Why The Medallion Tanked

For several years now the most talked-about topics of conversation with passengers have been Uber and the fate of the once coveted taxi medallion.  How an established commodity selling for as much as 1.3 million dollars in 2013 could drop in value to virtually nothing in the span of a year is quite a story and I find that not only New Yorkers but people from all over the world are often quite interested in it and many are surprisingly knowledgeable about it as well.

And yet I have not encountered a single person who actually understood the true reason for the medallion's decline.  Nor have I read an article that pinpointed exactly what happened.  The assumption is always that Uber showed up and took the passengers away or, according to a recent series of articles in the NY Times, that predatory loans agreed to by unsuspecting drivers were the cause.  (To read these articles click here.  This is outstanding investigative reporting by Times reporter Brian Rosenthal.)

It is true that these are both parts of the story, but they do not identify the primary cause of the medallion's collapse.  What I'm doing in this post is setting the record straight.  

Some History

You may already know about taxi medallions.  If not, here is some information about them:

A medallion is a license -- symbolized by a piece of metal (called the "tin" in the industry) -- attached to the hood of a cab.  It's a license not to drive, but to own one taxicab.

The owner of a medallion may or may not be the driver of the cab.  Most often the driver of a yellow cab in NYC is not the owner.  The owner is more likely to be an investor who either leases the medallion to a middleman (known as a "taxi broker", who in turn sets up a driver with the medallion, a taxicab, and insurance) or the owner of the medallion leases it to the operator of a taxi garage. Taxi garages, also known as "fleets", vary in size.  Some may have only ten or twenty cabs.  Others have hundreds.  There are many taxi garages scattered around New York City, mostly in the boroughs outside of Manhattan.

The medallion system was set up in 1937, during the Great Depression.  In those days all you had to do to get a permit to be in the taxi business in New York was to have a car and pay a $10 annual fee to the city.  The industry was so easy to enter that there were eventually way too many cabs for the amount of business on the streets.  No one could make a living with that much competition.  So the city decided to stop issuing new annual permits (medallions) altogether.  If you didn't renew it you lost it and as a result the only way to become the owner of a taxi medallion was to purchase one from someone who already owned it.  Thus a market was created for the medallion.  Business remained poor for several more years and the number of taxis dwindled from over 30,000 to exactly 11,787, where it stayed until 1996 when the city auctioned off 133 new ones.  After World War II ended in 1945, however, business picked up considerably and the demand for ownership of a medallion steadily increased along with its value, which rose to its peak in 2013 at 1.3 million dollars. 

It should be noted, however, that many thousands of car service vehicles -- far more than the number of medallion cabs -- were added to the streets of the city as time went on.  But only the medallion cabs could legally pick you up by means of the street hail.  All other for-hire vehicles had to be summoned by telephone.

2013

Okay, that should be sufficient history.  Now here's the story.  Why did the medallion drop from $1.3 million to virtually nothing in less than a year?

Let's go back to the year 2013.  Conditions in the NYC taxi industry are pretty much the same as they've been for decades.  There are approximately 13,000 yellow cabs (one cab for each medallion) on the streets, a number that is set by law and does not increase, as noted, except on the rare occasion when new medallions are auctioned off by the city.

The majority of taxi drivers are working out of taxi garages.  Working conditions, as always, are far below the labor standards of most American workplaces.

Drivers must pay leasing fees for twelve-hour shifts -- either a day shift (5 a.m. to 5 p.m.) or a night shift (5 p.m. to 5 a.m.)   They also pay for filling the tank up with gas at the end of the shift.

It takes about five hours of driving time to break even, so you don't start making money for yourself until that point is reached.   You don't have to work the full twelve hours of a shift -- that's okay -- but you still have to pay the full price of the shift.  It's not charged by the hour, or by a percentage of the money from passengers.   It's charged by the shift.

There is no union looking out for the drivers, only a taxi advocacy group called the Taxi Workers Alliance.  They try their best but they are not a real union because they have no clout -- that is, they have no ability to call for and enforce a strike. No one who has any real power to improve your working conditions -- like the mayor, the Taxi and Limousine Commissioners, or the owner of your garage -- is looking out for you.  There is nothing resembling a human resources department in the taxi industry that you'd find in any big business in the United States.

There is no overtime.

There is no health insurance.

There are no sick days.

No paid vacations.

No pension.

No profit sharing (of course).

No bonuses.

Although they pretty much fit the description of "employees", drivers have been deemed "independent contractors" by city law since the early 1980s.  (And there went the concept of "benefits".)

Once you're out on the road you are driving in a kind of perpetual horse race with other taxi drivers to be the first to arrive at people waving their arms in the air.  It's very competitive.  Some cabbies prefer to work the airports and spend a lot of time waiting in lots at LaGuardia or JFK.  Others choose to wait in lines in front of hotels, museums, or clubs.  Most, though, are battling traffic and other taxis on the streets of Manhattan in search of their next customer.

After you have won your prize -- a passenger -- you must provide service to a person sitting a few feet behind your head.  It's not like you're moving cargo.  You've got people -- virtually every type of person imaginable -- to contend with.

You're carrying cash.  Even though about 70% of the payments are made with credit cards, the fact that you are known to have cash could make you the target of a criminal.  You cannot legally refuse service to anyone unless they are "disorderly" or intoxicated and you can be fined heavily or even have your license revoked if you're found guilty of doing these and other offenses by one of the TLC's kangaroo courts.

So it's a dangerous and usually a thankless job.

And yet, even with all these liabilities, there are always plenty of drivers.  The great majority of them are immigrants from third world countries.  Why?  Because as substandard as these working conditions are, they're still a lot better than whatever they had in Bangladesh.  Or Nigeria.  Or Haiti.

Indeed, one problem owners of taxi garages never had was a shortage of drivers. Drivers would tend to come and go, but new ones showing up and old ones returning were always in sufficient supply.  Quite often there were more drivers than there were cabs, which gave the owners of taxi fleets a great advantage.  If they didn't like a driver for whatever reason, they could simply refuse to lease him a cab.  This put drivers in a position of needing to put up with varying degrees of unfairness if they hoped to continue working there.

Dispatchers demanding "tips".

No compensation for lost time if their cab breaks down.

Payment to the garage for accidents which is not returned after insurance compensates the owner.

And so on.

Perhaps the greatest unfairness of all was forcing drivers to accept a "weekly deal". It's better for the owner of a garage to assign one driver to one car and be assured of payment for an entire week than to let drivers work whichever days they preferred.   This meant that even if they took a day off to be with their families they were still paying for the shift for that day.

The point I'm making here is that drivers for decades have been utterly taken for granted.  I mean "utterly", as in completely, totally, absolutely, entirely, thoroughly, in all respects, and to the hilt.

Look at this:

I took this picture in 2009 at my taxi garage.  It pretty much tells the story.  Labor Day is the one day of the year in the USA that is set aside as a national holiday to honor working people.  One driver took it upon himself to write "WE ARE NOT SLAVES" on this insulting notice.

2014 - Uber Arrives

Although according to Wikipedia Uber "went live" in NYC in 2011, it didn't have any impact on the taxi business here until early in 2014.  Then, quite suddenly, everywhere you looked -- on billboards, on TV, on the internet, and especially on the backs of buses -- there were ads from Uber directed not at customers, but at drivers.  Some of these ads were actually offering guarantees of monthly income, something completely unheard of in the history of the taxi industry.

In 2014 Uber pulled off what I would call a military-precision invasion of New York City.  You've got to have several things in place simultaneously for this to be successful.

1. You've got to have a public that has heard of you and has access to you.  There was considerable word of mouth about Uber in the United States from people who traveled to places where Uber had already set up shop.  And by 2014 everyone had a smart phone, so access, of course, was automatic.

2. You've got to be able to provide your service to the public immediately.  If you promote a car service and an app to the general public and then you can't provide a car and a driver, you're finished.  That's what happened to Hailo.

3. You've got to have a business model and all sorts of administrators to put it into action.  This means people, policies, locations, and equipment.  You've got to have the app set up and ready to go without crashing, tech personnel to maintain the app, people to answer phones, people to explain the deal to drivers and get them on the road, managers, lawyers, and staff to run offices.

4. You've got to have a ton of money.  By demonstrating its success in other locations before it arrived in New York, Uber was able to obtain venture capital from major investors.  By June of 2014 they had secured over a billion dollars in funding.

5. And finally, you've got to have a green light from the city you're about to invade. City officials turned a blind eye as Uber was able to add unlimited numbers of for-hire vehicles to the already congested streets of Manhattan.  (By 2018 there were over 100,000.) I think it's safe to assume that the savvy leaders of Uber would not have attempted to enter the world's largest taxi market in the way they did (not with small steps, but with a bang) unless they felt confident that they would not be met with serious opposition from the mayor, the TLC Commissioner, or the City Council.

