The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission can revoke the license of a cab driver who refuses to pick up a customer even if the driver has no prior violations, an appeals court in Manhattan ruled Tuesday.

The unanimous panel of the Appellate Division, 1st Department, reversed a lower court ruling that said the penalty was too stiff for a first infraction and violated the city's Administrative Code, which sets guidelines for punishing drivers.

I saw this in the paper today and just had to weigh in...

There is a unfair standard being applied here which no one seems interested in addressing. The enforcement of this rule is as it applies to ‘yellow, medallion cab drivers.’ Some of you might ask whatever do you mean?

Well, New York is served by loads and loads of cabs. There are just below 13,000 medallion, yellow taxis. These are the cabs most identified with New York city. They are the cabs which are legally allowed to acknowledge street hails and to service the airports and such.

However, there are fleets upon fleets of taxis serving New York. There are the livery (gypsy) cabs seen in so many neighborhoods of the outer boroughs (sometimes with radios and often accepting street hails), radio car services (which employers use to take workers home after a late night and to the airport prior to business trips) and simple radio taxis (fleets of cabs which are base in the outer boroughs and take radio calls only serving local neighborhoods in which they are based).

Everybody has taxi horror stories (I’ve been on both ends of the coin) but, bear in mind the rules which are being applied are almost exclusively being applied to yellow, medallion taxis only!

Radio cars (black cars as they are known throughout the industry) deal in corporate (read clean) work. The radio groups are self-regulating, don’t deal with cash calls often and get a minimum every time someone sits in the back seat of their car (the drop is around $8 now I believe). Radio drivers don’t need to discriminate between riders because most of their work is paid in advance via credit card. It’s not a cash business, they don’t carry excess amounts of cash and their clientele is for the most part pre-screened. Also, as a driver for a radio group, they get benefits, spend much of their day waiting (parked) for a call and aren’t in a position where they would have to refuse a fare.

Livery cars often work the outer boroughs. The taxi and limousine commission focuses the lion’s share of it’s enforcement efforts in Manhattan and at the airports. While livery cab drivers are still subject to enforcement of TLC equipment violations (whether ticketed by TLC inspectors or NYPD) the enforcement is sporadic at best. Consequently, this is one of the reasons you can see a ‘gypsy’ cab that looks as if it’s being held together by string. It’s also why you hear those horror stories every once and awhile of somebody getting into a ‘gypsy’ cab, going to the airport and paying a ridiculous sum. Gypsy cabs usually don’t have meters and the driver can get away with charging a fee at his discretion (depending on whether or not he thinks he’ll get caught). Maybe he doesn’t have insurance, maybe he doesn’t even have a license. It’s not an easy job and usually the gypsy cab driver is desperate to make money (could be an illegal alien) but, there is after all a gyp in gypsy. If a livery cab driver refuses a fare in the outer boroughs, chances are more than likely nobody will know or complain (no handy dandy medallion number to lodge a formal complaint against).

Radio groups in the outer boroughs also screen their clientele to a certain extent. Drivers are ‘employees’ and they usually don’t accept street hails unless they want to make some extra money without the boss knowing about it.

Now, we get to the yellow cab drivers.

Most yellow cab drivers are independent contractors meaning they rent the car and medallion per shift (it’s actually called leasing). In the old days (right around the time I was starting) there was a union and to be a yellow cab driver you had to join. You paid union dues but, got the benefits of union representation in any dispute with the cab company you worked for. Also, you and the company were partners. The cab company got a percentage of the meter receipts each shift and you got a percentage of the receipts plus your tips. The company paid for gas and upkeep on the cab. If you broke down, driver and company bore the loss of time due to breakdown equally. Also, at this time radios were still in medallion cabs meaning if there wasn’t any street business, you could work the radio and vice a versa (round about ’84 then Mayor Koch outlawed radios in yellow cabs which started the ‘black car’ business). The nice thing about the radios is, help was only a radio call away.

Again, nowadays drivers are on their own. If the car breaks down, they might get a credit on some of their lease monies but, it’s up to the discretion of the owner. When the fare goes up, so too do the lease rates meaning any increase doesn’t benefit the driver as much as it does the cab owner. There are no benefits (health or otherwise), if you don’t work, you don’t make money. You have to make back your lease money and the money you’ll spend on gas before you even begin to earn money for yourself. Lease rates can run anywhere from $85 to $120 per 12 hour shift - if you think the streets are brimming with fares at 3:30 in the morning, you’re sadly mistaken.

And if someone winds up taking you to a remote area to rob you and you wind up shot, too bad. There’s no pension (as there is for a city employee), no medical benefits and if you survive you can be sure there won’t be the kind of manhunt there is when a cop or a city bus driver is shot. There is no hue and cry of outrage from the general populace when a yellow cab driver gets shot as much as a byline buried somewhere in the interior of the paper. Of course, while you’re recovering from your injuries, you’ll be unemployed without any income.

Yellow taxis aren’t a right. They aren’t public transportation in the same sense the subway or bus is. The only thing a driver has to protect himself are his own wits, abilities and street savvy. The old saw goes ‘walk a mile in his shoes’ and anyone who gets their back up about cab drivers with righteous indignation should spend a couple of shifts in the drivers’ seat before opening their big mouth. After a couple of days bouncing your kidneys around for 14 hours and dealing with the public I think you’ll have a higher opinion of taxi drivers.