Streetsblog New York City

The first thing I noticed was a blur of yellow to my left, and a split second later a bump on my arm and something brushing my leg. I had just crossed Fifth Avenue, heading east on 72nd Street on my bike. I was riding, as is my custom, as close to the parked cars as I could while minimizing the hazard of getting doored. It was about 10:10 on a lovely March morning and traffic was light.

I managed to stay upright as the cab swept by me. Alarmed and shaken, I screamed and the driver hit the brakes. Adrenaline pumping, I banged on the front passenger-side window and yelled that he had just hit me. He raised his arms in a "What am I supposed to do?" gesture of helplessness. His fare in the back seat leaned forward to say something and the driver pulled away. I made a mental note of the plate number. Catching the cab at the next light, I loudly proclaimed my intention of reporting the incident to the Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC). The driver appeared unconcerned.

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.

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The surcharge on NYC medallion taxi fares that took effect this month is a bit like a bases-loaded groundout that scores a run but kills a big inning: It does some good, but a ringing base hit could have done a lot more.

The good, in this case, is a new pot of money for the financially strapped MTA: the 50 cent-a-ride surcharge is expected to raise $80 to $85 million a year according to transit officials, a figure confirmed by inputting the surcharge into the Balanced Transportation Analyzer (BTA) pricing model. While that will barely cover one percent of the MTA's budget, it will help patch the authority's deficit and sustain essential services like subway car cleaning and system maintenance.

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.

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In an apparent quest to see which local daily can issue the most ridiculously auto-centric assessment of the problems plaguing the public realm, the "New York" Post has some competition.

Commenting today on pending action by the Taxi and Limousine Commission to ban the use of electronic devices by cab drivers while their vehicles are in motion, the Daily News wonders: What's the problem?

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.

A reader sent in this photo of the weekend collision between a yellow cab and a horse carriage on 60th Street at Fifth Avenue. NY1 reports:

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.

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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.

For the second time (that we know of) in less than a week, a yellow cab driver has wreaked havoc on Manhattan streets, terrorizing pedestrians and leaving a trail of destruction.

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.

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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?

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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.

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We called Assemblyman Richard Brodsky yesterday to get his comments on the demise of congestion pricing. While he wouldn't talk to us on the phone, he fielded a few questions over e-mail. 

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.

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The congestion pricing deadline is little more than a week (or two) away, and news is coming fast and furious about the last wave of legislative wrangling. Two reports published in the last 16 hours give a sense of how compromises may be hashed out to gain passage for the measure.

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.

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