Meanwhile, At The Taxi Garage

Let's take a look into the world of the taxi garage.  Imagine that you operate a taxi garage and you own or lease a hundred medallions.  That's one hundred cabs, double-shifted.  Two hundred drivers.

If every shift is sold out that means you've got two hundred drivers paying you approximately $125 every day for the use of a cab for twelve hours.  That's a lot of money coming in, but you also have an enormous overhead.  Your expenses include:

--- the cabs themselves which by TLC rules must be replaced every three years.

-- the parts for the cabs which are in constant need of repair.

-- the cost of the garage.  This includes whatever you pay for renting the space if you don't own it, for property tax and insurance if you do own it, the parking lot for the cabs, the equipment you need to maintain the cabs, office machinery and office supplies.

-- insurance for the cabs, over $500 per month per cab.

-- a body shop and its equipment.

-- perhaps a tow truck.

-- personnel, including mechanics and dispatchers.

-- lawyers.

-- accountants.

-- fees paid to the city.

-- and let's not forget the cost of leasing medallions if you don't own them or paying for loans that may be outstanding on the medallions that you do own.

Clearly, it's an expensive proposition to run a taxi garage in New York City.

The Key Question

About a year after the medallion crashed it occurred to me that I didn't know the answer to a very pertinent question about the economics of the taxi business.  I keep up with these things and I was sure I'd never heard the answer to this question in conversation nor had I learned about it from trade magazines or in the media.  So I posed the question to the owner of my taxi garage, a person who has operated a fleet of as many as 240 cabs for thirty years:  

"What percentage of your cabs have to be out on the road for you to break even?"

He answered immediately without needing a moment to think about it.  

"Eighty per cent."

Eighty per cent to break even.  That, ladies and germs, is a great piece of data.

Here's another one: the customers of the owner of a taxi garage are not the passengers who get into his taxis and pay for a ride.  His customers are the drivers who lease his cabs.  His income comes almost entirely from his drivers.  It is of little concern to the garage owner if passengers are happy with their rides or even if his drivers are out on the streets for the full shift and racking up lots of money on the meter.  In fact, it would be fine with him if the drivers don't work the full shift.  It would mean less wear and tear on his cabs.  

The customers of the owner of a taxi garage are his own drivers.  That's where his money comes from.

Why The Medallion Tanked

The medallion did not tank because Uber took the passengers.  Uber certainly took many passengers but not enough so that you couldn't still make a living driving a yellow cab.  I can say this for a fact because I've been driving a yellow cab since 1977 until the present.   It's true that I'm making less than what I was before Uber showed up in 2014, but it's not that much less.  There's still plenty of business for yellow cabs.

And that's because the business model of the medallion cab -- people who live and work in an extremely condensed piece of real estate (Manhattan) step out onto the street, wave a hand in the air, and a yellow car suddenly appears and whisks them away -- is actually competitive with and often better than the app.  I see people all the time standing there waiting for their Uber to show up while available yellow cabs are driving right by them.  The app may have replaced the telephone but it has not replaced the street hail.   

The medallion also didn't tank because several hundred drivers were swindled by predatory lenders.  There are over 40,000 people in New York City who have valid hack licenses.  There were thousands of people who never drove a cab but purchased medallions strictly as investments.  The misfortunes of a relative few could, and should, lead to reforms in the way loans are made and even to compensations to these drivers, but it would not by itself destroy the confidence that so many others still had in the commodity.

The medallion tanked because the drivers defected to Uber.  

They suddenly left the garages, in big numbers, and did not come back.  New drivers considering entering the industry chose Uber instead of yellow.  Old drivers considering returning to the profession decided to give Uber a try instead of taking the old twelve-hour shift deal.  

Drivers, who for so many years were taken for granted, whose working conditions were deplorable, saw the possibility of a better life if they left the garages and went with Uber.  

No more twelve-hour shifts.

No more working for five hours before you break even. 

No more waking at 3 a.m. to get to the taxi garage by 5:00 to start your twelve-hour work day.

No more working all night and not getting to sleep until 7 a.m.

No more dispatchers shaking you down.

No more being turned away because all the cabs are already leased out.

Now you can own and drive your own vehicle.

You can make money even if you drive for just a few hours.

You can arrange your schedule to give you time with your family.

Work when it's busy.

Work whenever you feel like it.

Surge pricing!

Unfortunately, and predictably, this didn't last.  As time went forward Uber (and Lyft), like the owners of taxi garages, showed themselves to be not particularly concerned with the welfares of their drivers. In fact Travis Kalanick, Uber's founder, shamelessly announced that the long-term goal of Uber was to completely do away with their drivers and replace them with self-driving cars!  These companies allowed their market to become saturated with unlimited numbers of drivers and the good times were over.  It was, and still is, actually very similar to the situation which led to the creation of the medallion in 1937.

But in 2014 Uber sure looked great if you were working out of a taxi garage.

At first the drivers began to drop away like weary soldiers disappearing from their ranks on the long march home.  You might wonder whatever happened to so and so who you used to see at the garage every day.  Someone would say out of earshot of the dispatcher that so and so went to Uber.  The word started to get around from these early defectors that they were doing so much better now, making as much money in two or three busy hours as they were making in twelve at the garage.  

I will never forget what I started seeing in September of 2014.  Traditionally summer was always the slowest season for yellow cabs due to so many New Yorkers being out of town on vacation.  Many cabbies took time off in the summer, too -- the only time of the year when they may not have had to worry about losing their weekly deal.  I might see a dozen empty cabs parked on the street in front of my garage in the summer months, whereas at other times of the year there would be perhaps just two or three out there, waiting for repairs.   

But every year right after Labor Day, it would be as if a switch had been turned on. Immediately the business was back, the traffic was worse, the shifts at the garage were selling out, and things were back to normal.  This did not happen in 2014. Instead there were dozens of empty cabs sitting on the street because they did not have drivers.  In fact, the owner of my garage had a new problem -- he had no place to put his cabs.  He had to start paying to keep them in commercial parking lots. 

Driving around the city I saw the same thing.  Every taxi garage with dozens of empty cabs on the streets.  As months went by, nothing changed.  Rows and rows of empty cabs at every taxi garage.  

The days of endless supplies of drivers were over.

This meant that the garages were below their 80% threshold.  They were losing money.

Worse than that, the confidence in the medallion evaporated.  There was no reason to believe that things were ever going to get better.  

This carried over into the taxi broker segment of the industry as well.  As mentioned above, some drivers preferred to lease medallions rather than continue working out of garages.  They'd go to a middleman (the broker) who'd set them up with a medallion (owned by an investor), a taxicab, and insurance.  He'd then guide them through the red tape of the Taxi and Limousine Commission and they'd be in business for themselves.  Part of this arrangement would be for the driver to sign a contract agreeing to continue to lease the medallion for an agreed upon period of time.   

Let's say the driver signed a two-year contract to lease the medallion in November of 2012.  The two years go by; it's now November of 2014.  He sees that all the drivers he knows who went to Uber are doing great, much better than he is.  Is he going to renew his contract to lease that medallion?

No.  He's going to return it to the broker.  See ya later.

Also, getting back to the owners of taxi garages -- they usually own some medallions themselves but they, too, were leasing medallions from investors.  Seeing that they no longer had enough drivers and were losing money, did they renew their leases with the medallion owners?

No.  In order to cut their expenses they reduced the number of cabs in their fleets by returning the medallions they did not own.  My garage shrunk from 240 cabs to 144.

What if you were the person who bought a medallion (or ten) strictly as an investment?  That commodity which had been giving you a great return in the form of a monthly check from a broker or a fleet owner has now been returned to you. There are no drivers to be found and you are getting nothing.  If you owned only one medallion (and one cab) at least you could still make money by driving the thing yourself.  But you can only drive one cab at a time.  And you own ten medallions.

You are screwed.

Supposing you owned a bank or ran a credit union.  Would you still accept the medallion as collateral for a loan?

No.  So the existing medallion owners could not borrow on their own medallions in the hope of riding out the crisis.

Supposing you were someone who had been considering buying a medallion and you understood what was happening. Would you buy a medallion for a million dollars? Would you buy one at any price at all?  No, you would not.  Nor would anyone else.

If no one will buy a medallion, what is it worth?  

Nothing.  

So that is the story.  That is why the medallion tanked.  The engine that was producing the wealth -- the drivers -- galloped out of the stable in the hope of finding a better life.   

It's a story that has a certain karmic appeal to it.

If you kick a horse long enough it will no longer be around to pull your wagon.

What It Takes, Part 3 -- Epilogue: McEnroe Returns

Note: Best to read Parts 1 and 2 below before reading this one. 

