The city has begun cracking down on rogue cabbies, increasingly suspending or revoking the hack licenses of those with multiple driving infractions, amNewYork has learned.
Within the past six months, the Taxi & Limousine Commission switched to an automated system to monitor the cabbies’ moving violations, allowing the agency to better track offending drivers. So far this year, a whopping 1,132 of the city’s 48,600 taxi drivers had their licenses suspended or revoked, compared to 32 in 2009.
“There were plenty of holes in the system,” said TLC Commissioner David Yassky, referring to how the agency previously had to comb through the infractions by hand.
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Dispatcher payoffs
The spirit of Louie De Palma lives on.
Thousands of cabbies are dealing with the real-life version of Danny DeVito’s infamous dispatcher from the 1980s sitcom “Taxi,” an amoral boss who would demand cash from his drivers to score a yellow cab for a hard day’s work.
Clearly flouting Taxi and Limousine Commission rules, it’s still an unspoken mandate that drivers handsomely tip garage dispatchers to get cars that aren’t total jalopies — and, in some instances, to get a car at all.
Taxi officials say they’re on the case.
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More than 500 gabby cabbies have been found guilty of yakking on cellphones and dangerously using other electronic devices in the past four months.
Since a law went into effect banning hacks from using all distracting electronic equipment, Taxi and Limousine Commission officials have doled out 1,797 summonses.
So far, 551 cabbies have been found guilty, 990 cases are scheduled to be heard, 28 are under appeal and 127 were dismissed.
The remaining cases have been adjourned to later dates.
The rules went into effect Jan. 29.
Many hacks said the restrictions prevent them from talking to their families in case of an emergency.
To use a cellphone or even a Bluetooth device while in the cab, the driver has to pull over into a legal parking spot.
Drivers are fined $200 for each conviction and get sent to a “refresher course” on the rules.
After a second infraction, the hack’s license will be suspended, and after the third strike, revoked, officials said.
Passengers can report gabby cabbies directly by calling 311, officials said. In order for the penalties to be imposed, the complaining passenger must participate in a hearing in person or by phone.
The new rules also apply to livery drivers, although they are allowed to briefly use a radio to talk to their dispatchers.
Caught green-handed!
This stunning shakedown — snapped by Post photographers — is just one of the hundreds that doormen at swanky hotels demand every day from helpless cabbies, the hacks complain.
The Paramount Hotel’s concierge, Brian Conboy, was spotted demanding money in exchange for lucrative airport-bound fares — not only from this driver but about a dozen others during a two-day period last week.
Photographers snapped him shaking down three drivers on Friday and Saturday, and reporters observed several others.
When confronted by The Post, Conboy spilled the beans about the sleazy practice.
“They do this all over the city,” Conboy said, when asked about demanding the dough.
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The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission will try and revoke the licenses of 633 drivers for routinely overcharging customers as part of a scheme that cost passengers $1.1 million, it was announced on Friday.
The commission had previously accused about 35,000 taxi drivers of overcharging riders, costing passengers a total of $8.3 million. The number of suspected drivers was subsequently reduced. New figures released on Friday show that, in all, 21,819 drivers overcharged passengers a total of 286,000 times, the commission said.
Of those, the majority — 13,315 — only overcharged riders once or twice.
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A Queens man has been arrested for driving a fake taxi cab and driving with a suspended license, police said.
His 2006 yellow Toyota minivan with a tag number on the roof and NYC logo on the passenger side doors was a fake, authorities said.
“Anything can happen. You don’t know who you’re getting into the cab with,” Lt. Mark Dubose of the Taxi and Limousine Commission said.
Investigators say New Yorkers and tourists hopped into the car with 55 year old Sui Hua Tan of Queens.
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Doormen at some of the city’s swankiest hotels are shaking down cabbies for shameless kickbacks before allowing them to transport guests to airports — and are blacklisting drivers who refuse to pay up, taxi officials told The Post.
The rampant, only-in-New York scheme pitting two service industries against each other has sparked a Taxi and Limousine Commission investigation, officials said.
“This stuff goes on day-in and day-out at hotels all over Midtown,” said David Pollack, a former driver and director of the Committee for Taxi Safety. “It’s never happened as much as it is now. Everyone’s hurting for money and no one is stopping it.”
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Getting information on cheating taxi drivers should soon be as easy as hailing a cab.
A proposed sweeping overhaul of the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s record-keeping and governance — sparked by a one-two punch of scandals involving cabdrivers overcharging riders — will land before the City Council tomorrow, The Post has learned.
The proposed legislation comes just weeks after The Post reported that drivers routinely bypass the shorter E-ZPass lanes at tollbooths, cheating taxpayers out of millions of dollars, and months after city officials revealed that thousands of cabbies deceptively charged riders the double-fare suburban rate inside city limits. [click to continue…]
When roughly 100 of the city’s 13,000 cab drivers gathered at a public forum in Manhattan recently, some took the opportunity to complain about the incessant chatter of taxi TV blaring from their back seats.
And perhaps with good reason. A Marist poll conducted for The Wall Street Journal and released on Monday found that just 29% of New York City taxi riders turn off the television sets in cabs.
The Marist results, which were culled from roughly 400 telephone interviews with taxi riders ages 18 and over, stood in slight contrast with those by Creative Mobile Technologies, the largest taxicab television system in the city; that company’s internal numbers show that their screens remain on more than 85% of the time when passengers are riding. (Unlike CMT’s data, Marist’s did not include information culled from tourists).
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