“I’m going to Park Slope Brooklyn.. you won’t take me?!” is what the microphone picked up 30 meters from a man, dressed in a suit on a corner at 5th Avenue and 44th street at 6pm on a Tuesday. The cab driver refused to take the passenger and tried to drive off.
Only the man asking to go to Brooklyn was the Commissioner of the Taxi and Limousine Commission, David Yassky. And what was actually going down, was a sting. In 2012, the TLC conducted more than two thousand ‘refusal tests,’ going on to issue 362 refusal summonses. However the numbers are translated – within a short span, Commissioner Yassky himself found 2 cab drivers who appeared to be refusing to operate legitimately.
Only the man asking to go to Brooklyn was the Commissioner of the Taxi and Limousine Commission, David Yassky.
The fines are stiff, some $350 for the infraction. Yet, as a PIX11 investigation found, on some nights illegal practices are used by cab drivers to pick and choose their customers. The practice is emboldened with the use of their ‘off-duty’ light while asking “where you going?” Drivers tell PIX11 that the unethical are willing to use the off duty light, hoping it will create enough doubt in the mind of passengers so they do not consider filing the incident with 3-1-1.
There are some 50,000 licensed cab drivers in New York City, the vast majority of them operating legitimately. And the TLC permits a ‘going my way?’ questioned being used during changeover for cabs – normally between 4p-5p, then again from 4a-5a. According to Yassky, drivers who ask “where you going?” are breaking the rule already, since it indicates the driver is picking the ride (also called, cherry-picking). “If a driver asks you where you’re going and refuses to take you and you suspect he’s not truly off-duty,” advised Yassky, “call 3-1-1, and we will follow up and see if the driver was truly off-duty, and if he wasn’t – we’ll take action against that driver.”
Read more: http://pix11.com/2013/02/19/hack-job-part-ii-tlc-crackdown-with-a-special-guest/
Drivers have to make $130-$145 just to pay the lease(depending on the garage) and then another $40-$50 for gas. In total it’s $170-$195 for night shift per day(yes per day!). In other words when starting, the night shift drivers are negative $170-195 short.
Sunday-Wednesday, there’s hardly any business after mid-night. So the $170-195 plus whatever money for food and coffee and net profit has to be made between 5pm-12(6hrs). This is the current ground reality of the night shift(like it or not)…..
Imagine someone getting in during these crucial 6hrs and instead of the straight uptown downtown trip, taking you to Bklyn or Qns, having to sit in traffic and wasting precious time. At the end of the night it won’t affect making the lease and gas money($170-$195), but it’ll drastically affect the ‘pittance’ he makes for himself.
It’s nothing personal, 95% of the drivers live in Qns, Bklyn & Bronx and they have no such personal issues with those boroughs. Its just that they too have house rent, utility bills, kids and other expenses and struggling to make it in these trying times.
Of course the daily shift summary will show drivers made $250-$300 and TLC will boast about it. But in reality, how much actually went into drivers pocket after lease and gas money?
PIX 11, if you really have balls go find the real sharks and expose them. The sharks TLC has failed to counter while over-regulating the poor Taxi drivers.
Sharks in the form of garage owners who are overcharging when leasing a Taxi to drivers, garage owners who are constantly breaking the rules and manipulating the drivers. These practices are on-going, unhindered specially with the influx of many new drivers since the recession(who lost their jobs or finding hard to find employment, and chosen to drive a cab to support their families).
These sharks have 5-10 drivers waiting for each Taxi and how much they charge and how they manipulate is upto them…..Somebody told me its a good example of Capitalism at its worse and goes unexposed!
Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. NYC TLC is going insane trying to inform same symptoms year after year. Is it any news at all? Will it bring any meaninful solution for public? I suggest TLC to try to find causes of this symptom if it is really interested in solving the problem. One cause I recognize: medallion system with bubbled price which is paid to the city, therefore NYC is causing the problem to itself.
So how much money collected from refusal, maybe billions 350$ times 10000 drivers that would make $3500000. Almost 4 million per month. My question is this: can tlc recover unpaid trips by passenger to drivers with a police report?
Well They should Let Us Charge Double once you Leave the Boro….. Same as NJ or Outside City Limits BECAUSE 99% of the Time WE RETURN EMPTY which Really Is A CUT in The DAYS Earnings !!!…Thats Why we dont like leaving Manhattan…..
Cleverly using public as ticket agents by calling 311 instead of TLC officers sting operation? Desperate attempt to make up loss of 2000(!) medallion sale by retaliating to drivers?
