Mayor Bloomberg delivering the State of the City today. Image: NYC.gov.

Mayor Bloomberg delivered his tenth State of the City address this afternoon, laying out what he believed to be the city’s accomplishments, challenges, and priorities for the future. And if the speech is any indication, taxis and ferries are at the top of his transportation agenda.

Bloomberg’s plan to create a new class of taxi for the outer boroughs was included in a list of programs intended to make city government more efficient. “Why shouldn’t someone in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, or Staten Island be able to hail a legal cab on the street?” asked the mayor. Under the plan, livery cabs would be allowed to legally pick up street hails so long as they met a set of taxi-style requirements, including metered rates, credit card readers, standard markings, and GPS. A memo by TLC Commissioner David Yassky and Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith argues that expanding cab service in the boroughs would make a car-free lifestyle there easier; currently, 97.5 percent of yellow cab hails are in Manhattan or at the airports.

Bloomberg also discussed his administration’s continued redevelopment of the city’s waterfront. He touted plans to institute city-subsidized ferry service along the East River, the only other mention of transportation policy in the speech. Bus service, walking and cycling didn’t make it into the speech.

Of the three Taxi of Tomorrow finalists, the entry from Turkish manufacturer Karsan (left) is the one without sliding passenger doors. Image: TLC

More than 13,000 yellow cabs ply NYC streets, carrying more than 600,000 passengers each day. That’s a lot of chances for a familiar risk to city cyclists — car doors opening in traffic.

The city’s Taxi of Tomorrow competition promises to select a single design for the entire yellow cab fleet. In the process, the cab door threat could be standardized out of existence (or at least drastically reduced). The competition is down to three finalists, and if you ride in the city, there’s one feature in particular that you may want to weigh in on: Whether the passenger doors slide open or open on a hinge.

The Design Trust for Public Space and the Taxi and Limousine Commission are asking New Yorkers to fill out a quick survey about what you want out of the next-gen taxi, which you can fill out here.

We checked in with the TLC, and two of the three designs — from Nissan and Ford — have sliding doors. The third finalist, from Turkish manufacturer Karsan, is the only vehicle designed specifically for the competition and has the aura of a plucky underdog, but the current design features hinged doors. A spokesman for the TLC said that the companies have yet to submit their best and final offers for the competition, so it’s possible the Karsan design can change before all is said and done.

The winning proposal will be announced in early 2011 and the new vehicle is scheduled to be on the road no later than the fall of 2014.

A sign advertises the TLC's cab-sharing stand at 72nd Street and Third Avenue. Photo: New York Times

Can the city's 50,000 licensed livery vehicles better serve New Yorkers stranded by service cuts and help keep streets from getting more clogged with private motor vehicles? Both the city government and at least one start-up business are trying to find out.

Since February, the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission has been operating a handful of group-ride stands, where multiple passengers can jump into a cab together. They pay a flat fare and each can be dropped off at different locations, along a route that is loosely defined by the TLC. 

For example, the newest group-ride stand is located on York Avenue, between 70th and 71st Streets [PDF]. After each passenger pays $6, the cab drives all the way downtown on the FDR and then lets riders off at locations of their choice between Pearl Street and the World Financial Center. That particular route replaces the MTA's discontinued X90 express bus. 

"The goal," said TLC Commissioner David Yassky, "is to expand the capacity of the cab fleet by opening up seats that otherwise would be unoccupied." Group rides have the added benefit, he argued, of providing cheaper rides for passengers while offering more revenue for drivers.

The TLC isn't the only one trying to figure out how to get New Yorkers to share cabs, though. David Mahfouda is the founder of Weeels, a smartphone application that allows New Yorkers to order livery cabs electronically and share rides with other Weeels users. "Sharing offers users a big discount," explained Mahfouda, "and it's also a way to save energy and gasoline."

So far, Weeels is just getting started. It's only available for the iPhone and only connects to one Brooklyn-based livery car company, though the plan is to offer connections to more companies with more technologies, including text messaging. Even so, Mahfouda's ambitions are sizable. "Ultimately," he said, "the idea is to create a new kind of public transit system out of existing infrastructure."

If cab-sharing takes off -- Yassky admitted that group rides still aren't popular, though he hopes new locations, like the airports, will jumpstart the program -- it could help cut traffic on New York City's streets, but the potential effects are tough to predict.

Yassky thinks that cab-sharing, by reducing the price of a ride, would attract more people to take cabs. "My gut instinct, I think it will expand the market for taxi service in the way that credit cards did," he said. If that's so, one question is how those new riders would have gotten around otherwise. Are they switching from buses and trains or ditching their cars? Neither Yassky nor Mahfouda was willing to speculate.

Regardless, Yassky expects that cab-sharing, by expanding transportation options for car-free New Yorkers, could ultimately help reduce congestion. "That's the overall goal here," said Yassky, "to make each component of the transit network as inexpensive and convenient as it can be, so that people won't be driven into using private automobiles."