Epilogue (noun) --  a section or speech at the end of a book or a play that serves as a comment on or a conclusion to what has happened. (the Apple dictionary)

I love epilogues, especially when one occurs in real life, as if life itself were a story. In the context of a ride in a taxi in a big city like New York, epilogues are rare indeed because in most cases you will never meet your passenger again.  So whatever you may have found to be interesting, or quirky, or disturbing about your passenger -- whatever the circumstance was --  it will remain unresolved in your mind.  You may occasionally find yourself wondering, "whatever became of so-and-so?"   You wish you could meet that person again just to find out or so you could satisfactorily end the story yourself.

I had an epilogue in my cab last year on April 22nd, a sunny Sunday with birds chirping and happy trees serenading the city with a concerto in the key of delicate green.

As I was waiting at a red light on Central Park West a bit before 4 p.m., the right rear door opened and a passenger jumped in.  Before I could say "hello" he barked, "59th and York and make it fly!"   Apparently he was in a big rush.

This kind of request is usually made in the form of a polite question, not a blunt command.  I looked in the rearview mirror to evaluate the situation.  In other words, why should I drive any faster than I  normally do?  Is this really an emergency?  I had one of those Nissan minivan cabs that day

which has a partition running the entire width of the cab.  One of the few things I like about this vehicle is that it allows the driver to fully view the passengers in the rear.  It also has an intercom that actually works, enabling the driver and passenger to hear each other.  So I was able to take a good look at this guy.

Hey, wait a minute -- he looked familiar.

Oh my God, it was McEnroe.  Again.  Much older.  After thirty-four years he has returned to me, the prodigal passenger.

"Mister McEnroe!" I exclaimed.

Big mistake.

If you recall from the second story in this series, the correct way to address John McEnroe is by referring to him by his last name only.  I should have remembered this and I immediately suffered the consequences of my blunder.

"WE DON'T HAVE TO TALK!" he screamed.

Now if this had been virtually anyone else in the world I would have tossed the guy out of my cab.  It's a dignity issue.  You can't allow people to talk to you that way unless, of course, they are drunk and much bigger than you.  But this was McEnroe. Actually, it was kind of charming.  I smiled as if he'd said, "Hello there, how are you?", which in his own way is sort of what he did.

I stepped lightly on the gas and we began moving downtown on Central Park West. His destination required me to make an almost immediate left turn onto the transverse which runs through the park at 65th Street.  It's the fastest route to the East Side.  But the transverse was closed due to a parade on 5th Avenue that day, so we had to cut over to Broadway, a detour.  McEnroe didn't take this lying down and began venting his rage at Mayor de Blasio, the tyrant who had no doubt orchestrated this outrage.  Ridiculous to get so upset, you say, but think about it. This is McEnroe.  Everyone knows how McEnroe feels about referees and mayors are pretty much the same as referees.  Right?

I realized there was no point in continuing on in that vein.  Instead, I said:

"Hey, do you remember what you were doing in the evening of March 13th, 1984?"

This non sequitur caught his attention.  He perked up and forgot about the mayor.

"I have no idea."

"You were in my cab.  I picked you up from your place on East End Avenue and took you to the Garden to a Knicks game.  We talked about sports.  I told you about the time I hit some balls with Martina Navratilova's coach."  

McEnroe's face lit up.  "I think I remember that ride!"

Well, that handled his don't-talk-to-me and his I'm-in-a-big-rush state of mind. Suddenly McEnroe was friendly, conversational, and in no particular hurry.  We began a rambling conversation about various subjects, one thing leading to another, as often happens in a lively exchange.  My long tenure as a taxi driver interested him and he asked me some questions about my more memorable rides.  One that I mentioned was the ride with a couple of Mafia hit men to Newark Airport.  That led to him telling me about a book he'd been reading at the time, I Hear You Paint Houses, which led to how much money Netflix was reportedly paying Martin Scorsese to direct the movie version.  And so on.

By the time we were about halfway to 59th and York I suddenly realized that I had the rarest of rare opportunities at hand.  And that this was really going to be fun.

Let me explain: in the last 34 years I have told the stories in Parts 1 and 2 of this series to countless passengers in my cab.  If the subject of tennis comes up, or if anything to do with what it takes to be the champion in a sport comes up, if time permits I will tell my passengers those two stories together.  First the story about how pleased I was with myself that I was able to hit the serve of Mike Estep, Martina Navratilova's coach.  Then the story about what McEnroe's response to me was, seven  months later, when I told him how pleased I was with myself that I could hit Mike Estep's serve:

"Well, Mike's never been known for his serve," McEnroe had said.

It burst my little bubble.

This always gets a laugh.  Then to make my point I really dig into McEnroe, putting emphasis on certain words.  I'll say: "here's a guy who is number ONE... in the WORLD!  NO ONE can beat him!  In the WORLD!  NO ONE!  But he's just a little concerned that maybe his TAXI DRIVER can hit his serve.  But then, oh, wait, it's okay.  It was only Mike Estep.  I'm safe."  

After a brief pause for more laughter I'll put the finishing touches on my speech:

"What we're looking at here is compulsive competitiveness of a magnitude that is borderline insane!  This guy is asylum bait.  He's surrounded by assassins.  Even his taxi driver, for God's sake, is a potential threat to his dominance in the world of tennis."

And the point I make is that this is what it takes to be Number One.

So -- the rarest of rare opportunities at hand was this: due to the high level of affinity that had been created between us by our free-flowing conversation, I knew I could now tell McEnroe the story I'd been telling passengers for 34 years about him to him.  Just the way I tell it.  In life this just never happens.

So I set him up.

As we hit some traffic on 57th Street, I asked him if he remembered what he'd said to me in 1984 about my tennis session with Martina's coach.  Of course he did not, so the door was open.  I started at the beginning with Mike Estep hailing me on 6th Avenue in August of 1983, how friendly he was, how he was telling me things about the men's tour he probably shouldn't be telling anyone, about how he always beats Martina in a real match, and so on, leading up to his invitation to come out onto the court so I could see what it's like to try to hit the serve of a pro, and then later observing the ferocity of Martina when she played him in a practice game for real.

Watching McEnroe in the mirror, it was clear that he was enjoying the story and I was in safe territory when the story became about him.  So I brought it on...

"...so it's seven months later, March 13th, 1984 to be exact..."

"...you're going to the Garden, you're in my cab, we're on the FDR Drive..."

"...I'm telling you how happy I was with myself that I was able to hit his serve..."

"...you move forward in your seat, a look of concern on your face..."

"...what was his name again? you ask..."

"...Mike Estep..."

"...you move back in your seat, all relieved..."

"...well, you know," you say, "Mike's never been known for his serve"...

I check in the mirror to see how McEnroe's responding.  He's loving it.  I continue, with emphasis:

"...it's 1984.  You're the Number ONE tennis player in the WORLD!  NO ONE can beat you!  In the WORLD!  NO ONE!  But you're just a little concerned that maybe your TAXI DRIVER can hit your serve!  But then, wait, it's okay, it's only Mike Estep.  I'm safe."

Looking again at McEnroe, I see he's just about doubled-over in laughter.  I move in for the kill.  In  mock exasperation, squealing:

"Mike's never been known for his serve?"

And then, the coup de grace, both middle fingers raised high in extended triumph:

"FUCK YOU!  FU-U-U-CK YO-U-U-U McENROE!"

Now he is doubled-over in laughter.  

I tell my passenger to go fuck himself and he loves it.  A great accomplishment for me, but I knew it wouldn't offend him.  Self-deprecation has always been one of McEnroe's sterling qualities -- his saving grace, actually.

A feeling of calm set in as the laughter subsided.  We rode in silence for half a minute or so, then  traffic for the 59th Street Bridge brought us to a complete stop at Park Avenue.  I told McEnroe I knew a cab driver trick to get around it and proceeded to turn one block south to 56th Street, which is always completely empty.  As we began to zip along at a decent pace, I remembered that in our previous ride back in '84 I had kind of set him up for giving me a big tip.  We now had only a couple of minutes before we'd arrive at his destination, but I realized it could be done again.

"You know, for many years you held the record for being the best celebrity tipper in my cab," I said.    

"Really!  Who broke it?"

"Leonardo di Caprio.  Back in 1997.  He wanted to know who was the best celebrity tipper I'd ever had in my cab and I said, 'believe it or not it was John McEnroe, who gave me double the meter.'  Then he said, 'well I'm gonna give you triple the meter.' And he did.  Pretty impressive, considering he was really just a kid at the time."

Looking at him in the mirror, I could see a certain look of concern appearing on his face which I'd seen before.  Remember, this is a man who suffers from Obsessive Competitive Syndrome.  

