Taxis & Limos

Mayor Bloomberg delivered his tenth State of the City address this afternoon, laying out what he believed to be the city's accomplishments, challenges, and priorities for the future. And if the speech is any indication, taxis and ferries are at the top of his transportation agenda.

More than 13,000 yellow cabs ply NYC streets, carrying more than 600,000 passengers each day. That's a lot of chances for a familiar risk to city cyclists -- car doors opening in traffic.

The federal appeals court verdict this week barring New York City from mandating that new taxicabs be fuel-efficient hybrids has left the mayor fuming and other New Yorkers scratching their heads. Why should Washington pre-empt the city from tripling the fuel-efficiency of our nearly 13,000 yellow cabs, a step that would materially reduce petroleum use, given that three to four percent of all vehicle-miles traveled in the five boroughs are by medallion taxis?

With Albany lawmakers unwilling to properly fund the MTA, transportation planners are looking to plug the gaps that have opened up in the transit network and expand New Yorkers' travel options using existing resources. That's certainly a big part of the thinking behind the Bloomberg Administration's recent decision to expand private van service where bus lines were cut. One of the other ways New York will try to wring more value out of the infrastructure we already have is cab-sharing.

On Tuesday, Mayor Bloomberg announced a new pilot program to provide livery van service for transit-starved neighborhoods in Brooklyn and Queens, a proposal stemming from his 2009 campaign transit platform. The push to provide more mobility options in the wake of MTA service cuts is to be applauded, as is the administration's willingness to experiment with something new. But the jury is still out on this one. In particular, how livery vans will be integrated with the transit system remains a big question mark. 

When New York City installed GPS units in its taxi fleet in 2007, it began an ambitious initiative to gather information about how traffic functions. Over the last couple of weeks, the reams of taxi GPS data collected by NYCDOT received some major play from the Times, which ran stories on the intersections with the most cab hails, the days with the worst traffic, and cabbies overcharging their fares. The data is so rich, you could probably mine it for a few dozen more stories. 

The first thing I noticed was a blur of yellow to my left, and a split second later a bump on my arm and something brushing my leg. I had just crossed Fifth Avenue, heading east on 72nd Street on my bike. I was riding, as is my custom, as close to the parked cars as I could while minimizing the hazard of getting doored. It was about 10:10 on a lovely March morning and traffic was light.

The surcharge on NYC medallion taxi fares that took effect this month is a bit like a bases-loaded groundout that scores a run but kills a big inning: It does some good, but a ringing base hit could have done a lot more.

In an apparent quest to see which local daily can issue the most ridiculously auto-centric assessment of the problems plaguing the public realm, the "New York" Post has some competition.