Protesting cabbies cry out: Hail no!
An all-out taxi war erupted yesterday at City Hall over Mayor Bloomberg's plan to issue 30,000 permits letting livery drivers legally pick up street hails in the outer boroughs and northern Manhattan.
The protest will turn on Albany today, when opponents of the plan vow to ring the state Capitol with hundreds of yellow cabs.
"Shame on City Hall!" Fernando Mateo, president of the New York State Federation of Taxi Drivers, said at a City Hall rally yesterday. "We're not going to allow it to happen. It's not going to happen."
If approved by the state Legislature, the new permits would cost just $1,500 for three years.
But cab owners and their financial backers warned of a meltdown in the value of taxi medallions with the addition of a new class of cabs that could compete for yellow taxis' once-exclusive right to street hails.
"They could actually cause a taxi bubble as bad as the housing bubble," said Richard Kay, CEO of the LOMTO Federal Credit Union.
City Councilman Robert Jackson (D-Manhattan) called that concern overblown.
"We don't see it impacting [the yellow-cab industry] at all because the livery drivers would not be allowed to cruise or pick up anyone in Midtown," Jackson said. "Basically, they would be segregated to the areas they serve now."
Lawsuits are inevitable, opponents said.
The borough-only permits would also be valid in northern Manhattan and above 96th Street on the East Side and 110th Street on the West Side.
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