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.”

Yassky also made the case that the taxi plan would make livery drivers more likely to follow traffic laws and drive safely: “We see with the yellow taxis that when you have a valuable license, that gives the driver a stake in following the rules.” Certainly some yellow taxi drivers break rules, he said, but “they do have to worry that if they rack up too many driving infractions, they’re going to lose their livelihood.” That isn’t true in the underground market for livery cab street hails. “Since the drivers activity is illicit to begin with, we have no way to give them an incentive to follow the more mundane but important traffic rules,” he said.

Interestingly, Schaller’s 2006 report found that livery cabs generally had fewer crashes per mile than yellow cabs (both were far safer than private vehicles). The two classes of vehicle take different trips in different locations, so it’s possible either that Yassky’s intuitions are correct and liveries will become even safer, or that making liveries more like yellow cabs will push up their crash rate.

Yassky wouldn’t say whether legalization would make hailing a cab outside the Manhattan core more or less affordable. “Rates will be set through TLC rulemaking,” he said. “We’ll have to look at the economics of the industry.”

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.

The bill still requires the signature of Governor Andrew Cuomo. Cuomo has yet to take a position on the plan, and as the Times’ Michael Grynbaum has reported, his father, former Governor Mario Cuomo, has close ties to the yellow cab industry.

Financially, this bill is an enormous boon to the city, with a small amount thrown in for transit riders. In addition to the $1,500 fee on each of the 30,000 new street hail permits, the plan allows the city to auction off another 1,500 yellow cab medallions for an expected return of around $1 billion.

At the same time, the 50-cent taxi ride surcharge passed as part of the 2009 MTA rescue package will apply to the new outer borough street hail rides as well. That surcharge raises around $41 million a year from the trips made by the more than 13,000 yellow cabs, according to Crain’s. In a scenario where 30,000 new vehicles are generating surcharges, the new livery system could raise twice that (though if the outer borough taxis make fewer trips per day or aren’t fully subscribed, those ambitions won’t be realized). Considering that last year’s service cuts saved only $77.6 million each year, that’s a significant revenue stream.

That said, it’s a revenue stream that could potentially cost more than it helps. Reports Crain’s: “By creating a new, dedicated revenue source for the MTA, Republican senators will strengthen their hand next year when they renew their push to repeal the payroll mobility tax, another MTA revenue source that has been criticized as unfair to suburbanites.” The payroll tax brings in $1.5 billion for the MTA, making any new taxi surcharges small change in comparison.

With the MTA in search of $10 billion in new revenue for its capital plan, moreover, the surcharge isn’t enough to forestall what could be major fare hikes or disastrous deferred maintenance.

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.

Photo: pneedham/Flickr

Not every “disappeared” bus or subway trip will materialize as a car trip, of course. Some trips will be made on foot, by bike or by sharing a car, and some others won’t happen at all. But the number of additional car trips caused by the cuts and hikes will be significant, as will the increase in gasoline to fuel them.

I’ve estimated the impacts, using the BTA spreadsheet that has been written about here and was profiled recently in Wired magazine. I inputted an average 7.5 percent bus and subway fare hike along with a five percent increase in the time required to complete an average transit trip. (That's a rough "proxy" for the effects of increased crowding and unsanitary conditions as well as of longer waits between buses and trains and longer walks caused by eliminating some lines.)

The result: by inducing additional car trips as well as reducing the fuel-efficiency of all vehicles due to worsened traffic congestion, the transit cuts and hikes will lead New Yorkers to use an extra 13.5 million gallons of gasoline per year.

On top of that, the hybrid cab requirement would have been expected to save 31.3 million gallons, or almost two-and-a-half times as much as deteriorated transit will cost.

The point isn’t to compare the two -- in a more politically accountable world, the taxi rule would go forward while the transit cuts and hikes would be stayed -- but to show that both impacts are roughly in the same ballpark. In our society, political inertia, whether manifested as government neglect or as judicial narrow-mindedness, tends to reinforce energy consumption and oil dependence.

