Boro Taxis Close In On 300,000 Rides Since August
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- City officials announced Tuesday that more than 1,000 Boro Taxis are on the streets of New York just three and a half months into operation.
As WCBS 880's Rich Lamb reported, the new apple green taxis have already racked up nearly 300,000 rides.
The Boro Taxis are allowed to make street pickups anywhere outside the Manhattan Business District with the exception of John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. The goal has been to provide legal, safe and reliable service to those in upper Manhattan and the other four boroughs. The cabs can drop passengers off anywhere in the city.
Boro Taxis Close In On 300,000 Rides Since August
All 6,000 Boro Taxi licenses allotted for the first year of operation have already been sold, the city announced. Of those, 20 percent of the licenses have been earmarked for wheelchair-accessible cabs.
"Boro Taxis have quickly proven themselves to be immensely popular, with almost 300,000 rides having already taken place," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. "For decades, millions of New Yorkers were denied safe and legal taxi hails in their own neighborhoods – something we believed was wrong and set out to fix. The new taxis have been a hit with both riders and drivers, and they will become an increasingly common sight in communities that previously lacked taxi service."
City officials also announced a new website that will allow New Yorkers to suggest locations for new Boro Taxi stands in their communities.
The website, BoroTaxis.org, allows taxi riders to offer input as to why a hail stand should go up in their neighborhood.
Bloomberg first announced his Boro Taxi plan at his State of the City address in Jan. 2011.
Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio has voiced his opposition to the Boro Taxis, but it's unclear if he'd try to undo them after he's sworn in.
"I have no idea what Bill's gonna want to do, you have to address those questions to him. I can tell you what we have done and to date as I gave you some of those numbers, it's been phenomenally successful. The taxi drivers are making more money when they drive the green cabs than when they ever did driving black cabs," Bloomberg said.
The mayor also noted that the price of yellow cab medallions keeps rising, indicating they're making a lot more money.
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