This year Mayor Bloomberg has spent much time trying to make it easier to get a cab to take you out of Manhattan (or find a cab in the outer boroughs) but maybe first he ought to make it easier to catch a cab while black? Because if black City Councilman James Sanders's recent experiences are any indication those scare videos the TLC made in March ain't doing the trick. "It is horrible," Bloomberg said on his WOR radio show this morning.
"I have always had trouble hailing cabs and it is widespread," City Councilman James Sanders said of the recent incident in which he tried to get a cab for his visiting daughter from SoHo to Yonkers.
"I gave it my best New York try. 45 minutes later and 20 cabs, I said this isn't working. They did not stop," Sanders said. When that didn't work he and his daughter walked over to a hotel to catch a cab. And then it got worse. "Two of them said they were off duty. A third claimed he didn't go there. At that point I picked up the phone and called the Commissioner of the Taxi and Limousine Commission [David Yassky]," Sanders said.
And with Yassky listening in it kept happening. "I heard the driver just decline and drive away. That is absolutely unacceptable," said Yassky.
"[The cab] pulled away and went 20 feet away and picked up a nice white couple, took them wherever," Sanders said. Finally a onlooker helped Sanders get his daughter a cab to Yonkers—an area that yellow cabs are required by law to take you to.
Luckily Sanders got the numbers for many of the cabs that refused him service and is pursuing action with the TlC. But he really shouldn't have to. By law medallion cab passengers have the right to go anywhere within the five boroughs as well as Westchester and Nassau counties and Newark Airport. And cabbies, no matter what their union might say, do not have the right to refuse customers.
