Streetsblog New York City

Emergency responders work to free Amy Fass from beneath a cab, after she was struck at W. 181st Street and Haven Avenue. The driver was not charged. Photo: Andrew Adams

A reader has identified the woman wounded by a cab driver in Upper Manhattan Sunday evening as Amy Fass of Washington Heights. The crash occurred in the 34th Precinct, where officers issued two speeding tickets in the last three months of 2012.

Fass was crossing 181st at Haven Avenue, near her home, at approximately 6:45 p.m. when she was struck as the cab driver appeared to be en route to the West Side Highway. Andrew Adams writes:

Amy, in her late 50s, was in the crosswalk when a driver of a SUV taxi struck her and drug her approximately 40 feet before he stopped when pedestrians screamed at him to do so. She was pinned underneath the taxi until emergency services responded to rescue her.

Another witness posted this account on a neighborhood parent list:

I saw when she was trapped under the taxi on Haven Ave. where it leads to the West Side Highway. The cab must have been speeding downhill on 181st. She lives on Haven in the building next to the highway entrance. My impression was that she was very badly hurt.

A third witness, James Ribas, told the Post: ”I saw a cabby going real fast. He didn’t know he hit her.”

Fass was conscious at the scene, but at some point went into cardiac and respiratory arrest, according to an FDNY spokesperson. She was considered “not likely” to die when transported to Lincoln Hospital.

Adams heard from a family member today that Fass remains hospitalized. Her release date is uncertain, but she will require physical rehabilitation, the family member said.

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Sajjad Matin, left, whose left leg was amputated after he was hit by a drunk driver, speaks about his roommate Mir Hossain, who was killed by a speeding driver over the weekend. Taxi and Limousine Commissioner David Yassky, right, listens on. Photo: Stephen Miller

Early Sunday morning, Mir Hossain, 35, was standing next to his double-parked cab on East 26th Street between Third and Lexington Avenues when a speeding SUV driver rear-ended his taxi, sending him flying to the pavement and killing him.

This afternoon, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance held a memorial at the site of the crash, joined by, among others, Taxi and Limousine Commissioner David Yassky and Paul Steely White of Transportation Alternatives.

Hossain’s roommate Sajjad Matin, himself a cab driver, fought back tears as he spoke about his friend. Overcome by grief, he left halfway through his remarks. In February 2012, Matin was pinned by a drunk driver on Eighth Avenue near 51st Street as he was unloading a passenger’s luggage from his car’s trunk. His left leg was amputated and he remained in a medically-induced coma for weeks.

Saying that “an injury to one is an injury to all,” transportation analyst Charles Komanoff cited his research in “Killed by Automobile” showing that taxi drivers are some of New York’s safest drivers per mile driven, yet face big risks due to long shifts and time getting into and out of vehicles on the street.

“Our streets can give us better, and if we work together with transit activists, taxi drivers, pedestrians, bicyclists and the city of New York, we believe we can make the streets safer for all of us,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance. ”The design of the streets and the allocation of space should be respectful of everybody who needs to use it, including taxi drivers.”

Although she counted herself among the city’s advocates for safer streets today, Desai has a history of MTA-bashing and skepticism of camera enforcement, and told Streetsblog this afternoon that she thought the city already had speed cameras.

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One morning in May, I was riding my bike up Park Avenue in the East 70s, a stretch that is rife with double-parking at that hour. Seeing a cab and another vehicle stationary ahead of me in the right-hand travel lane, I carefully checked behind and then pulled into the middle lane. As I passed the cab it began to move — parallel to me and into my lane. It was quickly clear to me that the driver saw me but meant to occupy my space, whether or not I was in it. I shouted and swerved. The driver advanced a little more, then stopped and leaned on her horn. Then, seeing an opening, she whipped around me.

Photo: mikealex/Flickr

Catching up to the cab at the next light, I told the driver that she should have yielded. No, she indignantly asserted, you should have been in “the bike lane.” I pointed out that there is no bike lane on Park Avenue and that a cyclist has a right to the road. She insisted that bicycles are subject to different rules. When I told her I’d report her actions to the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), her response was essentially “go ahead.”

I thought long and hard about following through on my threat.  After all, it was a trivial incident compared to the tragic crashes that kill or seriously injure cyclists in this city. What tipped the scales for me was the knowledge that bike-share would soon be adding thousands of bikes to the streets. I wanted to do my part to spread the word among cabbies that cyclists are legitimate road users, so I made a formal complaint to the TLC.  I never suspected that a TLC attorney would share the driver’s view.

In July, I received a letter from Sameer Shukla, Esq., of the TLC, informing me that although the agency understood that I had “a negative experience” with one of their licensees, “we cannot at this time file charges in relation to your complaint.  The conduct you describe does not constitute a violation of any specific TLC rules.”