In this connection, it's worth noting that a well-designed congestion pricing plan -- one that surpassed the Bloomberg plan in scope and, I would argue, cured its political deficiencies -- would, at least on paper, reduce motor vehicle fuel use in the city by an estimated 77.3 million gallons of petroleum per year. That’s between double and triple the taxi-fleet savings. Yet while the associated benefits, in terms of less ecosystem destruction and reduced public pressure (or political cover) to wage war in Asia or elsewhere, would be impressive, they account for less than one percent of the overall expected societal benefit from such a plan. That’s testament not to the low price we pay for oil dependence but to the magnitude of the other benefits, chiefly travel-time savings followed by increased physical activity, that smart and imaginative congestion pricing could bring to our city.

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.

The average density of taxi pick-ups at 1 a.m. on Saturdays in 2009. The most rides originated from the Meatpacking District and the Lower East Side. Image: NYT.

So we wondered, how can this trove of information be used to help pedestrians, cyclists, and transit riders?

We know that the city has already used this resource to measure the effects of street transformations. Mayor Bloomberg and Commissioner Sadik-Khan cited average vehicle speeds calculated from the GPS data when they announced the new pedestrian plazas Broadway would be permanent.

What else can this information do? We asked some of our local transportation experts and advocates about their ideas. Here's what they told us.

"Gridlock" Sam Schwartz, former deputy DOT commish
"One possible use of the taxi data is to identify clusters of origins and destinations where it can be demonstrated that walking travel times are competitive or can be made competitive to taxi travel times. Then the city can try to make those walking trips more inviting with street designs, lighting, policing, changing signal timing to speed the walking trip, etc. Next, the city should publicize the competitiveness of walking for these trips."

Jessie Singer, Transportation Alternatives Traffic Safety Campaign Manager
The data could be used to find out how street infrastructure affects vehicle speeds. For instance, measuring "average travel speed on streets with bike lanes versus streets without."

Charles Komanoff, transportation analyst
"For some future refinements, it would be really helpful from a social standpoint to be able to measure instantaneous taxi speeds, not just averages, to be able to see in which parts of the city and at which times of day, taxis are exceeding the 30 mph speed limits and therefore endangering other people on the road."

Frank Hebbert, Regional Plan Association Associate Planner
"Above all else, make it publicly available. The best result for the city would be to release anonymized data -- that will spur all sorts of analysis and re-use with tangible economic benefit, beyond anything DOT alone can afford."

Rob Freudenberg, RPA Senior Planner for Long Island
"How about comparing taxi routes to existing subway routes? Do most taxi trips line up with existing lines or are they filling in gaps? Are they faster, slower, etc.?"

Streetsman, Streetsblog commenter, on the heat map of taxi pick-ups
"That NYTimes Taxi GPS graphic reads as a map of times and places where public transportation, particularly surface transportation, is sorely lacking. If there were frequent, highly visible buses running directly between nightlife destinations and transit hubs we wouldn't need so many taxis clogging the streets."

Larry Littlefield, occasional Streetsblog commenter, also on the heat map
"These areas are far enough from the subway that it is not worth the hassle, but the walk to the CBD is too long. The bus is too slow, so cabs are shared for those who can afford it. But bicycles are ideal at that distance."

We have a request in with NYCDOT to see how else they plan to use this unparalleled window onto traffic behavior. If you have more ideas, tell us about them in the comments. 

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.

Congestion pricing paired with a significant taxi surcharge would speed cab trips and boost Manhattan's transit funding contribution. Photo: Bill in STL/Flickr.

A side benefit is that the discouragement of taxi use due to the surcharge should cause travel speeds in Manhattan to rise, saving time for car and truck drivers and bus passengers. With some taxi trips switching to subway or bus, transit farebox revenues will go up as well. But the surcharge is so slight -- around 5 percent of a typical fare -- that these gains will barely be perceptible: a mere 0.1-0.2 percent rise in Manhattan travel speeds and a $2-$3 million-per-year rise in transit revenues, according to the BTA. And any increase in taxi cruising to make up for the lost fares would cut into the minuscule improvement in traffic.

