Mayor Bloomberg Battles Fleet Owners Over NYC 'Taxi of Tomorrow'

An anonymous reader writes "In April, Mayor Mike Bloomberg announced that the Nissan NV200 minivan had won a citywide competition to replace the current cab model, the Ford Crown Victoria, in a phased-in period of five years. Cab owners sued, pointing out that New York City law requires that hybrid electric models be available for immediate use for cab medallion owners; that excludes the current Nissan NV200, with its 2.0 liter, 4-cylinder engine rated at a combined 24 mpg. The NV200 also has poor accessibility for wheelchair users. After a state judge blocked the mayor's plan, Bloomberg allegedly told the CEO of Taxi Club Management at a private club, 'Come January 1st, when I am out of office, I am going to destroy your f--king industry.' Tim Fernholz of Quartz speculates that Bloomberg (a billionaire) may be planning to launch a cab-hailing service like Uber, which was just allowed back onto the streets of New York, with significant limitations."

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Oh if only there were a free market in taxis

[Laxori666]

It would be so much better. More taxis, cheaper rates, being able to order taxis from your iPhones... but given that the going rate to buy a medallion is over a million dollars nowadays (based on my convo w/ a taxi driver who had done just that recently), there's a ton of interest against that. If only, if only.

Re:Bloomberg is a spoiled brat

[Anonymous Coward]

Does that apply equally to the Koch brothers and their NRA connected group ALEC?

Yes?

How does that shoe feel now that it's on your foot?

How did you fit so many shoes into your rectum?

Only a man with an entire Payless of shoes shoved up his ass could be demented enough to think that dislike of gross corruption is party driven.

Re:Ambivalent

[MBGMorden]

On thing to keep in mind when comparing miles per "gallon" - the UK when it used gallons used the Imperial gallon, which is larger than the US gallon (4.55L vs 3.78L, respectively). A car that gets 24 miles per US gallon would get nearly 29 miles per Imperial gallon.

Re:Uber is not going to destroy NYC taxi

[TapeCutter]

Not sure how taxi's operate in NYC but the ones I drove here in Oz have a meter that ticks over after a fixed time or distance, whichever comes first, the fees are mandated by state law so all taxis charge the same amount for the same trip. There's also a flagfall fee just for getting in the cab, so really there's no such thing as an unprofitable trip.

Having said that the only way to make a reasonable income from a cab is to make sure a customers arse is in the seat at all times, getting a 5min job that puts you at the back of a 2hr queue is just the luck of the draw. Although I have heard that airport staff here in Melbourne are issuing "short trip" coupons to drivers who get stuck with a local job, it entitles them to come back to the front of the queue, but again that can happen at any rank and most ranks are not staffed/policed like they are at the airport. Also 5min jobs themselves are not the problem, on Friday and Saturday nights you want the 5min jobs because you know you can get another one straight away, doing that all night on your home turf is about as profitable as taxi driving gets.

Re:Uber is not going to destroy NYC taxi

[EmperorOfCanada]

In my town they went with a GPS and electronically dispatched system. I asked a driver what changes it made and he said that it nearly instantly doubled his income and then it nearly doubled again over the next couple of months. First he said that the old drivers had some sort of kickback system with the dispatchers. So he could be pretty well parked across the street from a call yet the dispatcher would send a taxi that was presently across town and presently had a fare. So he said that with the modern system the old dispatchers and drivers all quit overnight. Another set of drivers that quit were the illiterate drivers who couldn't work the system. He also said that the silence was bliss. If his computer bleeped he had a fare but otherwise it was reading time.

The slower increase in his income was when everybody discovered that the computer based cab company was much much faster.

Now it was too early at that point but one problem for him would be that the training time to become a fairly good cabbie would be nearly zero. You didn't have to learn to work the radio and with the computer both telling you how to get to your fair and the route to dropping them off you could be pretty well fresh off the boat and still be able to be a halfway decent cabbie in this city.

So when all is said and done the technological solution will benefit the customer and the cab company but not the worker.

Personally I am a huge fan of technological improvements but society is not well structured to prevent people from really getting hurt by all this. As robotics take this all to the next logical step there will be a point where very few owners are able to have huge businesses with almost zero workers. While individually this will be great for the producers and providers, the real base of any economy is consumption not production. So without employed people there will be little consumption and much rioting and crime. Society needs to be restructured so as to make sure that inequality doesn't get out of control. This would even hurt those who would like to be unequal.

Re:No no, not a cab hailing service...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bloomberg is not a "rich kid". Whatever you think of him or his politics, he's a self-made man and judging by the places he lived growing up, had a middle-class upbringing.

Re:Bloomberg is a spoiled brat

[sesshomaru]

What laws have the Kochs demonstrably violated?

Trading with Iran. [bloomberg.com]

For starters, and there's more if you look. [publicintegrity.org]

They should be swinging from lampposts right next to the one Bloomberg is swinging from, maybe across from the ones Jamie Dimon and Don Blankenship are strung up from.

The main problems will be really fat crows and running out of lamp posts.