NYC Taxi Drivers Begin Taxi Strike

Monday, October 22nd 2007, 9:31 am

By: News On 6

NEW YORK (AP) _ Some of the city's taxi drivers went on strike Monday to protest new rules requiring installation of equipment that would let passengers watch TV, pay with credit cards and check their location on GPS.

City officials say the touch screen devices help passengers by making payments more convenient and lost items easier to locate. But the Taxi Workers Alliance said it called the strike _ the second over the issue in six weeks _ because the technology is a costly invasion of cabbies' privacy and works erratically at best.

It wasn't immediately clear how many drivers were honoring the strike.

Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the Taxi Workers Alliance, said 75 percent of all cabs were on strike. The alliance claims to represent about a fifth of the city's 44,000 licensed cab drivers.

However, yellow cabs were lined up as usual Monday morning at the city's major transportation hubs, and taxis were seen on many streets.

``We are monitoring conditions and at this point have not observed a significant drop in the number of taxis on the road,'' said Andrew Troisi, a spokesman for the city's Office of Emergency Management.

Cabbie Jose Torres, who honored a two-day taxi strike last month, said he was working this time because he was afraid commuters would become accustomed to other means of transportation.

``People will learn to take trains,'' Torres said.

Although passengers could still easily find cabs, payment was unusually complicated. Under rules put in place just for the strike, the city required working yellow cabs to pick up multiple passengers, and charge fares on a zone-based system.

Passengers had to pay $10, plus $5 for each new ``zone'' they passed through. Manhattan was divided into four zones, and each of the outer boroughs counted as another. Riders between Manhattan and the city's airports were charged a flat, per-person fare of $20 for LaGuardia and $30 for Kennedy.

The new technology is being phased in as yellow cabs come up for inspection.

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

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

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