of the disabled, the old bill will give way to one with more protections for riders and yellow cabs. One Assembly representative — Micah Kellner — wants to sell 1500 new yellow medallions for handicapped accessible cabs in addition to 6000 new “outer borough” medallions. Of those, 1200 would have to be handicapped accessible. State Senator Martin Golden wants to cut the number of new medallions down from 30,000 to just 10,000 to placate the yellow cab industry.

And that’s where things are now. Powerful interests are fighting against a plan that would help millions of New Yorkers who would benefit from increased access to street hails. The resolution will drag on through the fall, but I’m optimistic that something positive will emerge. The bill and the debate, both nearly dead ten days ago, live on.

A hybrid taxi roams the streets of New York City in 2007. (Photo by Benjamin Kabak)

As the flurry of legislative activity wrapped up in Albany last month, the Assembly and Senate took taxicab matters into their own hands. With some urging from Mayor Bloomberg, state representatives chose to act with the knowledge that the City Council would kowtow to the demands of the medallion owners and stymy the bill. Now, nearly a month later, we wait to see if Gov. Andrew Cuomo will sign the bill or veto it. Whose interests is he protecting?

The plan, as I’ve outlined in the past, is geared toward ensuring that underserved areas of the city can legally hail taxis. The plan will put up for sale 30,000 medallions for $1500 with conditions. These medallions can only be used for street hails north of 96th St. in Manhattan and anywhere in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. They are designed to improve access to taxis while ensuring that areas where current taxi drivers say they pick up just three percent of passengers have legitimate street service.

In The Times today, Christine Haughney goes behind the scenes at the intense lobbying taking place in Albany. Cuomo has allowed the bill to sit on his desk for the better part of a month as he mulls over the fate of surface transportation for millions of New Yorkers who live in areas underserved by yellow cabs. He has been silent. She reports:

The fleet owners have stepped up efforts to persuade the governor to veto the legislation, arguing that the measure could jeopardize one of the city’s most vital industries. David Pollack, executive director of the Committee for Taxi Safety, a group that handles leasing operations for yellow medallions, said taxi drivers continue to send letters and call the governor’s office to oppose a plan that “would devastate 50,000 hard-working taxi drivers by flooding the market with new taxis.”

Michael Woloz, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, echoed Mr. Pollack’s fears, adding that these cars would limit yellow taxi service. “We are currently educating the governor’s office on the many policy, economic, procedural, legal, operational and logistical problems with this bill,” Mr. Woloz said…

Micah C. Lasher, Mr. Bloomberg’s chief lobbyist in Albany, said the mayor would continue to talk with the governor about how “this represents important and very positive public policy for the residents of New York City.” At the same time, Mr. Lasher said, “we plan to be responsive to the concerns of medallion owners in implementing the plan.”

While medallion owners are lobbying against the bill, the city’s Taxi & Limousine Commissioner David Yassky says residents are eager for the changes. “We’ve gotten tremendous reaction from people in Brooklyn and Queens and the Bronx,” he said to The Times. “Not a day goes by when I don’t hear people say, ‘That’s such a great idea.’”

The economics of the opposition doesn’t make much sense, and Cap’n Transit has written an extensive takedown of the system and new plan. (Start poke around his site.) If taxi drivers aren’t keen on going to these underserved areas and don’t cruise around for fares, they won’t lose business, and the yellow medallions, which still provide exclusive street service in Manhattan and pickups at the airport, won’t really be devalued that much. It’s certainly not going to devastate the 50,000 cab drivers as, if anything, it will impact the rich medallion owners instead.

So we wait on Cuomo, and we wait for a key piece of transportation legislation. Taxis are an integral part of a public transit network. Sometimes, the subway or a bus can’t take us where we need to go. Sometimes, we need the trunk space, the speed or the convenience of a car service. Comprehensive taxi service allows for less car dependence in an urban area. Cuomo should sign the bill.