I continued:

"That record stood for 17 years until it was broken by Derek Jeter.  Jeter gave me quadruple the meter."

McEnroe was indeed concerned.  "What was Jeter like?" he asked.  "I've never met him."

I told him Jeter was as advertised -- friendly, funny, easy to talk to, unpretentious. 

We arrived at his destination, the Sutton East Tennis Club (of course!) at 59th and York.  The fare was $19.30 and  I could almost see the wheels turning in his mind -- "should I give this guy quintuple the meter?"  That would be almost $100.  Could he do it?  The title of Best Celebrity Tipper Of All Time was within his grasp -- again! -- and the tension was almost palpable. 

McEnroe, like most people these days, was paying with a credit card.  As the passenger is touching a screen in the back to enter the tip, the driver can watch on his own screen in the front to see what's happening.  McEnroe began tapping.  If this had been taking place in a stadium, the crowd would be hushed in nail-biting anticipation.  

Could he do it?

The numbers began coming up on my screen, ever so slowly, one digit at a time...  a five, then a zero, then a period and two more zeroes.  Fifty dollars.  A valiant effort, ladies and gentlemen, but, alas, not enough.  He had come up short.  So sad, really, to see Father Time catching up with them.  Even the great ones must fall eventually to his relentless pursuit.  

But wait!

Number of times what's on the meter is only one way of determining the winner. Simple quantity would be another, more accurate, means of awarding the trophy. Di Caprio's ride in 1997 had been a short one and triple the meter came to about fifteen dollars.  And Jeter's ride was also a short one, around $8 on the meter and he gave me two twenties.  A $32 tip.    

So actually McEnroe had done it!  After 34 years he had come back to reclaim his title -- the Best Celebrity Tipper of All Time In My Cab. 

Without question the greatest comeback in taxi history!

I immediately decided he should receive a trophy -- my book.  I always keep a copy handy on the dashboard should the need arise to show it to passengers and this was just such an occasion.  

Thanking him for his tip, I announced that I had something for him -- "because you're special!"  And I held it up for him to see.  I couldn't hand it to him because the partition in these Nissans is solid with no window, so I told him to come around to me to receive his prize.  While he was on his way I wrote an inscription: "To John McEnroe, Thanks for that double the meter in 1984!  Best wishes, Eugene Salomon."  

I handed him the book, we shook hands, and by the big smile on his face it seemed to me that he was as happy to receive it as he was when he'd been handed one of his many trophies for winning the U.S. Open.  

Although that could be something of an overstatement on my part. 

*********

I found myself basking in the afterglow of that ride as my day continued on.  While taking a break at one of the many Starbucks around the city I reviewed mentally what had transpired earlier.  By confronting and skillfully communicating with an angry passenger I had turned the ride into a pleasant experience for the both of us.  I had transformed "we don't have to talk" into a fifty dollar tip.  I had explained to the passenger the route I was taking and expertly navigated the city streets to get him there in the shortest possible time.  I was so able to get myself on his wavelength to the point that even saying "fuck you" to him was completely appropriate and appreciated.  And I had given him a book written by his own taxi driver, something that is not likely to happen to a passenger even once in a lifetime. Putting all modesty aside, that is what it takes to rise to the very top echelon of a subset of our culture called "taxi driver".

The Taxi TV And Me

My God, how I hate these things.

For those who may not know, let me first tell you what the Taxi TV is. It's a television monitor situated in the rear compartment of all yellow and green (outer borough) taxicabs in New York City. It's not, however, a regular TV like you'd have at home. Rather, it consists of pre-programmed information, the majority of it being clips from television talk shows, along with commercials and the occasional public service announcement. The entertainment, the pitches, and the hear-ye-hear-ye's are packaged in continuous loops which the passenger may see and hear twice or even three times during the course of a ride. The driver hears it whenever the meter is turned on, which on the average is 60% of his twelve-hour shift.

The speakers of the Taxi TV are situated about 24 inches behind the driver's head. Not only does the cabbie have no control over its coming on automatically when the meter is engaged, he has no control over the thing's volume. The passenger can, with a tap-tap-tap of his finger, raise the volume to make it suddenly blasting into the driver's ears. He may also turn it off, and many do just that if they can figure out how to accomplish the task. Most, however, simply ignore it while conversing with their riding companions or the driver, texting, or chatting on their phones. Thus the Taxi TV is, more often than not, just "noise".

And if all this weren't enough to make you scream, let me add that it was the city itself (Mayor Bloomberg, in particular) which mandated its presence in all cabs in 2008. It is there primarily to raise advertising revenue for medallion owners and the companies which won the contracts for its installation and maintenance. The drivers don't see a dime - of course!

It is very unpopular with the majority of the taxi-riding public.  And needless to say, the drivers universally hate the thing.

Well, my dislike for the Taxi TV has been welling up in me for all these years.  The only positive thing I can say about it is that it has given me a worthy replacement for my Giuliani rant.  (I had my Giuliani rant perfected to such a point that passengers in my cab, who may have made the mistake of saying something positive about former Mayor Giuliani to me, would have been happy by the end of the ride to sign a petition to have the man tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a pole.  It was a thing of elocutionary beauty.)

A few weeks ago an acorn dropped on my head and the idea occurred to me to make an offer to passengers in my cab to raise awareness of the outrageousness of the presence of a television monitor in a taxicab, or at least of its continuous noise.  I decided to give them a one dollar rebate on the ride if they would just turn off the damned sound.  

It made the New York Post.  

Click here for the link.

The One Good Thing That Happened To Taxi Drivers After Uber Invaded New York City

Passengers in my cab are always surprised when I tell them there is no taxi drivers’ union in New York City. It is assumed that with all these cabs everywhere you look there must certainly be a union, but there is not. There is a taxi drivers’ advocacy group, the Taxi Workers Alliance, whose leader, Bhairavi Desai, often appears in the media and at meetings of the Taxi and Limousine Commission to try to present the viewpoint of the drivers, but the Taxi Workers Alliance has no clout. This was painfully evident in September of 2007 when Ms. Desai called for a two-day work stoppage to protest the imposition of the high-tech “system” (GPS monitoring, credit card readers, and back seat television screens) upon the taxi industry in New York City. Her call was widely ignored by the drivers who instead opted to avail themselves of the inducement of Mayor Michael Bloomberg to pay her no mind and instead make a bundle on those days because he was allowing drivers to accept multiple passengers and charge by zones.

Although I did observe the work stoppage myself, I was not at all surprised that it fell on its face. The template upon which the taxi industry in New York operates was conceived in 1937, a time of enormous labor unrest in the United States. Intentionally or not, it has turned out to be union-proof. The number of yellow cab medallions was fixed at 11,787; about half of them were owned by numerous taxi fleets scattered around the city and the other half by independent owner-drivers, one taxi for each owner-driver. So with dozens of taxi garages and thousands of independent drivers scattered all over the city, there was no central location where drivers would ever congregate and no place to put a picket line. Attempts to unionize failed and, boy, the weakness that was the result of that failure has been evident ever since.

Just compare the difference in the way taxi drivers and members of the Transit Workers Union (subways and buses) are dealt with by the city when a strike, or even a temporary work stoppage, is threatened. Mayor Bloomberg, as mentioned, simply bribed the taxi drivers to continue working on those two days. In May of 1998 there actually was a one-day work stoppage by taxi drivers, a labor miracle engineered by Ms. Desai, in response to Mayor Guiliani’s sudden imposition of unpopular new rules upon the industry. For that one remarkable day there were virtually no yellow cabs on the streets of the city. The mayor went on television that evening and with a smile on his face said, “The streets were nice and empty today. They should do it more often.” He refused to negotiate and then for the next two years taxi drivers were continuously being pulled over by the police and ticketed for such offenses as wearing sandals or having an entry missing from their trip sheets. Some felt this was not a coincidence.

But should the president of the Transit Workers Union even be overheard at the gym using the word “deadline” in regard to the expiration of contracts with the city, the attitude from the mayor’s office is along the lines of, “Come on over, we can work it out, let’s do lunch.” Negotiations are conducted and deals are made. Why? Because the TWU is a very strong union - it can call a strike for real and cause great trouble not only for the citizens of the city but for the mayor, who will be blamed for letting it happen. That is clout. That is leverage. That is what taxi drivers have never had.

As a result they have been taken utterly for granted by owners of taxi fleets and city officials alike. Due to a steady influx of immigrant labor, garage owners have never had to particularly worry about not having enough cabbies to drive their vehicles, regardless of the working conditions these drivers were required to tolerate. And any newly-elected mayor or recently-appointed Taxi and Limousine Commission chairman soon learned that they can impose any rules they want on taxi drivers and there will be no meaningful opposition to their decrees.

