Taxicabs of the United States

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Main article: Taxicabs around the world

Throughout the United States there is a mature system of taxicabs. Most US cities have a licensing scheme which restricts the number of taxicabs allowed. These are sometimes called medallions or CPNC (Certificate of Public Necessity and Convenience).

Often taxi businesses own their own cars, and the drivers are employees of the company. However, cabs can also be owned by separately-incorporated small businesses that subscribe to a dispatch service, in which case the company logo on the door is that of the dispatch association.

A suburban taxi company may operate under several different names serving several adjacent towns. They often provide different phone numbers for each fleet, but they usually all ring into a central dispatch office. They may have subsidiary taxi businesses holding medallions in each town. Taxi companies also may run multiple businesses, such as non-medallion car services, delivery services, and school buses, for additional revenue, as the infrastructure required for maintaining, operating and dispatching the fleet can be shared.

Contents 1 Types of taxicabs 2 Boston, Massachusetts 3 Chicago, Illinois 4 Denver, Colorado 5 New York City 5.1 History 5.2 New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission 5.3 Medallion taxis and livery cabs 5.4 Hailing a medallion taxi 5.5 Fares 5.6 Taxicab fleet 6 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 7 Washington, D.C. 8 Taxicabs by city 9 References 10 Notes 11 External links

[edit] Types of taxicabs

There is a distinction between medallion taxicabs and livery cars. Medallion taxicabs are allowed to pick up street hails, while livery cars are only allowed to take dispatched calls or make prearranged pickups. Taxicabs are more regulated than livery cars, and usually have their rates set by the city. Most U.S. cities only allow a certain number of medallions, which causes them to become a valuable commodity. When a taxi is called to pick up a fare outside of their area, they are operating as a livery car, because the medallion is only good in the town that issued it. An out-of-town taxi may not pick up street hails.

Although the medallion usually allows the driver to cruise for fares anywhere in the municipality, taxis tend to cruise areas where they receive the most hails, such as the business districts. Thus they can be very difficult to find in other areas, which must be served by livery cars.

A livery car that provides local service looks very much like a taxicab, except it does not have a meter or "taxi" light on the roof. Another type of livery service is the "black car", or sedan limo, which tends to primarily serve business customers. These are usually big, black, American-made luxury cars that usually look identical to private vehicles - they typically do not bear their company name or logo. Stretch limousines, even though they are technically considered livery cars, are typically reserved for hours at a time long in advance, and have little in common with taxicabs.

A "jitney" van is a hybrid between a bus and a livery car. Instead of operating point to point, it will pick up and drop off several passengers along an ad-hoc route.

A "gypsy cab" is a car that illegally picks up street hails without a medallion. This could refer to an ordinary passenger car, but it usually refers to a livery car that picks up off the curb. Pejoratively, this is sometimes used to refer to all livery cars, for example in New York City.

Some corporations run a shuttle bus to transport employees to and from different company locations. These are usually regulated as livery cars, and are not allowed to pick up employees except at the shuttle stops. If they picked up an employee after being hailed, they could be fined for operating a gypsy cab.

[edit] Boston, Massachusetts

The City of Boston, Massachusetts issues hackney carriage licenses. The Boston Police Hackney Carriage Unit handles the regulation of the city's taxis.

[edit] Chicago, Illinois

Taxicabs in Chicago, Illinois are operated by private companies and licensed by the city. There are nearly seven thousand licensed cabs operating within the city limits. Licenses are obtained through the purchase or lease of a taxi medallion which is then affixed to the top right hood of the car.

Each medallion carries a numeric code, which is also displayed prominently at several locations on (and in) the taxicab. The medallion must be purchased from the city or from another medallion owner. The supply of medallions is strictly controlled to prevent a surplus of cabs, which means that medallions trade at a high price. Unlike other cities Chicago taxis can be of any color and drivers are not required to wear uniforms.

