Laurie Penny, a British writer for “the New Statesmen, Independent, Guardian, Al-Jazeera, The Nation and others” (according to her Twitter), just had the dreamiest brush with death ever. Ryan Gosling, he who breaks up fights in the middle of the street, stopped Ms. Penny from walking directly into a speeding taxi in New York today. Read More
New Yorkers have little interaction with the transportation workers that bring them from work to culinary class to preschool to home. But their presence is quintessential: subway conductors are there for the cheap rides and taxis are perfect for time crunches or corporate expense accounts. You know that MTA workers have health benefits—oh, you know all about MTA spending—but have you ever considered the health and welfare of taxi drivers? Read More
After six months of hard negotiations between Governor Cuomo, Mayor Bloomberg and the Legislature, a deal was finally struck yesterday to bring more taxicabs to the outer boroughs and upper Manhattan.
The sale of the new medallion yellow cabs will inject a billion dollars into the city’s coffers. In addition, with 24,000 new cabs (eventually), it will now be possible to hail one in the outer boroughs. Sounds like a brilliant idea, so why were we stuck on the corner, trying to hail a deal for six months?
Well it seems those pesky ‘needs of the disabled’ cropped up… again. There was also the issue of disgruntled current taxi drivers, who now face competition with 18,000 “hailing” livery cabs. Read More
Starting this week New Yorkers with iPhones will be able to pay for subways, trains and taxis using Visa’s paywave program.
Users just slip their iPhones into a special case that contains a secure memory card. While it’s Apple only for now, this technology could be ported to any phone with a memory card Read More