The examples of this could fill a book (hey, there’s an idea!) but I’m going to give you just three, to illustrate the point.

1) After the recession hit in 2008, taxi garages were overflowing with drivers looking for work. Since it’s more convenient and more profitable for fleet owners to lease their cabs out on a weekly, rather than a daily basis, drivers were told they had no choice but to take the weekly deal. This meant a six-day work week for either a day shift (5 a.m. to 5 p.m.) or a night shift (5 p.m. to 5 a.m.). Should a personal situation or an illness or a Hurricane Sandy come along and you needed a few days off, tough, you still had to pay the full weekly lease if you wanted to continue to drive one of that fleet’s cabs.

2) The high-tech “system” was mandated by the Bloomberg administration to be in use in all taxis in January of 2008. It consists of three components: credit card readers, GPS tracking, and a television monitor in the back seat. I will leave the pros and cons of the credit card readers and the GPS tracking for another day - let’s just talk about the television monitor. Here is a glittering example, the gold standard, if you will, of just how taken for granted the taxi drivers have been. When you sit down in the back seat of a New York taxicab, a TV monitor is staring you in the face. When the driver turns on the meter it activates the TV and the canned entertainment begins. Of late this consists of clips taken from talk shows, interspersed with commercials and public-service announcements. What this means to the taxi driver is that for approximately sixty-five percent of his twelve-hour shift (the average percentage of time the meter is on) he will be forced to endure listening to the same jokes and babble over and over and over and over again. Was any kind of survey ever done of how the drivers felt about this? Of course not. Are the drivers even given a piece of the advertising revenue the Taxi TV generates? Uh, why even ask?

Aside from all this, there is a safety issue, as well. The monitor is about twenty-four inches from the driver’s head, so the noise it emits is inescapable. And to make it worse, the volume can be turned up to make it suddenly BLASTING with a quick tap-tap-tap of the passenger’s finger. Now, quite aside from the obvious annoyance this would be to the person who has to put up with it for two-thirds of his or her work day, has it occurred to no one that it is also a distraction to the driver and it therefore makes a ride in a taxi less safe than it would be if the thing simply wasn’t there at all? If anyone would dispute that point, I would invite them to answer this question: how would you like it if that monitor was twenty-four inches behind the head of your airline pilot as he’s bringing your plane in for a landing? Do you think that would be approved by the FAA? Of course not! But in a taxi, it’s okay?

3) And then there is the Nissan NV200 minivan, the so-called “Taxi of Tomorrow”. Forget about the fact that the car is not a hybrid. Forget about the peculiar and troubling deal that Mayor Bloomberg entered the city into which squelches competition in the marketplace by awarding Nissan an exclusive ten-year contract to be the sole manufacturer of all taxicabs in New York City. Let’s just talk about the feature of this vehicle which makes it so horrible that I told the manager of my garage, after driving it for only two shifts, that if he had no other types of cabs to offer me, I will quit: it comes from the manufacturer with a solid Plexiglas partition which cannot be opened. Why is this so bad? Because, although there is an intercom which permits a sentence or two to come through, it nevertheless reduces the chance of an actual conversation between the passenger and the driver to nearly zero. Like hair salons and bars, the taxicab is a business setting in which there is a potential for real human contact. For a driver like myself, this is the essence of the job, and for many New Yorkers - and for nearly all tourists - contact with taxi drivers is an important part of the “New York experience”. The partition which cannot be opened kills that, and it kills tips, too, as a consequence of the enforced disconnection from the driver.

So into this environment enters Uber, the new kid in town. After some initial wrangling the dust settles down and Uber creates a foothold in the taxi community. Its popularity with customers grows. The owners of car services are very worried because the Uber business model of getting a taxi via an app is superior to having to call for one on the phone and wait for it to show up, if it shows up at all. But the fleet owners of the yellow cabs are not worried because the business model of going out on the street and waving your hand is still superior, or at least as good as, ordering a cab via an app. So even with Uber in town, business was going along as usual… until last summer.

That’s when things began to change. And this was the huge, unforeseen consequence which is turning the New York taxi industry upside down: the drivers of the yellow cabs began to defect to Uber. Like weary soldiers who disappear from their units in the middle of the night, the drivers are deserting the fleets, and there is no sign at this point that they will be coming back. At my own garage at least twenty-five percent of the fleet’s two hundred taxis have been standing empty on most days since July.

This is a disaster scenario for the garage owners. It is quite an expensive operation to keep a fleet of taxis on the streets of New York. The owners' only source of revenue is what they receive from the leasing fees of drivers, so if too many cabs stand empty for too long, the fleet owners will be facing bankruptcy. And to make matters worse, the medallion, which had been trading in the vicinity of a million dollars, is in free-fall. It has lost over twenty percent of its value since the drivers began to shift to Uber, and right now it would be difficult, if not impossible, to sell one because potential buyers as well as lenders are shying away. There is no longer confidence in what the future may hold for the value of the medallion nor does anyone know what the bottom will be. This means that even if a fleet owner wanted to liquidate some of his medallions to help cover expenses while he rides the crisis out, he cannot. And the city, too, has suffered. The sale of 2,000 new medallions, which was included in Mayor Bloomberg’s final budget and was expected to bring in a billion dollars, has been suspended indefinitely.

What does this all mean for the drivers of the yellow cabs? It means hallelujah, leverage has arrived at last. It has arrived not through feeble threats of strikes or work stoppages, but through competition for the services of drivers. Now, for the first time ever, fleet owners and city officials will have no choice but to give serious consideration to how their actions affect the lives of the drivers. If they are wise, they will realize it’s not only a matter of whether or not a cabbie can make more money driving for Uber, although that is, of course, an important issue. It’s also about the working conditions of the drivers - the twelve-hour shifts, the six-day work week, the Taxi TV, the removal of choice in the vehicles they can drive, and so on.

Hey, Taxi and Limousine Commission - do you want the drivers to return?

How about doing some surveys?

Find out what's really needed and wanted from the drivers.

And then give them some good reasons to come back.

Welcome, New Inductees

It takes something really special to make it into the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame. In fact, since its inception in 2007, there has been not a single addition to its ranks. So imagine my astonishment when last week not one, but two candidates showed that they had what it takes to achieve traffic jam immortality and were immediately nominated for admission into the sanctum sanctorum of the Hall. Two in one week!

In New York City traffic jams are a way of life. Veteran New Yorkers have been known to laugh in the face of out-of-towners who think they know anything about what a traffic jam really is. You got stuck on the interstate for fifteen minutes on your way to the mall? Whaddaya kiddin' me? It took me an hour and a half to get from 31st and 2nd to 58th and 9th! And that was on a Sunday!

As common as it is, however, to be trapped in the misery of going nowhere forever, it is not the length of time of the jam up that earns even consideration for admittance into the Hall. Roadwork, an accident, bridge or tunnel delays? No, these are routine. It has to be much more than that. Indeed, it has to be something so outrageous, so unexpected, so never-seen-that-before that one considers writing a letter of recommendation to the Committee.

So I'm happy to report that my two nominees were put on the fast track and, after a late-night session, have been granted admission by the Powers That Be. I present them to you now... trumpets and drums, if you please... our newest members of the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame!

57th and 5th

I was waiting in front of the Apple Store on 5th Avene between 58th and 59th Streets at one a.m. on November 12th, hoping to get a computer geek (or anyone else for that matter) as my next passenger. In true New York style, this store is open 24/7 and has turned out to be a spot where a cabbie can find some business all night long. Sure enough, within five minutes four nerdy type fellows jumped in and asked me to take them to Grand Central Station, a three-minute ride.

I pulled out from the curb to the intersection at 58th Street where the light had just turned red and while we were waiting there I was informed by the guy sitting next to me in the front that they had ten minutes to make their train. Plenty of time, I told him, but to add a bit of tension to the ride he explained that if they didn't make this particular train the next one wouldn't be leaving the station until 6 a.m. Still, I told him, there was nothing to worry about. After all, it was one in the morning and, as we could both plainly see, 5th Avenue was empty in front of us. So relax, I said, there's never any traffic at this time of the night.

Right?

There are those who believe you must never say things like that. It's called "tempting fate". There's some kind of Force, you see - call it Fate, God, Zeus, or Google - that overhears everything we say and then, just for sport, starts fucking with us. I should have kept my mouth shut.

The words had barely left my lips when a police car with lights flashing entered the intersection a block down the avenue at 57th Street and just stopped there. This was followed by two more cruisers, lights also ablaze, who did the same. A big cop wearing those knee-high black boots of the Highway Patrol (and the Gestapo) jumped out of one of the vehicles and held his hands over his head, bringing the cars on 57th Street to a halt. A few moments later our own light on 58th turned green and we moved up to 57th where we were greeted by a second cop, also with his hands in the "stop" position.