Flagging a taxi down is fairly easy throughout most city neighborhoods, but can often be more difficult in areas where there is low demand for cabs. Drivers are required to pick up the first or closest passenger they see, and may not refuse a fare anywhere within the city.

The passenger is required to pay the amount on the taximeter plus any additional tolls or fees. The initial entry, sometimes called a "meter drop" or "flag pull", is $2.25 regardless of distance traveled. Each additional fraction of a mile charge is $.20 for each additional 1/9 of a mile. Additionally, each 36 seconds of time elapsed, known as "wait time", is $.20. This charge is in place to ensure the driver still makes money if the cab is stuck in bad traffic. There is a flat fee of $1.00 for the first additional passenger and another $.50 for each additional passenger after that unless the passenger is under 12 or over 65 years of age.

An additional charge of $1.00 is added to the total fare on each trip to or from O'Hare or Midway Airports under the State of Illinois Metropolitan Pier & Exposition Authority (MPEA) Airport Departure Ordinance. The tax should appear on the meter as an "extra" charge. There is no additional charge for baggage or credit card use and tipping is optional but encouraged at the rate of 10% of the total taximeter fare.

Below are some estimated cab fares from State and Madison, the downtown zero point.

• State and Madison to O'Hare Airport: $30 - $35.
• State and Madison to Midway Airport: $22 - $28.
• State and Madison to the United Center: $8 - $10.

Rates from Chicago, excluding O'Hare and Midway Airports, are straight meter to the city limits plus meter and one-half from the city limits to the destination.

Straight meter fares apply to all trips departing from Midway or O'Hare airports to the following suburbs. (All other trips are metered at one and one half the rate from Chicago's city limits to the suburbs.)

Alsip	Bedford Park	Blue Island	Burnham	Calumet City	Calumet Park
Cicero	Des Plaines	Dolton	Elk Grove	Elmwood Park	Evanston
Evergreen Park	Forest View	Harwood Heights	Hines Hospital	Hometown	Lincolnwood
Merrionette Park	Niles	Norridge	Oak Lawn	Oak Park	Park Ridge
Riverdale	River Grove	Rosemont	Stickney	Summit

[edit] Denver, Colorado

Denver has three taxi companies, Metro Transportation (who also operates Taxi Latino,) Yellow Cab, and Freedom Cab.

Taxicabs are licensed by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) who regulates number of cabs, meter rates, and other rules and regulations.

Metro Transportation has PUC license for 498 cabs, Yellow has license for 300, and Freedom has license for 150.

Meter rates are as followed:

There is a flat 'flag drop' rate, which is $2.60 for Metro, $2.50 for Yellow. Once in the car, there are two rates: milage and time. Both are counted in $0.25 increments, and the dividing line between the two is 15mph. One can estimate their trip to cost $2 per mile, and approximately $0.25 per red light on that trip, plus the drop rate.

There are three 'flat rate' trips set by the PUC:

Downtown Denver to Denver International Airport, or DIA to DT: $43 Denver Tech Center to DIA, or DIA to DTC: $45 Anywhere within the city limits of Boulder to DIA, or DIA to Boulder: $70

Other rates vary by company, and include per-person rates, luggage handling, and pets. Individual drivers are also known to set their own rates for extraneous circumstances, such as bodily fluids in the car, or smoking with a non-smoking driver, which some local police will assist the driver in enforcing if necessary.

Vehicles are generally owned, inspected, and maintained by the Taxi company, and leased to the drivers. Some of the companies have 'owner drivers,' who are drivers that own their own vehicle, pay a slightly reduced weekly lease, and have to pay for maintenance on the vehicle.

[edit] New York City

The taxicabs of New York City, with their distinctive yellow paint, are a widely recognized icon of the city. There are more than 13,000 taxis operating in the city, not including over 40,000 other for-hire vehicles.^[1] Taxicabs are operated by private companies and licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), a New York City government agency. "Medallion taxis," the familiar yellow cabs, are the only vehicles in the city permitted to pick up passengers in response to a street hail.

