Komanoff: 2,000 New Cabs Will Add as Much Traffic as 80,000 Private Cars

No one mentioned traffic when the taxi deal was rolled out last month at City Hall and in Albany. After all, with 800,000 motor vehicles already entering the Manhattan Central Business District (CBD) each weekday, what difference could a mere 2,000 additional yellow cabs possibly make?

Plenty, it turns out. Yellow cabs spend three-fourths of each shift, around seven hours, plying CBD streets and avenues. (And of course some are active for two shifts a day.) Most private cars driven in Manhattan don't do so for long. Even at the CBD’s notoriously labored traffic pace -- now averaging 9.5 mph, up from 8 mph before the recession -- the two to three miles per day logged by the average car below 60th Street occupy 15 to 20 minutes.

Adding one new medallion is thus equivalent to adding 40 private cars. Adding 2,000 of them -- as the City now intends to do during the next three years -- would be the traffic equivalent of adding 80,000 cars, a 10% increase in volume.