It looked to me like some V.I.P. motorcade was about to come on through. Perhaps a prime minister from Somewhere Special or a Secretary of State or something. Government big shots who are considered security risks do get this kind of treatment in New York. But at one a.m.? Odd, but possible.

"Probably someone much more important than you or me," I said to my front seat companion with a trace of sarcasm in my voice. I understand the need for security, I guess, but it does interfere with my making a living. You wonder if it's really necessary.

"Do you think it will be long?" he asked, a bit of concern apparent in the tone of his own voice. The sure thing of making the train was appearing to be not such a sure thing anymore.

"Nah, don't worry," I replied. "I'm sure they'll be out of here in no time at all."

Well, "no time at all" becomes magnified when every minute counts. In what was becoming forever, our light at 57th turned red. The cops remained in the intersection and nothing happened. Another thirty seconds ticked by. The light turned green. The cops just stood there, looking down the street. With tension mounting, there was finally activity to our right on 57th Street. Another couple of police cruisers appeared in the intersection and made right turns onto 5th Avenue. And then, at last, we were able to see what the cause of the delay had been.

It was a tree.

Yes, the enormous tree that had been chosen to be the star of the show in Rockefeller Center this Christmas season was making its final leg of a trek from a town in Pennsylvania to its new home in Midtown, New York City. A future of being oohed and ahhed at by millions of tourists lay before it. So why not kick things off with a little traffic jam in the middle of the night on November 12th, just to get things off on the right foot?

Flanked by a couple of those cars with "oversized vehicle" warning signs attached to them, the tree made a right turn onto 5th Avenue and proceeded at five miles per hour toward Rockefeller Center at 50th Street. The cops kept us sitting there at 57th for another minute before finally clearing out of the intersection and joining their caravan a couple of blocks down the road.

What had started as a routine little ride to Grand Central Station had now entered crisis management mode. With only five minutes left to make the train, my passengers, who up to now had seemed relatively unconcerned, had become silent and tense. Visions of five hours of camping out in the station were creeping in on them. I put on my Racing Driver hat.

Zipping down to 54th Street, I made a quick decision to take a detour to Park Avenue in order to avoid further delays by the Great Tree Procession in front of us on 5th. With some extra speed and a cautious running of a red light, I got them to Grand Central with three minutes remaining on the clock. After a quick payment of the fare and a thank you, my passengers bolted out of the cab and headed for the entrance to the station, four nerds doing the hundred-yard dash with what should have been just enough time to catch the train.


Now, in my day I've weathered some of the greatest traffic jams in the history of New York City. I've been filibustered by several presidents of the United States. I've been blockaded by Fidel Castro, held hostage by Ahmadinijad. I've been rendered into collateral damage by a Mafia hit in Midtown. I've been stopped in my tracks by the camels, elephants, and zebras of the Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey Circus. And now I've been humbled into submission by something that's not even a member of the animal kingdom.

But it is a member of the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame.

The Entire East Side

My favorite shift of the week is the Sunday night shift. Even though it's usually quite slow after midnight, the passengers on Sundays tend to be friendlier and certainly more sober than any of the other nights of the week. And with a little luck you might get an airport ride early in the shift, say, between 5 and 7 pm - the time when there are tons of flights coming in - and that means a quick turnaround with a new fare, hopefully back to Manhattan. And that means good money. Cha-ching!

And so I was quite pleased to pick up, as my first fare of the night on Sunday, November 13th, two people who were LaGuardia bound. After putting their luggage in the trunk, we had a brief conference to reach agreement on the best route to take. Should it be the Queens-Midtown Tunnel (a $4.80 toll and all highway on the Queens side), the Triboro Bridge (longer, less chance of traffic, also a $4.80 toll, and all highway after the bridge), or the 59th Street Bridge (free, and closest to us from where we were located on 46th Street and 10th Avenue)? Since they said their flight was to leave at 7:00 and it was then 5:00 (plenty of time), the choice was obvious: the 59th Street Bridge. I made a right on 56th and we were on our way.

My passengers were a young, married couple from Sweden who, they said, were living and working in Dublin. They were both cheerful and the fellow was particularly conversational, telling me that part of the reason for their trip to New York was for a surprise reunion with his sister, who lives in California and was in New York herself for the weekend to celebrate her thirtieth birthday. His wife was pleasant, as well, although not as chatty as her husband. She struck me as the more practical of the two, showing some concern about any potential traffic problems that could lie ahead of us. I set her mind at ease by saying that they had wisely left more than enough time to get to LaGuardia, which is normally a twenty-five minute trip, but added that, of course, you never could know for sure what might happen with the traffic in New York City.

"Don't worry, though," I reassured her, while showing my age, "you'll be at LaGuardia so early you'll be playing Ms. PacMan for an hour just to pass the time."

Remember what I said about tempting fate? You would have thought from the previous night's debacle that I would have learned to keep my mouth shut.

We proceeded at a decent pace on 56th Street until we got to Lexington Avenue, two and a half "avenue blocks" from the bridge (in the New York street grid the distance between the avenues is considerably longer than the distance between the streets) and then we hit a wall. The trained eye (mine) can very quickly ascertain the degree of severity of traffic jams in the city and I knew immediately that something was amiss here. Not only was the traffic backed up all the way to the next avenue, 3rd, but it was solid, meaning it was moving forward at a pace of only three of four car lengths for each change of the light. It took us five minutes to get close enough to 3rd Avenue for me to see that the problem on our street was due to massive gridlock in the intersection - our backup on 56th was being caused by an even bigger backup on 3rd Avenue. And this translated to me instantly that there was huge - huge! - traffic on the bridge itself.

My passengers had remained calm and cheerful. Time was on their side and a five-minute delay on the crowded 56th Street wasn't enough to raise an eyebrow. But in my mind a little alarm clock was ringing. Something was wrong here - you just never see this kind of traffic at this particular place and at this particular time - but I couldn't imagine what it could be. However, I did know the 59th Street Bridge was no longer an option.

"Listen," I announced, "Something's really bad on the bridge. I'm gonna take the Midtown Tunnel. I know it's $4.80 more for the toll, but it's the best thing to do with this kind of traffic. God knows how long we might be sitting in it."

They were fine with it. So when it was finally my turn to zigzag around the cars jamming up the intersection, I went straight on 56th toward 2nd Avenue instead of making the left onto 3rd, which had been my original intention. 56th was relatively clear on that block, and that was a good thing, but when we reached 2nd Avenue I saw that our traffic problems were not only behind us, but ahead of us as well: 2nd Avenue, which should have been free-flowing, was also a solid wall of barely moving vehicles.

So now we were stuck in whatever it was. The entrance to the Midtown Tunnel is at 2nd Avenue and 36th Street, exactly one mile from where we were. To get to the third possible route, the Triboro Bridge, would mean circling back in the direction of the 59th Street Bridge traffic. I decided our best bet was to just stick with 2nd Avenue, even though it was a river of brake lights as far as the eye could see.

We plunged into it.

Well, the conversation quickly changed from how a couple of Swedes wound up in Dublin to, gee, do you think we're going to make our plane? I told them they probably had enough time to walk to LaGuardia and still make the plane but secretly, since I had no idea what was causing this mess, I was wondering the same thing. For the next ten minutes we moved so slowly on 2nd Avenue - not even one block for each change of the light - that the possibility of missing the flight was becoming less and less remote.

More than anything, though, I was dying of curiosity to know what was causing the problem. It had to be something huge. An accident? No, couldn't be, accidents only tie up traffic for just a few blocks. A fire? No, fires cause only small delays and detours, never anything like this. I decided it had to be a disaster - something like a plane crash, a building collapse, or a terrorist attack. Yeah, it had to be on that order of magnitude. I turned the radio on to the news station and within a couple of minutes I had my answer...

...the Upper Level of the 59th Street Bridge was closed in both directions.

Yes, it immediately fit. That would do it. The 59th Street Bridge is the busiest passageway in New York City. It takes, by far, more vehicular traffic than any other bridge or tunnel. Close down half of it and you have an automatic traffic disaster. It explained both slowdowns: the gridlock on 3rd Avenue was from cars trying to get onto the bridge; the inch-by-inch on 2nd Avenue were the cars doing what we were trying to do - get away from the bridge and get to the Midtown Tunnel instead.

So the mystery was solved, except for one thing: why? Why in the world would they do such a thing? It had to be an incident of cataclysmic proportions.

Now I will tell you why it happened, but before I do, let me remind you that it is not merely the size of the traffic nightmare that earns one consideration for entrance into the Hall. It has to be something special, something that makes it a champion. It's like professional athletes. Sure, you have to be damned good to even make it to the pros, but we don't place laurels on the heads of the average players. We bestow immortality only on those who have proven to be the best of the best. And so it is with the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame.