[edit] History

The first taxicab company in New York was the New York Taxicab Company, which in 1907 imported 600 gasoline-powered cars from France. The cars were painted red and green. Within a decade several more companies opened business and taxicabs began to proliferate. The fare was 50 cents a mile, a rate only affordable to the relatively wealthy.^[2]

By the 1920s industrialists recognized the potential of the taxicab market. Automobile manufacturers like General Motors and the Ford Motor Company began operating fleets. The most successful manufacturer, however, was the Checkered Cab Manufacturing Company. Founded by Morris Markin, Checker Cabs produced the large yellow and black taxis that became one of the most recognizable symbols of mid-20th century urban life. For many years Checker cabs were the most popular taxis in New York City.

By the 1930s the taxicab industry in the city was large and rife with corruption.^{[citation needed]} Cabbies, many of whom at the time were Irish, Italian, or Jewish immigrants, were the frequent victims of unfair labor practices while passengers were often victims of price gouging. In 1934 more than 2,000 cabbies went on strike and occupied Times Square.^{[citation needed]} In response, Mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia signed the Haas Act of 1937, which introduced official taxi licenses and the medallion system that remains in place today.

In the 1960s New York City experienced many of the problems of social unrest that engulfed other American cities.^{[citation needed]} Crime rates increased along with racial tensions, and cabbies often illegally avoided neighborhoods of racial minorities.^{[citation needed]} As a result, a quickly growing industry of private livery services emerged. Unofficial drivers were barred from picking up people on the street, but they readily found business in under-served neighborhoods. In 1967, New York City ordered all "medallion taxis" be painted yellow to help cut down on unofficial drivers and make official taxicabs more readily recognizable.^[2]

The yellow taxi had been popularized by John D. Hertz, who started the Yellow Cab Company in 1915 and which operated in a number of cities including New York. Hertz painted his cabs yellow after he read a study identifying yellow as the most visible color from long distances.^[2]

In the 1970s and 1980s both the unofficial livery services and the medallion taxicab companies began finding more and more of their drivers in the growing populations of Black, Latino, and Middle Eastern immigrants to the city as the previous generation of cabbies retired and moved out of the city.^{[citation needed]} Crime in New York City had become severe at this point, and cabbies were often the victims of robberies and street crime.^{[citation needed]} Bulletproof partitions between the rear passenger seat and the driver became common.

By the mid-1980s and into the 1990s the demographic changes among cabbies began to accelerate as new waves of immigrants arrived in New York. Today, according to the 2000 U.S. Census, of the 42,000 cabbies in New York 82% are foreign born: 23% are from the Caribbean (the Dominican Republic and Haiti), and 20% from South Asia (India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh).^{[citations needed]}

The working conditions of cabbies have changed as crime in New York has plummeted, while the cost of medallions has increased and fewer cabbies own their taxicabs than in previous times.

[edit] New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission

The New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC), established in 1971, is the regulatory agency for the city's medallion (yellow) taxicabs, livery cabs, commuter vans, paratransit vehicles (ambulettes) and some luxury limousines. The TLC was founded to deal with the growing number of drivers and to address issues important to both the taxi and livery industries.

In the late 1990s, mayor Rudolph Giuliani ordered the agency to initiate a series of crackdowns on allegedly reckless taxi drivers. The TLC enacted stricter rules and stepped up enforcement. Also, In 1999 Danny Glover filed a complaint with the TLC after he was allegedly refused service by New York cab drivers. This resulted in "Operation Refusal", where undercover taxi inspectors and police officers launched a sting operation to see if black passengers were being discriminated against.

