Saturday 20th February 2021
“Pandemic is devastating”
New York taxis are struggling to survive
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The famous “Yellow Cabs” shape the cityscape of New York. The corona crisis is hitting the taxi industry particularly hard there. Instead of 20 minutes, drivers now wait up to two hours for a customer. Some leave their yellow taxi completely in the garage. Driving is hardly worth it anymore.
Day and night they were ubiquitous on the streets of New York. They stood for the metropolis like the Empire State Building: the world-famous yellow taxis. But because many New Yorkers are now working at home, schools are closed and there are hardly any tourists, the pandemic could cause the iconic vehicles to disappear from the cityscape.
One morning at La Guardia airport, a few dozen “yellow cabs” are waiting for customers in the freezing cold. “This parking lot used to be full of hundreds of taxis, and there was even a line outside,” says 65-year-old driver Joey Olivo. “Now there are only around 50 and you wait two hours, whereas before you only had to wait 20 minutes.” His earnings have fallen by 80 percent, says Olivo. “I used to make $ 1,000 a week, now $ 200 or $ 300.” If his wife didn’t “earn good money” as a nurse, he wouldn’t know what to do next.
New York taxi drivers, most of them first-generation immigrants, used to earn $ 7,000 or more a month by working overtime, seven days a week. But then the competition from Uber, Lyft and other transport services drastically reduced their income. With the pandemic it is now “in free fall”, says the 62-year-old taxi driver Richard Chow, who comes from Myanmar.
Uber traf Taxi branch heart
Chow is lucky, he bought his taxi license – known as the “Medallion” in New York – for $ 410,000 in 2006. In the years that followed, these license fees continued to rise, fueled by a network of bankers, investors and lawyers. In 2009, his younger brother Kenny Chow paid $ 750,000 for his medallion, and in 2014 the price reached $ 1 million.
The success of Uber and Co. then burst the bubble and bankrupted thousands who had bought the license on credit. Desperate, Kenny Chow and at least seven other drivers committed suicide in 2018. Now the coronavirus has made the situation even worse. “The pandemic is devastating,” says Bhairavi Desai of the Taxi Workers Alliance. “Before the pandemic, the number of passengers had dropped by 50 percent, now the decrease is at 90 percent.”
According to the union, of around 13,000 licenses, only around 5,000 taxis currently drive regularly. About 7000 don’t even leave their garage. William Pierre continues to drive, despite making little more than $ 100 to $ 150 a day. He still has to give 50 percent of this to the company from which he leases his vehicle. “I don’t want to stay at home,” says the Haitian driver. “I want to be out there to support my family.”
Union calls for debt relief
Could the yellow taxis that replaced striped vehicles in the 1960s actually become extinct? Union representative Desai is calling for the city to cancel the debt of the drivers so it doesn’t come to that. And New York Mayor Bill de Blasio promised help if the federal government in Washington gives the city hard by the pandemic a helping hand.
The union is now stepping up the protests, with dozens of drivers blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge last Wednesday. “When you see that yellow, you know you’re in New York,” enthuses Desai. “It is a landmark, part of the economic, social and cultural fabric of our beautiful city.”
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