So without further ado, here it is. Here is why the entire East Side of Manhattan was brought to a standstill for the entire afternoon (as I later found out): they were filming a scene from the latest Batman movie!

Yes, a movie company paid, I assume, a large amount of money to get permission from certain city officials who, in the "let them eat cake" style of our current mayor, chose to close down our most traveled bridge for several hours in the middle of the day. How many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people suffered for this? How many lost an hour out of their day? How many missed the first act of the Broadway show they were trying to get to? How many missed their train? How many missed their plane?

Fortunately my own passengers did make it to LaGuardia before their flight left without them. But not before it took them forty-five minutes to travel one mile on 2nd Avenue in a taxicab which cost them an extra $17 in waiting time and another $4.80 for a toll they shouldn't have had to pay.

As outraged as I am about this latest concession to materialism (our bridges are now for lease), it would be unfair to take it out on the jam itself. Just as certain athletes who were known for being antisocial sons of bitches off the field are nevertheless honored for their achievements on the field, proper acknowledgement must not be denied when it has been earned, regardless of how the damned thing was brought into the world.

And so, in the spirit of fair play, I now open wide the portals to our newest member. Welcome, The Batman Jam, to the Traffic Jam Hall of Fame!

********

And I welcome you to click here for Pictures From A Taxi.

The Car On East 86th Street

You may have heard that we had a blizzard in New York City on December 26th. They say it was in the vicinity of 20 inches and was the 6th largest snowstorm ever recorded here, but I don't know if it was really that big. It was certainly a huge storm, but men in general and weathermen in particular tend to exaggerate when it comes to inches.

In any case, the story here wasn't so much the storm itself as it was the failure of those in charge to clean it up. In New York the snow removal is done by the Sanitation Department. The army of sanitation workers, who are normally removing trash, become the people plowing and salting the streets. It's a highly organized, military-style operation when it's done correctly. The city streets are designated primary, secondary, and tertiary in importance and are attacked in that order. In Manhattan, this means the highways, avenues, and major cross-town streets are cleared first.

Taxi drivers need to be extremely aware of predictions of snowstorms, as the potential for disaster is everywhere even in relatively minor events. Unfortunately, most of us learn this the hard way. I was initiated by ice myself one night in 1981. We were in the beginning of a medium-sized storm and I was driving a Checker cab which had a two-way radio in it for business purposes (no longer allowed in yellow cabs). A call for a lucrative out-of-town ride kept coming through and no one would take it. Eventually the dispatcher was sounding desperate and I hesitatingly agreed to do the job, taking an executive from "Black Rock", the CBS headquarters on 6th Avenue, to his home in Darien, Connecticut. Although the snow was steadily falling, I had no problem getting the fellow to his residence. But a couple of minutes after dropping him off I skidded into a snow drift as I came down a hill and got completely stuck there. The Checkers (like the Ford Crown Victorias we drive today) had rear-wheel drive and thus had terrible traction in the snow. These were the days before cell phones, of course, and I was on a back road at midnight with no civilization in sight, so I was truly stuck and quite upset with Checkers, the weather, God, and especially myself for having taken the job against my better judgement in the first place. Luckily, a couple of very nice people in a four-wheel drive Jeep eventually came along and towed me out of there, even tagging along behind me to make sure I made it back to the highway safely. Lesson learned, and here it is. (New York taxi drivers, take note.)

1. If possible, don't drive at all during a real snow storm (more than three inches). Your chances of having an accident are enormously greater than normal and you won't make decent money, anyway, because the weather will slow you down to less than half speed and there isn't much business on the streets. People tend to stay indoors while the snow is coming down.

2. Wait a few hours until after the snow has stopped falling before venturing out. If the Sanitation Department is on the ball, the primary roads will be plowed and salted by that time.

3. For 24 hours after a major storm, ride with your "off-duty" light on and your doors locked. Ascertain that a passenger isn't leaving Manhattan before you allow him into your cab. The reason for this is that however bad the secondary and tertiary streets may be in Manhattan, they're much, much worse in the outer boroughs. Plus it will take you forever to get back to Manhattan (without a passenger) if you make it back at all.

4. Use the avenues and major cross-town streets as much as possible while driving in Manhattan. If a passenger's destination is on a street that hasn't been properly plowed, ask if it would be all right if you could drop them off on the corner (unless the passenger is disabled in any way).

Following my own rules, I called my garage when the storm was just beginning and told the dispatcher I would not be coming in, even though it was a Sunday, normally one of my driving days. He said that was okay, a fortunate response because the owner of the garage (my boss) might have instructed him to tell any driver who didn't come in that he'd have to pay for the shift even if he didn't work it. That's the way it's been since the recession started in '08 and garages have been overflowing with drivers, some of whom are turned away because there are no cabs for them. This surplus of drivers is a new thing in New York, by the way. In all my years in this business, there had never been a time when there were enough drivers for all the cabs. Until now.

Anyway, I agreed to drive the Monday night shift. It was seemingly a good strategy because the snow, as predicted, stopped falling on Monday morning and that gave the Sanitation Department over six hours to salt and plow the primary streets before my shift would begin at 5:00. That should be enough time, right?

Wrong!

I was alarmed when emerging from the subway to see major Manhattan avenues unsalted and snow-covered - not good! Walking a few blocks to my garage, I stared in astonished dismay at a bus that had been abandoned and was left completely blocking an intersection. It was an eerie sight I had never seen before and looked more like post-disaster than post-snowstorm.

I entered my garage where employees were coping with the chaos that blizzards create in the taxi world. I was given the keys to a cab and told it was "ready to go", meaning it wasn't stuck in a snow drift. An hour later, after clearing the cab and freeing it from the drift it wasn't in, I pulled out into the slippery night, wondering if what I'd seen between the subway stop and my garage had been an aberration.

It had not been. Manhattan was a mess. The avenues and major cross-town streets such as Houston and Canal had been plowed perhaps once before the snow had stopped falling and then were newly covered with a few more inches, enough to keep the top speed of vehicles at around ten miles per hour. Even Times Square was a slippery adventure at 8 p.m. And that's how things remained throughout the night. It wasn't until 2 a.m. that I finally saw some salters and plows on a few of the avenues. And the abandoned bus that I'd seen on my way to the garage was not alone - I encountered at least half a dozen more during the course of my shift.

As the night wore on, veterans of New York snowstorms such as myself and many of my passengers realized something was amiss and we began speculating through our anger as to what the hell was going on. This storm had not been a surprise. It had been forecast accurately more than a day before it arrived. Where was the Sanitation Department? Suspicion began to grow that this may not have been merely incompetence but may have been a union tactic against management - the conspiracy theory! The mayor, who is still trying to master the art of speaking from both sides of his mouth, at first was making excuses, saying that we'd "never seen a storm like this". (Oh, really? I have.) Then, noticing the rising tide of outrage, he started putting heads on pikes. Investigations have since been initiated by the City Council and even prosecutors, so we may someday get to the bottom of it.

But be that as it may, I realized in retrospect that, like many inconveniences and minor disasters, something of value had been inadvertently created by the mess. It was something I'd seen during the night but which took me until the next day to comprehend that it potentially had the stuff of legend about it. Something symbolic. Something that could stand as a metaphor for the angst of urban living.

It was the car on East 86th Street.

At 10 p.m. I picked up a woman at 86th and Amsterdam on the Upper West Side who wanted to go straight across the Central Park transverse to 91st Street and 1st Avenue on the Upper East Side. Our route would take us all the way across town on 86th, a major, four-lane cross-street that runs in both directions (in other words, it's not one-way, like most streets in Manhattan). It was this woman who told me about "the car". Apparently this vehicle had achieved instant infamy in the neighborhood.

She said that not too long after the snow had started coming down heavily during the previous night, at around 7 p.m., a car had been abandoned right in the middle of 86th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Not double-parked. Not pushed off to the side. Just sitting there in the middle of 86th Street. She, like I, had seen many big snowstorms in New York City, but she could not recall ever seeing a car just sitting there in the middle of a major crosstown street. Neither could I.

She went on to tell me that earlier in the evening she had taken a bus across town to the West Side, where I'd picked her up. The route of this bus went along 86th Street, but had encountered a problem in transit. It couldn't make its way around this abandoned car - which was still there eight hours after the snow had stopped falling - nor could any of the other buses on the 86th Street route.

Solution? Take a detour. All day long and into the night the buses that normally go straight across 86th had instead been making a left turn onto 2nd Avenue, going down to 79th Street (the next major cross-street), and then coming back uptown to 86th on 3rd Avenue in order to avoid "the car".