That both the public and private sectors are looking at cab-sharing right now is no coincidence. "In an era where the subways and buses aren't able to do everything we'd like to see them doing," argued Yassky, "the need for the taxi and car service segment to step up to the plate gets greater and greater." With transit service shrinking and expensive infrastructure improvements seemingly out of reach, cabs may have to pick up some of the slack. Yassky said this would happen bit by bit over a period of years. For example, the first five commuter van routes will open in late August or early September.

The TLC's approach, therefore, actually makes cabs function a little bit more like traditional transit, with fixed routes and fares. "It enables taxis to occupy even more fully their niche in the transit network," said Yassky. 

That's where the digital approach to cab-sharing has an advantage, argued Mahfouda. "They've missed an opportunity," he said, "insofar as they ended up routing taxis as they would buses." The whole advantage of taxis, Mahfouda argued, is that they are responsive, driving the exact route you want, when you want. Both Mahfouda and Yassky praised the other's approach to cab-sharing, though, calling them complementary.

Commuter vans, like this one in Sunset Park, could become a more common sight on New York's streets. Image: The Brooklyn Ink.

To clarify what's in the works, livery vans are going to be a completely new service, not an expansion of the existing commuter van program. Currently-licensed commuter vans operate within specific geographic areas, but lack defined routes, according to a spokesperson for the Taxi and Limousine Commission. Livery vans, in contrast, would travel between fixed pick-up and drop-off spots, though drivers would be able to take any route they choose between them. Drivers would also be allowed to drop off passengers at locations of their choice, he said, not just at fixed stops. 

The fares are likely to be $2, with longer rides costing up to $4, according to media reports, and there won't be free transfers to MTA subways and buses. "The issue here is not whether it’s more expensive or less expensive; it’s whether the service exists or not," said Bloomberg at Tuesday's press conference.

Transit advocates expressed guarded praise for the plan, noting that a detailed proposal was still forthcoming. "Providing new options like this is part of providing for a car-free lifestyle," said Transportation Alternatives' Noah Budnick. The Straphangers Campaign's Gene Russianoff also believed that livery vans could help improve mobility for New Yorkers, if implemented appropriately. 

In order to make the livery van pilot successful, it's being accompanied by a major enforcement push. The TLC will target unlicensed vans, unlicensed drivers, and licensed vehicles working outside the the bounds of authorized activities, said the agency spokesperson. The idea is that illegal vans, not subject to safety and insurance requirements, would undercut the more tightly regulated livery service. 

But from there, the picture becomes less clear. One big unknown is exactly where these livery vans will run. The stops will be set in the next few weeks, according to the TLC, and the mayor promised to put the routes in areas affected by MTA bus cuts. But just how the stops connect with buses and trains will determine how much livery cab service will complement transit, and how much it will substitute for it.

The relationship between transit and livery cabs grows even more muddled. We asked the TLC what would happen to these routes if the MTA ever restores bus service to these areas and were told "this program is not tied to any actions the MTA has taken or will take in the future." Decisions to discontinue or expand the service, said the TLC spokesperson, would be made based on livery industry capacity and public appetite for the service. That suggests a very different relationship with service cuts than the mayor suggested.

The presence of Deputy Mayor Stephen Goldsmith at Tuesday's announcement adds an extra resonance to the question of whether livery vans would replace, rather than augment, MTA service. As mayor of Indianapolis, Goldsmith's major transit initiative was a plan to privatize city buses.

Another key question: Though it's billed as a one-year pilot, according to the TLC, the metrics for success are still under development. In other words, we don't yet know what the program's goals are, or what it's ultimate purpose is.

Finding innovative new ways to bring car-free mobility to transit-poor neighborhoods, particularly in a time of austerity, is a good thing, and in the short-term that's all this plan is about. But where it is headed in the long run, how it fits into a larger transportation vision, remains completely and problematically opaque.

Photo: Ken Coughlin.

I deliberated long and hard about whether to press my case. The driver was probably just trying to make ends meet and save up a little by working grueling 12-hour shifts. Hell, I used to drive a cab myself. But I also thought of my responsibility to other cyclists. If the driver had swiped me on a four-lane boulevard in broad daylight, couldn't he do the same to someone else, with perhaps a devastating outcome? I decided to file a complaint.

The hearing took place several weeks later. I had a choice to testify by phone or in person in Queens (I live and work in Manhattan). Not wanting to take a half-day away from work, I opted for the surreal experience of being sworn in by a judge while sitting at my own desk. The driver, through his lawyer, did not dispute that he had hit me. His only defense was that he hadn't realized he had done so. To me, it seemed an open-and-shut case: Driver admits hitting cyclist, driver will face some consequences.

The judge's ruling came in the mail a few days later.

"There was no allegation of speeding or reckless driving during the hearing and certainly no proof of same," it read. "Thus a prima facie case for the violations charged has not been established and the Summons and charges are dismissed."

In effect, the judge was saying that it's okay for a cab driver to strike a cyclist as long as there is no evidence of reckless driving. But, I wondered, isn't the mere fact that a cyclist was hit "prima facie" evidence that the driver failed to exercise due care?