I called Mr. Shukla for a fuller explanation. During the course of our conversation, Mr. Shukla first suggested that I should have gone around the cab to its right — a narrow and perhaps impassable space between the double-parked and parked cars. He then stated inaccurately that a bicycle is not a vehicle in the eyes of the TLC, and suggested this as the reason the agency would not pursue my claim. If I wanted clarification of the policy, he said, I could contact TLC Commissioner David Yassky. Here is my exchange with Mr. Shukla. His declaration that a bicycle is not a vehicle appears about 20 lines down.

COUGHLIN: Isn’t there a rule against failing to yield to another vehicle that has the right of way?

SHUKLA: There is a rule but the case as I understand it you were behind the driver and you were going around him [sic] as he [sic] moved, correct?

COUGHLIN: No, I was to the left of the driver, I had to go into the other lane because she was in the right-hand lane . . .

SHUKLA: [interrupts] then it wouldn’t be a failure to yield

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The Times ran a story yesterday on the supposedly improving outlook for state speed camera legislation. The bills have failed to gain traction in Albany for several years running and have yet to clear either house this session, though the Senate version has picked up a sponsor in Staten Island Republican Andrew Lanza.

This 2009 Upper West Side crash injured the cab driver, his passenger, and a pedestrian. Witnesses said the cabbie was speeding when he careened onto a traffic island and slammed into the 72nd Street subway station. Photo: Lisa Sladkus

Speeding-related crashes killed 71 people in New York City in 2009, and injured 3,739. Cameras reduce the number of drivers speeding by 10+ mph by up to 88 percent, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. Speed cameras have the endorsement of NYPD, NYC DOT, and the city’s Department of Health.

Times reporter Matt Flegenheimer devotes three actual paragraphs to the benefits of automated enforcement. And then:

Still, some drivers said they retained a certain romantic attachment to the rare interactions with officers and their radar guns; the surge of pride derived from talking one’s way out of a ticket; the tacit kinship forged between drivers who slow in unison at the sight of a patrol car in the distance.

For the second half of his 1,000-word story, Flegenheimer talks to a random motorist who is skeptical that speeding is “truly dangerous” to pedestrians, along with a city cab driver and a chauffeur who, we are told, need to speed in order to avoid the wrath of their well-heeled passengers.

Then there’s Bhairavi Desai, head of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, who believes speed cameras are “simply another tactic to raise revenue for the city.”

Ms. Desai said many cabdrivers had received bus-lane violations after performing what they thought were legal pickups or drop-offs in bus lanes.

“With a camera, who do you argue against?” she said.

So to hear Ms. Desai tell it, the problem with speeding cabbies is that they sometimes get caught.

You would think that someone who gets paid to advocate for the well-being of cab drivers would understand that, in addition to pedestrians, bus riders, restaurant patrons and school kids, speeding cabbies also pose a danger to themselves. The fact is that, with thousands of New York City drivers and passengers killed and injured in speeding-related crashes each year, any driver who argues against speed enforcement is arguing against his or her own safety.

A city cab driver jumped a curb on Monday, pinning a woman against a building in Midtown and injuring a second pedestrian. Photo via Gothamist

Every New Yorker who steps off a curb should read the Gotham Gazette story on the health problems associated with driving a city cab. If nothing else it’s an eye-opener, to say the least, in light of the potential impact of cabbie working conditions on street safety.

From a physical standpoint, driving is a sedentary activity, so it stands to reason that those who drive for a living are prone to a host of maladies.

Drivers are often forced to eat on the go, making fast food their easiest option. Few of them get any exercise whatsoever, and often suffer from back, hip and leg pain from sitting in a car all day. This lack of exercise combined with a bad diet has led to high rates of diabetes and high blood pressure among cabbies, according to health experts. Many of them even have kidney problems because they frequently can’t find a place to park when they need to use a bathroom.

Stress is also a significant problem — and no wonder, since according to Gotham Gazette, “most drivers work 60 to 70 hours per week.” That’s more time on the road than is permitted to long-haul truck drivers. While federal law limits truckers to 11 hour shifts, regulations from the Taxi & Limousine Commission say cabbies may work up to 12 hours at a time.

Of course there are a number of factors at play, including low pay and the inherent nature of the work itself. And there are no statistics that we know of on the number of cab crashes caused by driver fatigue or other ailments. But if the federal government says 12 hours behind the wheel is too risky for drivers who haul freight on interstate highways, how safe can it be for those carrying passengers on streets teeming with people?

As bad as those long days are for cab drivers themselves, it could be that they’re worse for everyone else.

Transportation analyst and Streetsblog contributor Charles Komanoff is out with a piece in Reuters today that examines the traffic impacts of adding 2,000 new yellow taxis to Manhattan streets, and it’s not pretty.

