The Mayor wants to give liveries our street hails.  Garages/Brokers petition for $1,000/wk garage lease per driver and $1,300/wk broker lease.  City Council wants 30-day hack suspensions for two refusals in two years.  Gas prices are soaring.  FIGHT BACK!  Plan our days of action at the All Driver Meetings!  Bring fellow drivers with you! 

The new livery taxis would increase congestion, cut into Manhattan and airport fares without which yellow cab drivers can't survive, increase competition in already served areas of the outer boroughs, all while doing nothing to address the real problems with outer borough under-service.

Likely, the new liveries would cruise the more frequently served parts of the outer boroughs and the majority of underserved neighborhoods without much pedestrian traffic would remain underserved.  Riders need a real solution -- this isn't it.  NYTWA will soon announce our alternative proposal and voted-upon plan of action.

Higher penalties being proposed by the TLC and championed by City Council Transportation Committee Chairman James Vacca scapegoat drivers for what even the city knows is an economic problem beyond drivers' control.  Vacca is proposing legislation to increase refusal penalties to $500 for the first offense and $750 and a 30-day suspension for the second offense within two years.  The penalty of revocation for the third offense in three years would remain the same.  So, drivers, who have nine "drivable" hours per shift to book between $150-$190 to break even, are being punished if they refuse a fare which in today's traffic and at today's rates would yield them $10-$15 for 1.5 hours of work -- a rate which would never allow a driver to cover operating expenses.  Drivers are also being mandated to completing fares which the driver knows will take them back late for shift-change and would lead to a fine by the garage or impede into their partner's shift.  The city's solution: punish the workers, ignore the economics.  NYTWA is calling for lower leases, a fare adjustment and traffic rights.  All riders have a right to service anywhere.  And drivers deserve a fare and lease structure that allows us to provide that service without going broke.   

The Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade (MTBOT), the garages owners' association, released a statement supporting this "Two strikes and you lose your livelihood" penalty.  On March 9th, during the Mayor's weekly City Hall press event, the TLC released a video showing refusals by TWO drivers to outer borough locations.  Neither the "passengers" nor the drivers knew how to get to the location.  The city still claimed this was damning evidence of a pervasive problem.  They also added that the numbers of refusals reported (not convicted) from this year (2,128) and last (2,887) is "on the rise" by 36 percent.  Yet, the Mayor's Management Report that the TLC submitted just two days later cites that driver compliance with TLC's undercover sting operation, "Operation Refusal", was 96% in 2009-2010.

Riders hate Taxi TV.  How do we know?  The TLC told us (NY Riders Weigh In / TVs a Turn Off).  GPS won't work for Lost & Found -- Another report by City Council Member Gale Brewer?  Nope, TLC again (Taxi Missing Link). Another vendor - not the one owned by the president of the garages' association or the monopoly meter shop - found to be no good.  Three strikes and cancellation?  Think again.  You guessed it, the TLC told us so.