As I understand it, the city has licensed so many livery cabs in part because the medallion cabs prefer to cluster in Manhattan (and not Upper Manhattan). Allowing the livery cabs ensures that residents of your neighborhood can get a cab at all.

So: the city has not been able to ensure the availability of cabs outside of Manhattan below 96th Street, and they haven't been able to prevent livery cabs from responding to street hails. I'm not sure what they could do about your current situation - although I've heard of them doing sting operations and fining drivers for picking people up off the street.

Full disclosure: one of my customers is a livery cab company.

The key stat to taxi congestion, as I see it, is not Eric's "dozens of people in a day" but the fact that between seven and nine a.m. taxis clog the streets in my neighborhood. I doubt that the taxi riders are private car owners, so if there were no taxis, they would take the bus (or walk, or maybe cycle). Now, if you took the taxis off the streets, the buses would go a lot faster, obviating the need for taking the kids to school in a taxi in the first place.

A taxi is like a shared vehicle in that any individual taxi is used by dozens of people in a day, versus a private vehicle that is at curbside 98% of the time. Granted, when the two are in use, there's no difference in terms of clogging the streets, so you have a point. But all that curb space that would be freed up (cabs vs. privately owned cars) could be put to other uses.

Angus makes a good point, too – raise the taxi fare and devote the increase to transit improvements.

Of course, if Sam were working for the taxi industry, he might have spun that one differently. While his plan has some good elements, I think it's more about "Sam, Inc." than anything else.

"Charge thru-trucking $100" -Sounds fair enough... But how do you enforce it?

"Curtail privileged parking" -Great idea.

The "Vehicles in Motion in Midtown Core By Time of Day" graph supports the arguement that most of the congestion is by people doing business by vehicle (and usually don't have a mass-transit option), not people traveling to work.

Whay a "50% discount for people within [CP] zone?" There are so many mass-transit option within the zone there is little need for a discount to travel within a zone.

Another element that could be added to this plan would be to take one lane from every major highway and bridge that is otherwise toll-less and make it a toll lane for about $5. This way, people could pay to cross the Verrazano or the Throgs Neck or ride on the Cross Bronx or BQE quickly. Imagine paying $15 to go from Queens to Jersey ($5 for the Throgs Neck, $5 for the Cross Bronx and &5 for the GWB) and being able to go 60 mph the whole time.

http://www.transalt.org/info/SOVBanImpacts.pdf

The only problem -- you could have an empty FDR and a packed BQE during mid-days.