As part of the grand bargain struck between Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor Andrew Cuomo that will create a new class of hail-able livery cabs, NYC will auction off 2,000 new yellow taxi medallions. The city is expected to haul in a billion dollars from the auction, but Komanoff calculates that in the bargain, central Manhattan streets will be overrun with even more traffic:

No one mentioned traffic when the taxi deal was rolled out last month at City Hall and in Albany. After all, with 800,000 motor vehicles already entering the Manhattan Central Business District (CBD) each weekday, what difference could a mere 2,000 additional yellow cabs possibly make?

Plenty, it turns out. Yellow cabs spend three-fourths of each shift, around seven hours, plying CBD streets and avenues. (And of course some are active for two shifts a day.) Most private cars driven in Manhattan don’t do so for long. Even at the CBD’s notoriously labored traffic pace — now averaging 9.5 mph, up from 8 mph before the recession — the two to three miles per day logged by the average car below 60th Street occupy 15 to 20 minutes.

Adding one new medallion is thus equivalent to adding 40 private cars. Adding 2,000 of them — as the City now intends to do during the next three years — would be the traffic equivalent of adding 80,000 cars, a 10% increase in volume.

Some form of congestion pricing would be just about the only way to mitigate the impact of all this additional traffic, Komanoff writes. You can see the analysis underlying his conclusions in this PDF.

Taxi and Limousine Commissioner David Yassky says legalizing street hails for livery cabs will reduce car ownership rates and improve traffic safety. Photo: Adams for News

Since Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced his plan to create a new class of taxis allowed to make street hails outside the Manhattan core, most of the coverage has focused on the potential effect on yellow cab medallion owners’ profits or livery drivers’ earnings. Less has been written about the broader effect such a plan would have on the city’s transportation system as a whole (Cap’n Transit being a notable exception).

Taxis, after all, make up a significant component of that system. A 2006 report by Bruce Schaller, a former policy director at the Taxi and Limousine Commission and now a top DOT official, estimated that in 2004, yellow cabs drove 815 million miles each year, while livery cabs drove more than double that, 1.733 billion miles.

Now that the legislature has passed the plan — it still needs Governor Andrew Cuomo’s signature — we checked in with TLC Commissioner David Yassky to see how he views its wider impact. He argued that the outer-borough taxi plan would help reduce car ownership and improve traffic safety.

Though he couldn’t quantify the likely impact of the Bloomberg taxi plan on car ownership or trip mode-share, Yassky said that “I think we can say that we know what direction the numbers go in.”

“A healthy taxi market gives people an alternative to private car ownership,” he said. People currently use illegal street hails “to go home from the supermarket with heavy bags, to go to and from the subway stop if you live a mile from the subway, to go to church or visit friends on a Saturday or Sunday. Those are all things that you need a car to do outside Manhattan if there’s no decent taxi service… That’s the systemic impact.”

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Under a plan passed by the State Legislature last Friday, it would become legal to hail certain livery vehicles from the street outside the Manhattan core. Image: James Adams for the Daily News.

Legislation passed by the State Senate last Friday night could clear the way for Mayor Michael Bloomberg to completely revamp taxi service in large swaths of the city through the introduction of a new class of vehicle authorized to pick up street hails only outside the Manhattan core. The improved service should make it easier to live car-free in the majority of New York City. It also would provide a small source of revenue to the MTA.

Under the plan, the city can issue 30,000 new permits to livery cabs, each of which will allow the holder to pick up street hails. In exchange, the permit holders will pay a $1,500 fee and submit to a slew of regulations intended to make the new class of livery vehicles more like yellow cabs.

Those regulations should be a boon to many riders: a uniform paint scheme and taxi lights so that the taxis can be identified without honking, a meter and rate card to eliminate the need to haggle over the price of a trip, credit card machines to enable more payment methods, and GPS tracking.

As taxis often serve as complements to public transit — especially true in outer-borough neighborhoods where many people live outside of walking distance to a subway station — improving their utility can advance progressive transportation policy. Taxis are already a major component of the city’s transportation system, with yellow cabs alone moving over 600,000 people a day.

So that the new borough taxis don’t simply join yellow cabs in the profitable center of Manhattan — 97 percent of yellow cab trips start there or at an airport, according to GPS data — their permits would only be valid for the other four boroughs and above E. 96th Street and W. 110th Street.

The plan was passed through the state legislature in an end-run around the yellow taxi industry’s decades-long sway over the City Council. In the Assembly, it passed by a wide margin of 110-28; the idea to take the vote to Albany instead of the council came from Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver in addition to Bloomberg, according to the New York Times. In the Senate, the plan passed by 40-21, with a strange coalition of support that divided Democrats, Republicans, the New York City delegation, and the upstate delegation.

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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.