Strike Two For NYC Cabbies

For the second time in two months, some city taxi drivers went on strike early Monday to protest new rules requiring credit card and GPS technology in cabs.

Bhairavi Desai, the executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance, the group leading the strike, said the action had begun. Speaking around 7 a.m., she gave an estimate that 75 percent of cabs were on strike.

"We think this is a great success," she said. The Taxi and Limousine Commission and the Office of Emergency Management did not return calls.

But despite Desai's estimate, passengers were still easily able to find cabs.

Ned Bolcar, waiting for a cab at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, said he hadn't even known about the strike until reading about it Monday morning, and wasn't surprised to see so many still on the job.

"The ones who work make money, they have bills to pay," he said.

Under a contingency plan in place for the anticipated strike - the second in six weeks - the city is requiring remaining yellow cabs to pick up multiple passengers, and charge fares on a zone-based system.

Passengers will each pay $10, plus $5 for each new "zone" they pass through, according to the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission. Manhattan will be divided into four zones, and each of the outer boroughs will be considered a zone.

Rides between Manhattan and the city's airports will also be subject to a flat, per-person fare of $20 for LaGuardia and $30 for Kennedy. If necessary, city officials will also allow livery cabs to pick up passengers trying to wave down a ride. The plan goes into effect at 5 a.m. Monday, when the planned strike is expected to begin.

The Taxi Workers Alliance, which claims to represent about a fifth of the city's 44,000 licensed cab drivers, is opposed to the new credit card and GPS technology that is being phased in as yellow cabs come up for inspection.

The touch-screen monitors let passengers pay by credit card, check on news stories, map their taxi's current location and look up restaurant and entertainment information.

City officials say the devices help passengers, make payments more convenient and lost items easier to locate.

But the Taxi Workers Alliance has argued the technology is a costly invasion of cabbies' privacy and now maintains that it does not work.

"There are several dead zones throughout the city where the credit card machine simply does not work," Desai said at a news conference in front of Penn Station on Sunday. "A passenger may swipe it and jump out of the cab, which is understandable, but then three minutes later the message comes on the screen that the credit card was declined. Who's going to compensate the drivers?"

The Taxi and Limousine Commission said earlier this month that its tests showed the technology worked more than 99 percent of the time.

TLC Commissioner Matthew Daus said in a statement last week, "Improvements pioneered by the TLC and Bloomberg administration, in addition to ... two significant fare increases, have allowed drivers to benefit from participation in the strongest and most viable taxi industry of its century-long history."

It was unclear how many drivers honored the Taxi Workers Alliance's strike over the technology issue in September.