While the press bewails the surcharge's impact on taxi users, the people likely to suffer the most are the drivers, who on average can be expected to turn 1½ to 2 fewer fares a week. Losing $20-$25 in weekly revenue may not seem like much, but it's a bitter pill for drivers who can barely pay off their medallion leases as it is. Indeed, the taxi surcharge, enacted by the legislature as an afterthought to the "mobility (payroll) tax" last spring, may do to drivers what the new taxi credit card payment system reportedly has not: drive them to the wall, economically.

Does this mean that surcharging taxi fares to pay for transit is categorically a bad idea? Decidedly not. I'm prepared to argue that a taxi surcharge a good deal larger than 50 cents per ride is essential to the political and logistical success of congestion pricing. At the same time, congestion pricing is essential to making a taxi surcharge fair for taxi drivers and passengers. With, and only with, a cordon toll, will Manhattan traffic improve sufficiently that cabbies can book more fares per shift, not fewer. Moreover, the same speedup will enable users to save valuable time, partially compensating them for the surcharge and ensuring that the taxi sector stays robust.

To grasp these synergies, consider a variable toll to drive into the Manhattan Central Business District of $3 to $9 on weekdays and $2 to $4 on weekends, with the revenues used to cut transit fares roughly in half. Residents of Queens and Brooklyn would pony up 45 cents of every dollar in new toll revenue, because of tolls on the East River bridges. Manhattanites would contribute less than 7 cents of each dollar, less than residents of Nassau County, Staten Island and the Bronx, yet would reap most of the benefits of quieter and safer streets, cleaner air, and faster bus service.

Such a plan would be DOA in Albany. Indeed, I would argue that this very imbalance between beneficiaries and benefactors helped doom the Bloomberg cordon fee in 2008 and the Ravitch bridge tolls this year.

Now take the same toll plan and add a 33 percent taxi surcharge -- yes, a one-third increase in the mileage rate, the waiting time rate and the "drop." Instantly, Manhattan residents -- who comprise an estimated three-fourths of medallion taxi users -- would see their payment share nearly quadruple to 25 percent. Brooklyn and Queens residents' share would shrink from 45 percent without the taxi surcharge to 28 percent with it. The borough-inequity argument largely disappears.

Not only that, the taxi surcharge revenue, a cool $400-$500 million according to the BTA, could allow transit officials to eliminate bus fares. Free buses would be a particular boon in distant precincts where subway lines don't reach. As well, the rise in the taxi fare would offset the fall in the "time cost" of taxi service due to the decrease in auto traffic, and keep new taxi trips from inundating the CBD. Total use of medallion cabs would stay roughly constant under this integrated plan, with the reduction in gridlock enabling drivers to handle an extra 15-20 fares per week without booking more hours.

As for the effect on taxi users, the BTA indicates that the integrated plan outlined here would add $2.16 to the price of the average CBD cab trip while shortening the ride by 1.8 minutes. In other words, passengers pay $1.20 per minute saved -- a steep rate, for most of us, and it would be steeper for trips that venture outside the CBD, where the travel time savings would be smaller, percentage-wise. Even with a cordon toll, then, taxi surcharges can't be sold to riders as an unalloyed win-win, although riders could help themselves by cab-pooling and prioritizing their taxi use.

Of course, taxi surcharges are still justified as a means of internalizing the "social delay" costs of vehicle traffic on congested streets. They're most fair and effective, though, when coupled with cordon tolling.

In August, 8-year-old Axel Pablo was killed by a cab driver in Harlem. Witnesses say the cabbie was on his cell phone. Though police cleared him of wrongdoing, the TLC has since revoked his hack license. Photo via Daily News

According to the News, keeping cab drivers off the phone should only be required when passengers are present -- apparently because News editors believe distracted driving is a mere annoyance, rather than a well-documented threat to public safety:

The present TLC rules forbid cell chatting while cabbies are driving. That's reasonable; you shouldn't have to listen to your hack yack while you're paying $2 per mile, no more than you should be forced to listen to the radio at full blast.

But when drivers are alone, using their cabs as cars -- just like millions do -- they should live by the same rules as the rest of the population.

