Wanna cab without having to stick your arm out? You’ll soon have an app for that.
In a win for 21st-century taxi riders, state Supreme Court Justice Carol Huff tossed out all claims raised by livery cabs trying to block yellow cabs from participating in a novel e-hail system.
Last fall, the city announced a pilot program encouraging several tech companies to develop apps that would allow the hailing of cabs via smart phones.
Black livery cabs immediately sued. They claimed that e-hails were more like residential pickups reserved for livery cabs, as opposed to street hails, which have legally been the purview of yellow cabs.
Huff rejected that and other bogus notions wholesale. Taxi & Limousine Commission head David Yassky applauded her verdict this way: “This decision is a victory for all the riders who want to decide for themselves what technologies and services they want to use.”
Well, yes and no.
Yes, it’s a victory for New York City riders, in that they’ll now be able to hail a cab with the push of a phone icon.
Yet last year the yellow cabs successfully knocked back a city plan that would have expanded livery service in the outer boroughs and northern Manhattan.
Justice Huff’s decision is a victory for more rider choice and market freedom. But so long as New York’s taxi system remains defined by a nearly 80-year-old service model — i.e., a city-approved monopoly fueled by an expensive medallion system — Gothamites remain a long way from having the opportunity to choose the “technologies and services they want to use.”