The answer to our problem may be
Mayor Bill DiBlasio,,,
It’s time for a change We have it coming to us!
To be honest I lost every hope driving a cab in nyc. waist of life and time, …
going home to start a new life, no more!
you, taxi people drive your own garbage cabs, seriously.
I can’t live in 2 bedrooms apartment all my life.
freedom everywhere.
It’s because these cherry-picking cabbies in NYC, all hard-working cab drivers should suffer? It’s rush hour, shift changing times and people getting in and out, and the poor cabbie has to hold it, and NO way to have a chance to any rest-room, and his or her kidney stressed, so the temper as the rush-hour traffic jam! What you would do? Some ride to Brooklyn or Bronx or Staten Island could take more than one hour, specially around shift changing times. Fleet garage’s cabbies must return the cab before the shift ends, if aren’t, then the garage will charge a hefty late fee to the driver! Does Mr. Yassky explaining this to the riding public? Furthermore, every cab driver needs a clear, helpful explanation with that new simplified roof light procedures!
Long time ago, when kings ruled the earth, drivers had a decent income.Things began to change when Giuliani came to office,and good happy day were finished by Bloomberg. Utopian world of happiness created by these indivduals defined a strong police force and safe streets ,attracting the world’s wealth’making a Disney world with shows and restuarants and miriads of hotels.The old New York has gone for good. Utopias don’t live long,the reality of where to get the money to support the artificial happiness kicks in. It will take a genius to turn things around.hopefully we have not reached the point of no return. And what can one do ?Loosen the control ,let people like taxi drivers make big money. Cops making big bucks while their salary reduced to almost nothing.Providing protection to shady businesses ,that’s how it works around the world .Tough Culligans keep the city safe through informants and by letting hookers,cabbies, bootleggers pimps and others alike live.Enough tickets, arrests ,Sterile societies only exist in futuristic literature.Live is a balance of good and bad.only good will fail!
In my younger years we used to put Japanese tourists on a portable scale and we charge’m by the pound , plus the weight of the luggage. $150-180 to get to JFK. Cops did not bother us much,they knew we had to make a living !
Recently I checked the website of”Ice road truckers”-popular series on a History channel. I found that these guys are making $90 grand a month or $270k for a season. Sometimes you have to risk your life to make a decent living.I ,guess,it’s man’s destiny to take chances,better than live year after year counting every penny with no hope of improvement.
Few words on gun control. Can a man with the sword or an ax walk into a room full of people and chop everyone to pieces? Possible. Couple centuries ago Europeans competed each other in a way of executing criminals. Giliotines ,hangings ,burning alive you name it. It was a deterent to prevent crime.Nobody talked about taking axes, knives ,bricks from people.Americans had an electric chair ,did it stop people of commiting crime? I never heard of mass shootings back in those times.
USA is broke. It has no money to play a betufull game of demacracy and universal happiness. How much can cab drivers be robbed to support this addiction. Come to earth people!
My fellow wall street occupiers! .Sorry to inform you,but by possesing the degree in quantum phisics to me all of you are a bunch of people with pigeon brains.
Everybody with an i-phone in his hand looks like a research scientist who made a major discovery. What do you see in there?
Probably your stock going up 5 cents which will fall tomormorw 6 cents.
At different periods of american history the goverment asked for help from Italian mafia .This is the time now.Fulton fish market should return.Downtown is dead .Few tourists only look and don’t spend. It shold bring real jobs.Meat market district should return.Today sky boys celebrating in New York, tommorow in Zurich, they don.t provide steady income. Cops should be on mafia payroll, nobody can afford a 40,000 army.
For some cabbies who still using paper map, computer 101. Computer is made of two parts: 1> HARDWARE (Mac, HP, IBM, Outer appearance n internal components like CPU n memory) 2> SOFTWARE (two types i> Operating System: Window 8, MacOS, iOS ii> APPlication softwares which run on the platform of OS, APPs for PC or Mac can be purchased in store(CD, DVD) or downloaded, but APPs for smartphone(iPhone not i-phone or Android phone) r downloaded only from APP store which is also an APP built in the phone. One APP (killer app) very useful for drivers is GPS Google map which gives detailed world map (New York, DC, Boston, London, Paris,…) of road, satellite view, street view (actual) from all angles. To be continued.
Many times people go to Bronx or Brooklyn and no pay, run from cab. I lose $40, I cry, I no feed family they no pay me