So instead of advocating for more stringent distracted driving laws for everyone who gets behind the wheel, the editors of the Daily News would prefer that we "cut some slack" to thousands of professional drivers who patrol streets teeming with vulnerable pedestrians and cyclists 24/7/365. Never mind that cell-phone-using drivers, hands-free or no, are four times more likely to be involved in a crash. And remember that national summit a couple of weeks ago, when the U.S. secretary of transportation declared distracted driving a "deadly epidemic"? Honestly, people: Where have you been?

For the record, the Post is in favor of the new TLC rules. And no wonder. It's hard to believe a position so ill-informed as that of the Daily News editorial board could be held by anyone who reads a newspaper on a daily basis, much less publishes one.

Central Park erupted into a scene of chaos early Saturday afternoon after witnesses say a taxi heading west from 60th Street toward Fifth Avenue hit an empty horse and buggy carriage before slamming into a brick wall.

"Actually he was coming very high speed, too, cause you see the big hole he made in the wall, he was coming very, very fast," said one witness.

"All of a sudden I heard this loud thump and I saw a horse going over toward Fifth Avenue, loose, before I saw a couple of drivers, the carriage drivers, stop the horse and there was a cab driver I assume it was now laying in the street," said another witness.

The cab driver and the carriage operator were injured, while horse Blackie, miraculously, was unharmed. No word that we could find on what charges, if any, were issued (the Post says the driver "was reportedly suffering from a seizure," but gives no source).

Though animal advocates were quick to paint Saturday's crash as further evidence that horse carriages have no place in traffic (an argument with which I personally agree), it was in fact only the latest example of cabbie-induced carnage.

The Times on Sunday ran a brief editorial reiterating the paper's recent coverage of cab drivers and cell phones. Cab-riding New Yorkers may recognize the dangers of driving on city streets while distracted, the Times says, but few do much about it: the TLC reports just 175 complaints regarding yakking drivers through July of this year. Despite the ubiquity of the offense -- when was the last time you got in a cab where the driver wasn't on the phone? -- NYPD is virtually no help, issuing under 1,000 tickets to cabbies in all of 2008, and just 232 through the first half of 2009.

Given the bleak state of enforcement, the Times advises readers to either buckle up or withhold gratuities. While option two might work on a case-by-case basis, this got us wondering: What should the protocol be for a safe streets advocate sitting behind a reckless cab driver? Confront the cabbie? Complain to TLC? Both? Or are you a conscientious objector, avoiding cabs altogether?

Reader Trish Naudon-Thomas sends this picture of yesterday's cab crash in Chelsea. Information about what transpired is still hard to come by, but an AP squib notes that the collision has put one person in critical condition and two others in serious condition. It's a miracle that even more people weren't hurt in such a pedestrian-packed city environment.

As noted in the comments to our first post about this crash, it's much easier to acquire a hack license in New York City compared to London. A survey released this June ranked New York cabbies the world's worst taxi drivers. London's were named the best. Think of the lives that could be saved if we decided that driving a multi-ton vehicle all day, all over town demanded more rigorous certification.

Miraculously, unlike Akim Saiful Alam, the unidentified driver in yesterday's crash didn't kill anyone when he lost control of his cab on Amsterdam Avenue. But it wasn't for lack of trying. Witnesses told NY1 the cabbie was speeding before he attempted to "make a turn from the far right lane of Amsterdam and turned all the way into the far left lane." The News reports what happened next:

The cab careened off the roadway and nearly cleared a 4-foot-high wrought-iron fence separating a traffic island from the intersection.

"He hit the fence, and he went flying," said Samuel Valerdi, 34, of Brooklyn.

Then the taxi smashed into a small building that houses the entrance to the 1, 2 and 3 subway trains.

"It hit like a bomb," said newspaper vendor Mohameed Raza, 22, of Brooklyn.

Pedestrians ran for their lives, but "luckily no one was coming out of the subway at the time," said David Spiers, 44, a Bronx electrician working across the street.

All told, three people -- the driver, his passenger, and a pedestrian -- were injured. The News says NYPD is still investigating, though no summonses were immediately issued.

