by: John Rodriguez
f you’re a New Yorker or if you’re visiting the Big Apple, one of the city’s recognizable features is being able to hail one of the many yellow cabs that speckle the city streets like ants with the simple extension of your arm. The city’s cab service is so renowned that it comes in fourth place as this country’s largest transit system after the MTA, LA Transit, and Chicago Transit since these yellow vehicles carry and move an estimated 1.2 million people daily throughout the city. Well, not throughout the entire city of New York only in Manhattan.
In the boroughs outside of Manhattan you many not see a yellow cab in service since they are not permitted to service the greater New York City. You may get a glance of them coming from or going to the airports, but that’s as far as you’ll get to riding or being near a yellow cab. But these rare sightings within Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island are about to change thanks to a recent proposal made by Mayor Bloomberg. We won’t be getting yellow cabs per say but the service of them.
In Mayor Bloomberg’s “Five Borough Plan” will enable the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) to establish new branches of cab services to make on-street pickups outside of Manhattan like the yellow cabs do. The Five Borough Plan would provide New Yorkers with another safe and reliable way of getting around the city without the use of the so-called gypsy-cabs seen within the boroughs outside of Manhattan as the yellow cabs replacement.
Do you know what a gypsy cab is? Well, gypsy cabs are slightly similar to yellow cabs but are vastly different when you look closer and pass the obvious distinction in appearance. Gypsy cabs are a mixture of licensed livery cars, the one where you are supposed to call-ahead for, and unlicensed cars that go around picking on-street passengers throughout the outer boroughs of Manhattan. Viewed as a service in the underground market, the service is generally viewed as third-rate due to the lack of insurance, licenses, and the lack of unavailability of a meter.
Gypsy cab riders often describe their experience within these cars as sketchy and unsafe. And they are generally right to say so. Riding in a gypsy cab is typically more dangerous than a yellow cab because a majority of these drivers aren’t licensed and lack the proper training and experience to drive. Aside from being unsafe, they are unsafe to your pocket since there is no meters present in these cars to monitor travel cost rates passengers find themselves having to negotiate a fare for their ride. And if you have no clue what the going rate is in the particular area you are traveling in, you can find yourself being ripped off. And under Bloomberg’s Five Borough Plan, the nuisance of gypsy cabs would be replaced with the service the yellow cabs provide Manhattan with.
Under the plan, the service provided by the yellow feet will be hitting the streets of Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Staten Island when Bloomberg changes the law to allow on-street pickups in these areas under the creation of Borough Taxis. The Borough Taxis will provide the same service and fare as the yellow taxis in Manhattan. To be distinguishable from the other boroughs, the taxis will be painted a uniform color to their own borough (yellow is out) and will have a “roof light” to signal availability with a meter and credit card reader within the cabs itself.
The Five Borough Plan will enabled New Yorkers with reliable service throughout the city, and the yellow taxi fleet owners themselves. When the proposed plan was announced back in February, yellow taxi owners tried to block the plan claiming the plan would cause their medallions to lose value from their estimated 13, 237. Although 97% of the yellow taxi trips are in Manhattan and at the airports, the plan would service a new and different market and will not affect the value of their medallion but could actually benefit it.
So if you’re in Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, or Staten Island and you’re too far from home with loads of shopping bags with no train station or bus stop near, the taxi would provide ample service to get you home possibly faster and less crowded than a bus or subway cart. The proposal has been created as a means to serve the public and their interest, which basically allows us to get around this large city in a hurried and safe pace.
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