Newsman: Cabbies and drivers for ride-hailing apps, who have spent years dueling for passengers on city streets, found themselves aligned in asking the governor to spare them from additional congestion pricing fees.
At a New York Taxi Workers Alliance rally in front of Gov. Kathy Hochul’s Midtown office, drivers for yellow taxis and app-based ride-hailing services called on Albany to exempt them from being tagged with more surcharges that are supposed to be a boon for the MTA, but which could take a heavy toll on drivers for hire.
“It’s not good for the drivers, because the prices are going to be up for the passengers,” said Harouna Cisse, 56, who has been driving five years for Uber after previously being a yellow taxi driver. “That’s bad news for all of us — yellow, Uber and Lyft drivers.”
“We’re really outraged and disgusted by the money grab of the MTA that would lead to massive job losses for thousands and thousands of drivers in this city,” said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance. “Drivers are facing down a barrel where your only choices are going to be: You either lose your lifetime job or you remain an indentured servant to the MTA.”
“The MTA has been broke since the day before I became a cab driver,” Jawaid Poppa, 55, a taxi driver for 27 years, told THE CITY. “And after 27 years, they’re still broke — we didn’t create their problems and their problems are not our problems.”
The potential tolls — which aim to cut traffic in Manhattan’s “central business district” and raise billions of dollars for transit improvements — could tack up to $19 on passengers in every yellow taxi and for-hire vehicle trip south of 60th Street, according to a series of scenarios included in an environmental assessment released earlier this month.
The rally united drivers who have long been on opposite sides, with the shrinking taxi business losing ground to tech companies like Uber and Lyft whose growth went unregulated for years.
But with the long-delayed congestion pricing proposal now beginning to take shape, the drivers found common ground in pushing back against potential fees that the report acknowledges could have an “adverse economic impact” on the taxi and for-hire vehicle (FHV) industry.
