Data culled from new computerized systems installed in taxis reveals that despite the recession, the number of cab rides each day in NYC is on the rise. Cabs carried approximately 478,000 in February, an all-time high since the Taxi and Limousine Commission started using the electronic trip sheets. In recent years, the old-fashioned taxi meters had registered between 400,000 to 450,000 cab rides a day in New York.
Last month riders paid with a credit card for one out of every five trips, and TLC chairman Matthew Daus says payments with plastic have been keeping the taxi industry afloat, because corporations that used to hire black cars for their employees are telling them to instead take cabs and charge it on the company card. Downside: the black car business is down at least 30 percent.
Some drivers were shocked to hear that the taxi business was booming; 45-year-old hack Mohamed Hillman tells the Times, "It can’t be possible," and Syed Shah, a driver for 15 years, says he used to take home $150 a day after expenses. Now he usually takes home $90. Bhairavi Desai, the head of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, explains that the recession has pushed more people to drive cabs, so there are more taxis on the road splitting up the pie.
Indeed, Daus confirms there are more than 47,000 people licensed to drive taxicabs, a record number; in recent years the number of licensed cabbies had been between 37,000 and 40,000. But Daus insisted wages were steady at $14 to $16 an hour after expenses. All in all, it's an informative read, and the electronic tip sheet reveals a number of fun facts—for instance, most drivers actually work about nine and a half hours a day, which is in contrast to the 11 or 12 hour days cabbies often claim to spend behind the wheel.