As the City Council, beholden to the interests of those who own taxi medallions, has delayed action on Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plan to expand taxi service beyond the cozy confines of Manhattan, the mayor has found an ally in Albany. In an attempt to bypass the city’s homerule and with prodding by the mayor, the Assembly and Senate are both considering a bill that would legalize street hails for livery cabs north of 96th St. and outside of Manhattan. With the legislative session set to end this week, action could come quickly.

Both The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times reported on this news late Sunday night, and the full text of the bill under consideration is available here. The move is essentially an end run around the City Council. Andrew Grossman from The Journal has more:

Lawmakers are on the verge of approving sweeping changes to New York’s taxi industry with the aim of improving cab service outside Manhattan. The changes include the creation of 30,000 permits that would allow owners to pick up passengers who hail them on the street everywhere in the city except at the airports and below West 110th Street and East 96th Street in Manhattan. Those permits would sell for $1,500, and the new cabs would likely have meters.

Currently, only yellow cabs with one of the 13,000 medallions—which sell for more than $800,000 on the open market—tacked to their hoods are allowed to pick up passengers who haven’t called ahead. But city data show that yellow taxis rarely stray beyond the airports and Manhattan south of Harlem. Everywhere else, New Yorkers looking to hire a car usually either have to call ahead or flag down a livery cab. The latter practice is illegal but common.

Since January, Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been trying to change that by creating a new kind of taxi that could be hailed legally in places where pickups that are currently illegal often happen. Each new plan presented by the city has angered a different part of the taxi industry. A version of the plan similar to the one under consideration in Albany was stopped by the yellow-taxi industry’s allies in the City Council earlier this year. But the bills lawmakers could vote on early this week don’t require council approval because they deem improved taxi service in the outer boroughs a matter of “substantial state concern.”

If Albany acts on this measure, you can bet that lawsuits will follow nearly immediately. The bill itself says that the “substantial state concern” focuses around the “public health, safety and welfare of the residents of the state of New York traveling to, from and within the city of New York.” It claims that “the majority of residents and nonresidents of the city of New York do not currently have access to the necessary amount of legal, licensed taxicabs available for street hails when traveling within the city.” Despite the truth of that statement, relying on that claim for purposes of overriding home rule in regards to a matter entirely within the purview of the City of New York may be a different (legal) matter all together.

Ultimate legal challenges aside, the livery and yellow cab industries are, as The Times notes, springing into action. Yellow cab owners worry about the devaluing of their medallions. “If one livery car has a meter in it and has the right to pick up street hails, every single livery in New York City will look at that as a green light to do what they are doing illegally now, and that’s picking up our fares,” David Pollack said. “This is life and death for the yellow taxi industry.”

But it isn’t. In fact, recent news coverages has more than adequately exposed the contradictions inherent in Pollack’s hyperbole. Yellow taxi drivers often refuse to take folks to non-Manhattan destinations and rarely cruise for hails in those neighborhoods because it’s just not worth it. In fact, some in the taxi industry say outer borough fares are just three percent of their total take. These yellow cab drivers can’t complain about longer trips over bridges and through tunnels while the medallion owners complain about competition. Something has to give. (For more, check out Cap’n Transit’s recent post.)

Meanwhile, the livery owners aren’t too keen on this plan either. Fernando Mateo of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers summed it up: “We are in disbelief that this is what we’re winding up with. It’s better that we keep the status quo as it is. Why create change? It’s not right. I don’t understand what the mentality at City Hall really is right now.” The federation seems to be concerned that the cost of the medallion will price some livery drivers out. Those who can afford it will legally be allowed to pick up street hails while others will fall behind.

Ultimately, then, this seems to be an imperfect solution to a problem that no one is willing to tackle properly. Taxis play a vital role in urban life where people can’t afford to and don’t want to rely on personal automobiles for trips that aren’t suitable for buses or subways. People in New York City need taxis to play a role travel, and right now, medallion owners, yellow cab drivers and livery cab companies do not see their interested aligned with each other or with the 7 million of us who live outside of Manhattan or north of 96th St. This plan seems to be a solution, but it likely isn’t the solution.