While this incident will soon drop off the radar (just as surely as it will soon happen again), not everyone will be quick to forget. After the jump, witness Lisa Sladkus questions why all of us, every day, should suffer the consequences of dangerous driving.

What will it take to make these streets safer? A low-stress afternoon interrupted by screeching tires, a loud crash, and the terrifying thought, "Where are my kids right now?" It shouldn't be like this. Today on Broadway between 71st and 72nd Street, a cab went straight through the wrought-iron fence and landed on the sidewalk right outside the subway entrance. My sister and I rushed out to see what seemed to be the cab driver with a bloody head and at least one pedestrian with a head injury. The sadder part was hearing the first police officer to the scene of the crash say, "It's shocking there weren't more injuries or deaths."

What's more shocking to me is that this is okay with the powers that be. Why is it okay to have a person walk out of the subway and get hit by some flying metal from a car crash? Why is it okay to have 53 pedestrians and four bicyclists die on the Upper West Side between 1995 and 2005 because of car crashes? Why can cars drive through red lights and nothing happens? Why is Amsterdam Avenue more like a bustling highway than a lovely city Boulevard?

This similar shock and sadness happened to me a few weeks ago while walking home with my three kids and loads of groceries. A woman riding her bike was hit by a car in front of the popular grocery store, Fairway. She didn't move for many minutes, and my kids kept asking, "Is she dead?" Once we determined that she, in fact, didn't die, my kids switched their questioning. The question that really got me was from my four year old, "You and Daddy bike. Are you going to get rolled up by a car too?"

All I can say is that we need a serious re-thinking of our neighborhoods. How do we want them to feel? Do we want kids to feel safe while walking and biking? Do we want peaceful streets where we can meet neighbors and frolic with our children? Do we want our valuable police force, fire department and EMT doing something more beneficial than spending hours dealing with the aftermath of a totally preventable crash? If so, we need to start by lowering speed limits, we need to re-design our streets and sidewalks to accommodate the masses of people instead of motor vehicles, we need safe places to bike and walk, we need trucks off our neighborhood side streets (and, frankly, completely out of our neighborhoods unless they are absolutely necessary), and on and on.

After the death of 8-year-old Axel Pablo last week, the Post called on Mayor Bloomberg, NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly and TLC Commissioner Matthew Daus to crack down on cell phone-talking cab drivers. While this would be a welcome move, a more effective approach, for starters, would be an across the board no tolerance policy to speeding on city streets, coupled with prosecution of reckless motorists who maim and kill.

We know what it takes to "help us make safer streets and sidewalks," Sladkus concludes. "The question is: do we want that as our outcome?"

A DOT team received a mix of gratitude and derision at Tuesday's public forum about recent pedestrian improvements in the Meatpacking District, which attracted an audience of about 100 people to the Housing Works offices on West 13th Street. It was an interesting window onto the competing interests now vying to shape what has been, from the beginning, a genuinely community-based project seeking to put pedestrians on equal footing with vehicle traffic.

Those who came to praise described the new sense of safety they feel walking around the area near Gansevoort Plaza. Those who came to scorn suggested rolling back those improvements in the hopes that livery passengers might not have to wait another minute or two to be dropped off right at their luxe destinations. The former enjoyed a two-to-one advantage over the latter among those who spoke, with much of crowd opinion resting with a sizable, aesthetically-driven middle ground -- people who professed support for street reclamation in theory, but just don't like the look of nipple bollards.

The goal of the meeting, said DOT Manhattan Borough Commissioner Margaret Forgione, was to get "a sense of the overall feeling and a sense of what can be tweaked" about the project, which is slated to enter a permanent design phase this July, followed by construction the next year. There was no shortage of thoughtful ideas -- and clunkers -- for a neighborhood attempting to deal with the influx of cab and limo traffic on weekend nights. Taxi stands, anyone?

One solution for the Meatpacking District's livery congestion: taxi stands. Image: NYCDOT

On the side of preserving safety gains, longtime resident Cynthia Penney encapsulated the sentiment of many locals. "I love the fact that I can cross the street without taking my life in my hands," she said. "Judging by the crowds outside Pastis, I don't think anyone is having trouble getting here."