Overall Giuliani's crackdowns led to a series of successful lawsuits against the city and the TLC. In 2000, a federal judge ruled that the NYPD had violated taxi drivers' First Amendment rights by refusing to let the drivers engage in a peaceful protest of new rules. The TLC also lost a series of cases in state courts for implementing rules without allowing for notice and comment. In 2000, another feceral judge ruled that the Operation Refusal sting violated the cabbies' due process rights. In 2004, TLC inspectors were embarrassed when they handcuffed and arrested "60 Minutes" reporter Mike Wallace, charging him with disorderly conduct for simply questioning the treatment of his driver. In 2006, the city was forced to settle the remaining aspects of the Operation Refusal case. Under the settlemnent, the TLC agreed to pay a group of 500 taxi drivers $7 million.

[edit] Medallion taxis and livery cabs

Only "medallion taxis," those painted in distinctive yellow paint and regulated by the TLC, are permitted to pick up passengers in response to a street hail. The TLC also regulates and licenses for-hire vehicles, known as “car services” or “livery cabs”, which are prohibited from picking up street hails (although this is less often enforced in outer boroughs) and are supposed to pick up only those customers who have called the car service's dispatcher and requested a car.

While medallion taxis in New York are always yellow, car service vehicles may be any color but yellow, and are usually black. For this reason, these taxi operators are sometimes called “black car” services. Despite the de jure prohibition on picking up passengers who hail on the street, some livery cabs nevertheless do so anyway, often to make extra money. When a livery cab engages in street pick-ups, it becomes known as a “gypsy cab.” They are often found in areas not routinely visited by medallion cabs, and authorities tend to turn a blind eye to the practice rather than leave sections of the city without cab service. The use of gypsy cabs is strictly at the rider’s risk, and it is recommended that passengers negotiate a fare with the driver before entering, as the cabs are not equipped with meters, and fares are not regulated by the TLC. The driver also is taking a risk that the passenger will leave without paying.

Medallion taxis are named for the official medallion issued by the TLC and attached to a taxi’s hood. The medallion may be purchased from the City at infrequent auctions, or from another medallion owner. Because of their high prices, medallions (and most cabs) are owned by investment companies and are leased to drivers (“hacks”). An auction was held in 2006 where 308 new medallions were sold. In the 2006 auction all medallions were designated as either hybrids (254) or handicap accessible (54) taxis.

[edit] Hailing a medallion taxi

Yellow cabs are often concentrated in the borough of Manhattan, but patrol throughout the five boroughs of New York City and may be hailed with a raised hand or by standing at a taxi stand. A cab's availability is indicated by the lights on the top of the car. When just the center light showing the medallion number is lit, the cab is empty and available. When the OFF DUTY inscriptions to either side of the medallion number are lit, the cab is off duty and not accepting passengers. When no lights are lit, the cab is occupied by passengers. There is an additional round amber light mounted on the left side of the trunk, as well as an amber light at the front of the cab, usually hidden from view behind the grille. When activated by the driver, these "trouble lights" blink to summon the police.

A maximum of four passengers may be carried in most cabs, although larger minivans may accommodate five passengers, and one child under seven can sit on an adult’s lap in the back seat if the maximum has been reached.^[3] Drivers are required to pick up the first or closest passenger they see, and may not refuse a trip to a destination anywhere within the five boroughs, neighboring Westchester and Nassau Counties, or to Newark Liberty International Airport. The TLC operates undercover anti-discrimination stings to ensure cabbies do not engage in racial profiling or otherwise discriminate against passengers hailing cabs from the street.

[edit] Fares

As of June 2006, fares begin at $2.50 ($3.00 after 8pm, and $3.50 during the peak weekday hours of 4-8pm) and increase based on the distance traveled and time spent in slow traffic (40 cents for each one-fifth of a mile or 120 seconds of no motion or motion under 6 miles an hour). The passenger also has to pay the fare whenever a cab is driven through a toll. The taxi must have an E-ZPass, and passengers pay the discounted E-ZPass toll rates.^[4] Taxi drivers are not permitted to use cell phones, even with a hands-free headset.

