Opinion
14th St. plan favors Uber & Co. over taxis
The city’s “pilot plan” for 14th St. would bar yellow cabs from cruising
along the street for fares between Third and Ninth Aves.
owners had paid hundreds
of thousands of dollars for that very
same right.
Another exemption involved the
requirement for wheelchair accessibility.
The city mandated that 50 percent
of all taxis must be wheelchair
accessible by 2020 — a requirement
that places extra fi nancial burdens
on cabbies. Yet, for more than four
years, Uber and Lyft rejected the demands
of advocates, and resisted all
legal efforts at compliance.
In the end, a watered-down compromise
was reached that falls far
short of the taxi mandate, one that
gives Uber and Lyft another unfair
competitive advantage.
What aggravates us to no end, is
that for the past four years, taxis (but
not the F.H.V.’s) have contributed
hundreds of millions of dollars to the
Metropolitan Transportation Authority
— 50 cents for each passenger
fare. At the same time, as most transit
experts agree, the F.H.V.’s have
been draining resources and riders
off of the buses and trains. Allowing
a 14th St. exemption to the culprits
who have made mass transit worse is
really a case of adding insult to injury,
not only to taxis, but to mass transit
riders, as well.
The bottom line is that if 14th St.
is to be car-free, then there should be
no exemption for any entity, but especially
not for one that has played
a major role in making congestion in
New York City so much worse.
However, if any exemption is to be
created, it should be given to the taxis
— whose numbers have been capped
since 1937 — and which have always
been seen as a protected public franchise
and an iconic symbol of New
York City.
Protz and Cabrera are taxi medallion
owners
BY CAROLYN PROTZ AND SERGIO
CABRERA
As The Villager has reported,
city offi cials have developed
a carless plan for 14th St. in
order to mitigate the impact of intermittent
reductions of service on the
L-train line. The plan has generated
considerable anger among a number
of local and advocacy groups who
have now fi led suit against the city.
Somewhat lost in all of the controversy
surrounding the lawsuit is the
fact that the city has given for-hirevehicles
like Uber and Lyft (F.H.V.’s)
— but not New York City taxis — special
dispensation to traverse 14th St.
in order to pick up passengers. This
special exemption is the essence of
arbitrary and capricious, and should
surprise no one that taxi medallion
owners agree with the lawsuit’s observation
that the plan lacks “some
modicum of rationality.”
From a taxi standpoint, the lawsuit’s
indictment of the plan was dramatized
the other day at a City Council
hearing on the role of New York City
and the Taxi and Limousine Commission
in the decimation of the value of
the taxi medallion. Councilmembers
took turns excoriating the T.L.C. for
its willful blindness and collusion in
the decline of the industry.
One of the central complaints made
by medallion owners was that T.L.C.
aided and abetted the decimation
of the taxi medallion by exempting
F.H.V.’s from many of the same strict
regulations that were mandated for
taxis.
Perhaps the most egregious example
was the T.L.C. allowing F.H.V.’s
access to the Central Business District
— otherwise known as the “Taxi
Exclusionary Zone” — for the price
of a $250-a-year license when medallion
12 July 4, 2019 TVG Schneps Media