On the side of maximizing vehicular throughput, Andrew Winter, a representative of luxury resto/lounge tandem Vento and Level V (a favored haunt of "good-looking, well-heeled New Yorkers in their late twenties, happy about how, well, good-looking they are" says New York Mag), put it to DOT thusly: "Instead of spending money on moving these cement block things into new areas, can we focus our funds on how to get the traffic in and out much easier?"

Not that all testimony hewed to the residents-vs.-businesses pattern. Paolo Secondo, owner of the restaurant Revel on Little West 12th Street, was firmly in favor of the pedestrian improvements. "I believe that a privilege we can no longer afford in New York is to be able to arrive at a restaurant in a cab or a limo," he said, assigning blame for traffic congestion in the area to the willy-nilly pattern of livery pick-ups and drop-offs. "I would much prefer to have stands or drop-off zones." His call was bolstered by comments from a CB4 member who recounted how taxi stands had eased traffic tie-ups and quieted late-night honking in Chelsea's nightclub district.

One of the most intriguing storylines to develop was -- brace yourself -- the question of management. As Project for Public Spaces can tell you, the success of any public space depends on programming and maintenance. Someone has to care for it. The Meatpacking District, unlike Madison Square and other areas where DOT plazas have bloomed, does not have a BID to assume this role. It does have a merchants' association -- the Meatpacking District Initiative -- and here's the Catch 22: The MPDI is funded through voluntary contributions, not mandatory assessments, so if the businesses don't like the new public spaces, they don't have to pay for things like putting on events or keeping planters looking good, and perceptions of the pedestrian zones will suffer.

"People want us to fund something that our members are not pleased with," said MPDI founder David Rabin, who called for some of the pedestrian areas on Ninth Avenue to be narrowed or removed. "It is unacceptable for me to hear people say they think it's okay that it's hard to get to the Meatpacking District."

Rabin was followed immediately by Florent Morellet, one of the first restaurateurs to set up in the area and a driving force behind the public space plan. "Cabs can come to the outskirts of the neighborhood but not to the middle," he said in a plea to fellow business owners. "The concept that people can drive wherever and whenever they want is over. You're going to kill business with the old way of thinking. Don't think the old way."

Judging by much of the testimony, many of Rabin's design-conscious members would be satisfied with changes to surface appearances -- nipple bollards, apparently, offend their haute sensibilities. As one boutique owner put it, the street furniture doesn't match the "Paris-like setting" that first attracted her to the neighborhood. Finding a substitute may prove tougher than you'd think. Any device to demarcate pedestrian space will have to meet DOT traffic engineers' exacting safety standards, which the reflective tops of nipple bollards manage to achieve.

With the final design phase slated to commence this July, the Gansevoort project is one to keep an eye on. Some changes may already be in the works. We checked in with DOT the day after the meeting, and the agency said they hope to install taxi stands in the next month or two.

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.

Streetsblog: With congestion pricing off the table and the deadline to receive $354M in federal support about to pass, will other traffic mitigation measures surface in the state legislature?
Brodsky: Several have already been proposed, including better enforcement (block-the-box and double parking being the prime targets) and reforms of yellow cab and black car services. But there is no support for using pricing or any other ability-to-pay mechanisms.

Streetsblog: How will the projected shortfall in the MTA capital plan be addressed? Pricing would have taken care of a big chunk of it -- what are some likely alternatives that will be proposed?
Brodsky: The Assembly has already passed a small increase in the income tax rate for those who earn over $1,000,000 a year, with the proceeds largely going to mass transit capital across the state. It has the added advantage of being pay-as-you-go, saving billions in interest costs.

First, the Daily Politics spoke to Bronx Assemblyman Michael Benedetto, a pricing supporter who identified three major sticking points among his colleagues:

• Taxis, which contribute considerably to traffic, getting off with just a $1 surcharge.
• No provisions for the elderly or sick people who are traveling into the congestion zone to go to medical appointments.
• The fact that commuters from New Jersey won't be affected because they're already paying $8 in PANY/NJ tolls.