Slip-sliding along 86th Street, we wondered when we got over to the East Side if "the car" would still be there between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. Actually I was hoping it would be, as I wanted to witness the spectacle for myself.

It was!

We had a mutual lamentation about the absurdity of it. How many individuals and city agencies had dropped the ball here? First, of course, the person who had walked away from his own car and had not come back to get it out of there, even many hours after the snow had stopped falling. Second, the people in the area who assumingly could have at least helped him push the car off to the side. Third, whatever towing service the owner of the car could not get help from. Fourth, the Traffic Department which normally will tow your car away if it is twenty seconds beyond the time posted on the "no parking" sign. Fifth, the Police Department, which has tow trucks of its own. And sixth, the Transit Authority which we can assume was too busy trying to get their own buses out of the snow to do anything about a car that was blocking one of its routes.

There was, however, one city agency which had not dropped the ball.

The Sanitation Department.

For surrounding "the car" on both sides were piles of snow which had been deposited there by the plows attached to city garbage trucks, thus creating an impassable island in the middle of 86th Street.

You've gotta love irony.

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And you've gotta love Pictures From A Taxi, too! Click here.

Goodbye, Giuliani

Rudy Giuliani has dropped out of the presidential race and, like the Munchkins who showed up after Dorothy's house came in for a landing, I feel it's safe to emerge from the hole I've been hiding in since he announced he was running over a year ago, and air it out about this guy. Actually I was going to write this post whether he won or lost in Florida, but the fact that I no longer have to worry that Giuliani is going to be our next president does make me feel a bit more comfortable at my keyboard, I must admit.

I have an unique perspective about Giuliani, one that you wouldn't hear from the usual political commentators. I can write about him from the point of view of a taxi driver who was directly affected by him for the eight years he was in office, from 1994 - 2001. When you're a taxi driver in New York, although you're deemed an "independent contractor", in reality the conditions of your working life are very strongly influenced by the government agency called the Taxi and Limousine Commission, which is headed by its own Chairman. This person is appointed by the mayor and, if the mayor is a strong-willed, hands-on guy like Giuliani, he pretty much does whatever the mayor says he should do.

So in a sense a taxi driver is only two steps down from having the mayor as his boss. Therefore, to that extent, I know Giuliani.

For the first four years, I liked him. The changes I noticed about New York were that the "squeegee" guys disappeared and the numbers of hustlers and destitute on the streets were greatly reduced. This was attributed to his policies. But then, from the moment he was re-elected in 1997 (and could not be elected again due to the term limit law), it was as if an acorn had dropped on his head and he just went wild in taking New York from being not merely a safer place than it had been before, but to what many were saying was a similarity to a police state.

The first sign of trouble I noticed was this: only a couple of weeks into his new term in 1998, a man got in my cab who was in a state of agitation and apparently needed to tell anyone who would listen what had happened to his brother the previous night. His brother, he said, owned a bar on the Upper East Side. A man and a woman whom he'd never seen before entered the bar, put a quarter in the juke box, and started to dance. This dancing was witnessed by two people sitting at the bar who turned out to be undercover cops. They promptly got up and wrote his brother a summons for $2,000 for allowing dancing in his bar when he does not possess a cabaret license. 

It turned out this was a law that had been sitting on the books for a hundred years and up until then had rarely, if ever, been enforced. And it was not an isolated incident. I heard numerous similar stories as time went on and concluded that this was part of a citywide sweep that could only have come from the mayor himself, as no police commissioner in his right mind would ever dream of sending his cops out to do such mean-spirited and absurd enforcement. It has been conjectured, and I believe it, that the two "dancers" were themselves cops, which would have made this operation nothing better than a set-up.

 
One thing is not conjecture, however. If you go into any bar in New York City today and look around at the walls, you will find a sign that states quite clearly for all to read: NO DANCING PERMITTED.

It turned out this no-dancing-in-bars action was a harbinger of things to come, particularly for taxi drivers. Within weeks we were hit with a bolt from the blue. The mayor announced new rules for taxi drivers and taxi owners. Using statistics about increasing traffic accidents (which turned out to be false) as his justification, these were some of the conditions we suddenly had to contend with:

1) If a taxi driver was being ticketed for a moving violation, he would receive not one, but two summonses. One from NY State, like always, and an additional one from the Taxi and Limousine Commission. One offense, two tickets. (Many months later, this was struck down by the courts.)

2) If a taxi driver accumulated six points on his driver's license within 18 months he would automatically have his hack license suspended for one month. Six points is normally the equivalent of two moving violations. This rule applied not only if you were ticketed while you were driving your taxi, but also if you were driving your own personal car. Thus a taxi driver could make an illegal turn in Wyoming and lose his job for a month in New York City. (This rule still stands, except it's been reduced to 15 months.)

3) Owners of taxi medallions were required to submit a list of all their personal assets to the government.
Following this decree from Giuliani, resistance, previously non-existent, began to build. A group formed calling itself the Taxi Workers Alliance and made attempts to protect the rights of taxi drivers. Using nothing but word of mouth and flyers distributed by hand, they called for a one-day strike in May, 1998. Amazingly, the word spread like fire and on that particular day it was impossible to find a yellow cab in the city.

 
I considered this to be a labor miracle. I had been saying for 20 years that the biggest problem of the taxi industry in New York was that there was no union. Drivers were powerless to stand up to the whims and injustices perpetuated against them by the powers-that-be and yet here, at last, was at least a real attempt to correct that situation. I was exhilarated.

Giuliani went on television that night and with a crooked smile on his face made this sarcastic comment:

"You know, the streets were nice and empty today. It was nice. They should do it more often."

 

He then stonewalled the people who were trying to represent the drivers. He wouldn't even speak with them.

 
However, he did do this: he sent his police force out to ticket taxi drivers for any imaginable offense for the next two years. There was no question, if you were a taxi driver from 1998 through 2000, that "the heat" was always on. Even if you were not pulled over yourself, on any given day you could observe in disturbing numbers the other cabbies who had been. Plus there were the endless stories you heard from these drivers and even from passengers about the harrassment taxi drivers were being subjected to.

I heard stories of drivers being ticketed because the receipt paper sticking out of the meter from the previous ride had not been torn off. Or an entry was missing from their trip sheets. Or a driver was wearing a shirt with no collar. Or he was wearing sandals. A friend of mine who had been a taxi driver for 25 years was pulled over by one of the TLC patrol cars and written up for several such tickets. Rather than sacrifice his own sense of dignity by paying them, he instead mailed his hack license in to the TLC, quitting the business.

It was abundantly clear to me that taxi drivers as a group had been singled out by Giuliani as targets for punishment. But whenever the subject came up in my cab (and it was a daily topic of conversation), the question I always heard was, "Why?"

 
What did Giuliani have against taxi drivers, anyway?

 
I never had an answer for that question.

 
Not until a passenger in my cab volunteered some information in the year 2000 that made sense to me. He was a middle-aged man going on a long ride up to the North Bronx and in the course of conversation mentioned that he was a police officer who worked "in the mayor's office". This interesting statement of course led to an in-depth conversation about Giuliani and eventually this man asked me a rhetorical question: "Why do you suppose," he asked, "the mayor has been so tough on three groups - the taxi drivers, the food vendors, and the video store operators?"

I didn't know the answer yet but I did know that aside from my own group, these other two industries, particularly the food vendors, had often been under attack during Giuliani's reign. The answer then given to me by my passenger was this: 

"These groups currently all have within them large numbers of Muslims. The mayor sees Muslims as being terrorists."

I don't repeat this comment as if it were a matter of fact or anything that Giuliani ever said in public. It can easily be dismissed as hearsay. I'm just saying that, given everything I knew about how Giuliani conducted himself, this statement was the only explanation I ever heard that made sense to me. It fit, in my opinion.

 
Of course, this conversation took place well before 9-11 and in hindsight some people might say Giuliani was right. But obviously it is fundamentally wrong - and dangerous - to lump entire groups of people together and make them targets for attacks from government agencies because some of them may be criminals. That's how genocides get started.

So I was deeply concerned that this man could possibly get his hands on the United States military and the nuclear arsenal. And even more concerned when he was actually leading in the polls. I had serious questions about the ability of the voters to see through a person like this.

But I was wrong. Rudy put all his resources into the Florida primary and came away with only 13 percent of the vote and one delegate to the convention. And then he quit. The voters had more sense than I had given them credit for, and it has rehabilitated my confidence in the democratic process.

So in that sense, now that he's lost, I'm actually glad he ran.

 
The "streets" of political thugs are much emptier now.

It's nice.

Maybe he should do it more often.

Then again, maybe not.

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But one thing anyone should seriously consider doing more often is clicking here for Pictures From A Taxi.