A checkered future: How to save taxis and other for-hire vehicles from extinction
Anyone with eyes knew that coronavirus’ arrival in New York saw the departure of hundreds of millions of dollars of fares for cabbies and Uber and Lyft drivers. Now it’s official, as the Taxi & Limousine Commission has finally published statistics that stupidly hadn’t been updated since the virus struck.
The news is predictably horrendous: As demand plummeted by 84%, thousands of drivers have been idled. They still have car payments or, even larger, medallion loans.
The TLC has been wisely offering free assistance for drivers to restructure their indebtedness, and took a tiny edge off the pain by hiring drivers to deliver 50 million food parcels to the home-bound. That $30 million is a small fracture of the lost fares, but every dollar helps.
The ridership numbers were withheld by the agency, says the city, to make sure that they were accurate. Apparently they are, and they herald a grim future for drivers, who were already reeling before the virus. We weep not for the fleet owners and other speculators, but the plight of the owner-operators, many of them hardworking immigrants, remains unresolved. Even a coronavirus vaccine will not cure what ails them. They deserve more.
An Op-Ed in these pages yesterday from TLC chair Aloysee Heredia Jarmoszuk mentioned that MTA ridership also hit rock bottom during the crisis. That is known because the MTA divulged that information in March. And April. And May. And June. And July.
Going forward, TLC statistics must remain current. No timely disease diagnosis, no effective treatment.
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