LEARNING CURVE: Andrew Vollo, who offers training courses for taxi drivers, says the city needs more rigorous continuing-ed courses for cabbies in such basic things as knowing their way around the streets.
Here’s a tip to cabbies who struggle with English or don’t know their way around town — there will be a test!
The city is looking to increase taxi-driver training in English, geography, driving skills, customer courtesy and all that new cab technology.
Also, training cabbies will no longer be a two-classes-and-done education. Instead, the Taxi and Limousine Commission wants the hacks to take refresher courses for as long as they have a license, said agency head Matthew Daus.
And recess is over for the 53,000 for-hire limo, livery and black-car drivers. They also will be required to take the same classes as the 47,000 yellow-cab drivers.
The plans were laid out in a request for information issued by the TLC late last week.
As a result, every TLC-approved driver should become more professional, Daus said.
The agency is hoping the public will chime in and send ideas to the e-mail address tlc-edrfi@tlc.nyc.gov by Aug. 1.
The document said the new set of sessions could include a test to assess how well drivers know English, the rules of the road and TLC mandates.
Current classes ask drivers to do role-playing exercises to learn how, for example, to deal with an unruly passenger.
“As long as we continue to get complaints about service, we’ll improve the programs,” Daus said.
Daus said the current tests, after either one three-day course or a more extensive 10-day, 80-hour course, with a follow-up test one year later, simply weren’t hacking it.
“I don’t think we do enough [training], and I’d like to see more of it,” Daus said. “I think the continuing education of drivers can do more than that.”
Drivers were struggling to keep up with the TLC’s rules, like understanding the credit- and debit-card reader systems that many hacks found confounding at first.
The new classes will make sure the drivers are current on the latest cab technology.
“We’re responding to complaints that rules are too complicated,” Daus said.
TLC-accredited taxi teachers said it was about time the agency revamped the curriculum.
“It’s so apparent, so obvious, and important that they do this,” said Andrew Vollo, who runs the Taxi and FHV Driver Institute at La Guardia Community College and plans to submit ideas.
He said some drivers could use training on speeding and cellphone use while driving.
“This, in my mind, promises to be big,” he said. “We’re going to wind up with real professional drivers.”
Livery and other for-hire cars won’t have to worry about the English section of any new classes, Daus said, because city law doesn’t require that they speak the language.
But those drivers will be tested on driving, geography, customer interaction and new rules about clearly marking livery cars to prevent fraud, Daus said.
tom.namako@nypost.com
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
j cifuentes 05.15.09 at 7:25 pm
How much of “cut” is this Daus getting from all this.
i bet you he gets a cut from the 5% credit card fee they steal at gun point from us.
abie 05.16.09 at 4:21 pm
I hope when they make up the tests the questions are prepared with advise from the most experienced drivers and not by peope who never drove a taxi!!!
yellow hornet 05.26.09 at 8:38 pm
We are we going to get a RAISE ?
lets STRIKE NOW!
Animal 06.05.09 at 12:12 pm
That bastard Andrew Vollo is a sell out. Just so he could get one more class on he’s willing to make all us cabbies suffer through his b.s. classes. NEVER believe that this guy was a cabbie. That license is just a prop for his classes. Take classes anywhere else but not to this traitor that “WILL WRITE LETTERS TO DAUS SO THAT HE COULD TEACH US TO BE PROFESSIONAL!!!” SELLOUT!!!!!
winky 06.06.09 at 10:11 am
It’s obvious he thinks he’s going to be the next TLC commissioner.
I know him personally and all he is interested in doing is increasing his revenue stream for LaGuardia Community College. The taxi program there makes big-time money for the school.
Charles T 03.03.10 at 10:49 pm
Left to their own devices, each profession becomes more and more cavalier. The Taxi teachers soon will have a day care set up to care for the kiddies while learning how to be a taxi driver after 20 years on the job!!!! This is unbelievable.
It reminds me of nurses, used to be a registered nurse was a valuable asset to patients, but then they got so much education, they couldn’t care for patients any more. Then they needed licensed practical nurses. They did the work. Then they got so cavalier that they created a nursing assistant job, with a 35 day course to pass, to become the Nursing Assistant, who does the work.
Taxi regulation has gotten too cavalier that it is just a keep themselves going effort that has gone crazy. Every taxi driver knows they should not be speeding, customers demand it and are angry when told no speeding, especially when all the cabs are passing them. It only makes sense of respect for cabbies not to use a phone when riders are in the cab. A cabbie who couldn’t figure that out, is really to low functioning to be let loose with a taxi cab.