The city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission is proceeding with one of the most significant changes in taxicab service in years. By January, all of the city’s 13,000 yellow cabs will be required to have a new set of technological features including credit card readers and passenger information monitors, which will allow riders to track their journey and also watch news and advertisements.
The city views the new requirements as “technology enhancements” that will benefit passengers, but not all drivers agree. As Lisa Iaboni of The Times explains in this video, some drivers are threatening to go on strike to protest the technology. The opponents of the new technology say it will hurt drivers because the costs off installing and maintaining equipment will ultimately be passed on to them. They also assert that they will lose a portion of their income to credit-card transaction fees.
The city has set up Web pages arguing that the new technology will benefit passengers and taxi drivers and owners alike. The new technology includes G.P.S. devices that track each vehicle’s location, automating the trip sheets that drivers have long kept by hand. The technology also allows for the city to send text messages to drivers, alerting them, for example, to property left in cabs and to traffic disruptions.
In 2005, I wrote about the start of the effort to rethink taxicab partitions, which began in the 1960s as a way to protect drivers and have been mandatory in most cabs since 1994. The new passenger information screens will be installed in the backs of partitions. Last January, Ray Rivera described the objections that drivers raised at a City Council hearing.
As Colin Moynihan reported on Friday, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance has called for a strike on Sept. 5 and 6, but not everyone supports the idea. A rival group, the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, denounced the call for a walkout. And a spokesman for the T.L.C. predicted that “the vast majority of our 44,000 professional drivers will continue to serve the public.”
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