New York, NY: Today, the Traffic Mobility Review Board released a proposal that includes a $1.25 per trip congestion fee on taxi drivers in Manhattan’s Central Business District.

NYTWA Executive Director Bhairavi Desai (she/her) released the following statement:

“This is a reckless proposal that will devastate an entire workforce. Yellow cab drivers already pay two taxes to the MTA, which add up to $15,000 per year on average. Meanwhile, trips are still down 50 percent since COVID and 40 percent of yellow cab medallions are not even operational on the streets.

“The MTA staff that guided the Traffic Mobility Review Board toward its recommendation should be ashamed. The MTA caved to Uber’s lobbying and took an initiative that was about reducing congestion and improving mass transit and turned it into a death knell for Uber’s competitors. The congestion pricing coalition, economists and an unprecedented number of legislators called for a taxi exemption. The MTA heard only the one voice that lobbied against it.

“The city has already decimated the taxi industry with years of unregulated, unchecked competition from Uber and Lyft, and the MTA seems poised to land a final blow to the prospect of stability and modest survival. If this proposal is implemented, thousands of driver families will get dragged back into crisis-level poverty with no relief in sight.

“Uber and Lyft have shown elasticity to bounce back when rates are raised, meaning they’ve retained ridership and are close to pre-COVID numbers. And because of NYTWA’s campaign for an Uber/Lyft driver pay floor, app drivers now earn their gross pay on each trip based on regulated per minute and per mile rates. These are guaranteed rates that the companies must pay drivers regardless of what the companies charge passengers.

“Yellow cab drivers, however, have no protections for their earnings. Drivers deduct these taxes from their gross fares. The taxi industry has neither elasticity with trip retention, nor bounce back post-COVID and will face a serious existential crisis from further loss of trips.

“Drivers will be in perpetual poverty, and owner-drivers whose loans are still not under the city-backed guarantee will be stuck in life-long debt, or the city will face a loss from defaults.

“This is the third tax on taxi trips and taxis have been paying taxes to the MTA since 2009, long before anyone else. This terrible proposal ignores the devastation about to be unleashed on a workforce the federal government found to be an environmental justice community.

“We are going to fight this until the final hour and explore every strategy from legislation to litigation.”

The MTA will take more than half of the starting fare on taxi trips during the daytime. Out of $8.25, drivers would have $3 toward lease/mortgage, gasoline, repairs, maintenance, insurance, licensing, parking and other operational costs before a penny for themselves. Drivers are thirty times more likely to be killed on the job than other workers. They have no guaranteed income, benefits, retirement or paid time off. Drivers keep NYC moving when MTA shuts down. Now, the MTA wants to shut them down. This is a disgrace.