I sought out the opinion of my friend and cycling attorney par excellence, Adam White. "While I'm sure it was upsetting getting brushed by this guy," he told me, "a judge is left with determining findings based upon the evidence presented. This guy presented a reasonable case and took it seriously enough to hire an attorney." Adam said the TLC appeared to be applying a recklessness standard and that I had not alleged recklessness. "Aside from that," he added, "the civil justice system is available to people who are injured or suffer property damage." Adam also noted that my case might have been strengthened had I shown up in person.

Perhaps I should have appeared in person, but it was undisputed that the driver hit me through no fault of my own. Without a finding of recklessness or negligence, any such case would not appear on a driver's record. Couldn't a driver repeatedly sideswipe cyclists, throughout his career presumably, and pay no price? What if this particular driver has, say, a vision problem that causes him to repeatedly come close to or brush more vulnerable road users? What if he is simply habitually careless? It appears that there is no mechanism within the existing TLC system to address such possibilities.

My guess is that few cyclists would pursue the matter as I did. For anything to appear on such a driver's record, there would have to be an injury serious enough to suggest to a TLC judge that recklessness might be involved. But by then it could be too late.

City cyclist and graphic designer Marko Bon is working to get a logo like this one added to taxi video screens as part of the "Taxicab Passenger Enhancement Program." Bon tells Streetsblog that the Taxi and Limousine Commission has shown interest in the design, which he hopes can be incorporated in a way that will draw passengers' attention. Info stickers have included anti-dooring messages, designed by Transportation Alternatives, for years, but video PSAs got lost in the shuffle when making their "Taxi TV" debut in 2003.

Bon is looking for design feedback from Streetsbloggers. (An alternate version of the graphic is posted on Flickr.) After the jump, a mock-up of Bon's design as it might look on today's taxicab screens.

Join Deborah Marton, Executive Director of the Design Trust for Public Space, for a dynamic conversation exploring the intersection of design, innovation, sustainability, and accessibility in New York's public realm. From bicycle-friendly streets and redesigned taxis to blossoming arts and cultural neighborhoods, this is your chance to speak with the experts about the latest projects and innovations shaping our lives. Panelists include: Ryan Russo, Director of the Bike and Pedestrian Planning Unit of NYC Department of Transportation; Andrew Salkin, First Deputy Commissioner, NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission; Davin Stowell, CEO and founder of Smart Design; Susan Chin, FAIA, Assistant Commissioner, Capital Projects, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs; and Mary Ceruti, Executive Director, Long Island City Sculpture Center.

The event kicks off at 6:30 p.m. tomorrow, 1220 Fifth Avenue at 104th Street. General admission is $9, but to get in free, make an advance reservation by calling (212) 534-1672, ext. 3395.

From Transportation Alternatives: 

Transportation Alternatives is proud to be part of New York City's first citywide education campaign targeting cyclists and motorists, which will be officially launched later today. Developed pro bono by international advertising agency Publicis in the West (Seattle) and installed by the City of New York, the ads on bus shelters, buses, taxi tops and phone kiosks will urge drivers and cyclists to "Look" for one another and to share the road.

The citywide awareness campaign was sparked by the tragic death of Liz Byrne, a city cyclist who was struck and killed by a truck in September 2005. Liz was a longtime NYC bike rider and freelancer who worked with Publicis' NYC office. Her tragic death motivated her sister and colleagues from Publicis to contact Transportation Alternatives in October 2005 and offer their pro bono services on a massive safety and education campaign. At the same time, the newly released Bike Safety Action Plan, authored by Transportation Alternatives and the NYC Bicycle Coalition, called for several strong initiatives to improve city cycling and demanded the City:

"With guidance from experienced street safety advocates, develop and implement a Public Awareness Campaign to curb dangerous driving and educate drivers about cyclists' rights to the streets."

"Look" represents a collaboration between T.A., the New York City Bicycle Coalition, the City Departments of Transportation, Health and Police, the NYC Taxi and Limousine Commission and the Office of the Public Advocate.

T.A. and the NYC Bicycle Coalition continue to press the City to implement the entire Bike Safety Action Plan, including more aggressive enforcement of illegal driving and developing stronger bike lane designs.

With an unknown number of cab drivers on strike as of 5 a.m. today, a sense of mild annoyance has gripped the city.

City Room reports:

At Kennedy International Airport, dispatchers said there were fewer yellow cabs than normal in the morning. Around 7 a.m., about 50 airline passengers waited outside Terminal 9 for a cab and were told that the wait could be as long as half an hour. Joshua Olken, 29, a consultant from Boston who had an 8 a.m. meeting in Midtown, was on the line around 7:30 a.m. “It’s not usually this long,” he said of the line. “Usually there are a lot more cabs than this. I should have taken the train.”

At Pennsylvania Station, the strike appeared to be having an effect. Lines for cabs gathered sporadically around Seventh Avenue. The lines were gradually dispersed when a few yellow cabs came to pick up passengers, but several regular commuters said the wait was twice as long as usual.

How has the Taxi Strike of '07 affected you?

Photo: LarimdaME/Flickr