The New Jersey issue, which prompted 20 City Council members to sign a letter of objection, may be on its way to being hashed out, according to a story in the Sun this morning:

Mr. Bloomberg has said he will address the issue and is expected to propose a possible fix soon.

The Sun also reports on the favors Council members are seeking in return for their vote:

"I know what my issues are -- northern Manhattan," Council Member Robert Jackson of Harlem, who said he is undecided about the mayor's plan, said yesterday. Mr. Jackson said his wish list includes more express bus routes and support for building a cross-harbor rail tunnel that would reduce truck traffic in the neighborhood.

He added that he is in talks with the mayor's office on local concerns and is leaning toward voting in favor of congestion pricing.

Want to urge Jackson and the rest of City Council to get behind pricing? There's a public hearing at City Hall on Monday. Details after the jump.

The Campaign for New York's Future sent an email to supporters yesterday to organize pro-pricing turnout. Here's the deal from CNYF:

WHAT: City Council is holding its last hearing on congestion pricing in order to gauge community support for the plan before it goes to a vote. This is likely your last opportunity to make your voice heard on this issue!

WHEN: Monday, March 24th at 9:30 a.m. and at 5:30 p.m. – READ ON FOR THE FULL DAY’S SCHEDULE

9:30 session: The morning hearing will hear testimonies from pre-invited panelists only but is open to the public.  We encourage you to attend and show your support for pro-pricing testimonies as well as sign up to testify at the evening hearing.

5:30 session: The evening hearing is open to the public -- anyone can testify. The sign-up for the evening hearing opens at 5:30. Testimonies are limited to 2 minutes each. The line up will be determined on a first come, first served basis.

To sum up: come all day if you can make it; if you can only come at one time make it at 5:30pm.

WHERE: 2nd Floor, Council Chambers - City Hall. City Hall is located in City Hall Park. You can enter the plaza from either the west side of the park at Broadway and Murray Street or the east side at Park Row.

Please let us know if you are coming or if you have questions: contact Katie at ksavin@mrss.com.

Bring congestion pricing related signs and t-shirts to show your support even when you are not testifying!  The CNYF will bring extras in case you need them.

Streetsblog's Brad Aaron files this report from Albany.

A contingent of about 80 New Yorkers is in Albany today to advocate for congestion pricing. Following a brief rally on the capitol steps this morning, led by the Campaign for New York's Future, the crowd broke off into small groups for a day of sit-downs with individual lawmakers.

I shadowed a group assigned to Senator Frank Padavan of Queens, who is against pricing, though he represents a district where just six percent of the population commutes by car to Manhattan's central business district. An amiably cantankerous fellow, Padavan started the meeting with a question: "Did the mayor send you up here?" The senator then went on for a bit about Bloomberg's helicopter and private jet before getting down to business.

"We've gotten tons of info," Padavan said. "We have reviewed it all, and I don't really have any questions."

Padavan said Residential Parking Permits would help his car-owning constituents avoid park-and-ride problems, and allowed that new express buses would be a welcome addition to his district. But he also said that, according to the MTA, there is no way to add subway capacity from 179th Street in Jamaica.

Then, when the senator was presented with specific plans for transit improvements in Queens, things got off track.

"When are we going to do something about the taxicabs and the limousines?" Padavan asked, apropos of nothing. "There's nothing in the plan that addresses that."

Padavan proceeded to rail against limos double-parking as they wait for affluent Manhattanites. (He was unaware of the proposed $1 surcharge for yellow cab rides.) He then suggested a fleet of jitneys along the avenues, which would be financially self-sustaining. ("What does he think buses are?" wondered one advocate after the meeting.)

Padavan pointed out how many City Council members from Queens and Brooklyn are against pricing, concluding, "You ought to be down there talking to them."

A cyclist in the group spoke eloquently of the vision needed from Albany to move the plan through, to make New York a city of livable streets. "We'd love you to provide leadership," one advocate said.

Padavan responded that City Council members don't listen to him. In fact, he said, one of them is running against him.