241 million passengers rode in New York taxis in 1999. The average cab fare in 2000 was $6; over $1 billion in fares were paid that year in total.^[2]

[edit] Taxicab fleet

After 1996, when Chevrolet stopped making the Caprice, the Ford Crown Victoria became the most widely used sedan for yellow cabs in New York. In addition, yellow cab operators also use the Honda Odyssey/Isuzu Oasis, Chevrolet Venture, Ford Freestar, and Toyota Sienna minivans which offer increased passenger and cargo room. The distinctive Checker cabs have long been phased out.

In 2005, New York introduced incentives to replace its current yellow cabs with electric hybrid vehicles such as the Toyota Prius and Ford Escape Hybrid.^[5]

[edit] Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

In Pittsburgh, 'jitney' refers to an unlicensed taxi. They are plentiful in low-income communities where regular taxi service is scarce. As enforcement is lax, jitney drivers have even created cooperatives to support each other and to establish jitney stands. They are known to gather at the parking lots of grocery stores in low-income communities. Some jitney drivers accept requests for service by phone from their regular customers.^[6]

The issue of whether to legalize jitneys has been considered several times by Pennsylvania's Public Utilities Commission since at least 1975.^[7] Famed Pittsburgh playwright August Wilson wrote a play called Jitney, which was published in 1982.

[edit] Washington, D.C.

The District of Columbia operates on a zone system; the fare is based on the zone the cab starts in when the passenger enters, and the zone the cab is in where the passenger exits, for trips which are entirely within the District. Washington is one of the few large cities in the United States to have taxicabs without meters. Cabs cannot charge for waiting time, and if the trip will not detour more than four blocks in doing so, are permitted to pick up additional passengers while carrying a fare.

For trips which terminate outside of the District, ("Interstate fares") the fare is based on mileage (plus special fees such as the taxi surcharge for trips to Ronald Reagan Airport in Arlington, Virginia, or Dulles Airport in Chantilly, Virginia, the two "official" airports of Washington.

The zone system was instituted shortly after World War II when meters were first authorized, when a temporary suspension of the meter system was imposed. This temporary suspension of the introduction of meters has been continued for over 50 years.

In October 2005, the District began a pilot project that is intended to test of use of meters in DC cabs. The project involves the use of 24 taxicabs that have been outfitted with standard meters. The driver operates the meter during the course of each trip and at trip's end collects the usual zone fare but records both the zone and meter fare for comparative purposes. After 8 months the comparative cost data will be analyzed by universities participating in the project and a 'revenue neutral' rate for the transition from the zones to meters will be determined.

The goal of the District's project is to determine what meter rate should be used in the initial stage of the transition. The expectation is that an initial transition meter rate will be established that will allow drivers to raise the same amount of revenue under the new system as they did under the old for the same trips. Thus, policymakers can assure both drivers and passengers that, on a global basis, the transition will not have a significant negative impact from the standpoint of fares charged and income generated. The proposed rate must be approved by the District's Taxicab Commission and the City Council before it can take effect.

Many of the taxis are pale yellow or white. Some of the most common taxis in the city include Ford Crown Victoria, Ford Taurus, some Mercurys, and even some Lincoln Town Car models. These cars are roomy but old.

[edit] Taxicabs by city

City	Taxi Certificates	Other
Atlanta, Georgia	1,600	plus 500 limos and 31 horse-drawn
Austin, Texas	700
Baltimore, Maryland	1,151
Boston, Massachusetts	1,565
Chicago, Illinois	7,000
Dayton, Ohio	117
Detroit, Michigan	1,310
Houston, Texas	2,245
Los Angeles, California	2,300
Minneapolis, Minnesota	600
New York, New York	13,087	and 40,000+ other for hire vehicles
San Francisco, California	1,381	71 of these are wheelchair accessible

[edit] References

• Taxicabs per city study
• Baltimore study
• Boston study
• Los Angeles study
• New York City study
• San Francisco study

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Gallery of photographs yellow taxicabs of New York City
• 20 Things Everyone Should Know About Yellow Cabs in NYC
• New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission