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COMMISSIONER'S LETTER |
By New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission Chairwoman & Cheif Executive Officer Meera Joshi
Hello,
The TLC has had a very busy but productive month and I have many updates to share. On June 9th, the New York City Council held a hearing on the Street Hail Livery (SHL) Program. The purpose of this meeting was for us to give an update on how the program has been doing thus far.
The SHL program has already proven to be successful at providing legal, hailable, taxi service in the areas that previously had no legal on demand taxi service. Since the first trip completed back in August 2013, Boro taxis have completed over six million trips to the residents living outside of the Manhattan Core. Our enforcement division has also been actively issuing summonses to SHL operators who pick up fares in the hail exclusionary zone.
We will also start selling the next wave of SHL permits in August of this year. Permits in the second issuance will sell for $3,000. At least 20% of the 6,000 permits sold during this issuance will be wheelchair accessible but that number could increase to 45%.
The TLC is hosting several information fairs throughout the five boroughs where TLC will explain the rules and regulation of the SHL program. We encourage our licensees, as well as the public, to attend. For more information on the information sessions which begin on June 23rd please visit www.nyc.gov/tlc.
On June 19th we had a monthly commission meeting where we passed a new rule which waives the taxi school requirement for all drivers who received their licenses
before 1999 and meet all other license requirements. The Commission believes that waiving the school requirement for this group of experience drivers will not pose a threat to the public’s safety and will allow the industry to retain some of its most valuable drivers.
Additionally, as part of its Vision Zero goals, the Commission passed a pilot resolution which would allow the TLC to test different types of in-vehicle safety technology. Some of this technology includes speed alerts, black box data recorders and speed governors. This pilot is completely voluntary but we feel strongly that licensees will see the benefits of this technology and encourage their participation.
Lastly, the New York City Council passed four pieces of legislation that will increase transparency and give the TLC the ability remove unsafe drivers form the street quickly.
Intro 171-A, also known as "Cooper's Law", allows the TLC to summarily suspend any driver who has received a summons for being involved in a crash which resulted in critical injury or death. If the driver is convicted of the summons, the driver may have his license revoked, but if they are found not guilty, the driver's license will be reinstated.
Intro 272 enables the TLC to remove unsafe drivers from the street by allowing us to combine critical driver and persistent violator points for violations that impact the safety of the public. As a result of these two pieces of legislation, the TLC will establish new rules and will reevaluate the TLC violations which TLC points are attributed to.
It is well known that the vast majority of TLC licensed drivers are safe drivers and this legislation is geared to only affect those drivers who consistently show unsafe driving habits.
The other two items of legislation, intro 276 and 174-A, open data streams between the TLC and the NYPD regarding crashes involving TLC licensed vehicles. This will increase transparency of crash data and give the public an opportunity to do their own analysis on crashes.
Watch the TLC web site at www.nyc.gov/taxi for updates, or to access monthly medallion price charts.