Mayor Michael Bloomberg vs. New York City’s taxi industry: Here’s wishing a plague of boils and oil leaks on both their vile, law-flouting houses

Let me start with my cranky prejudices. I hate New York City taxis.

Generally speaking, New York’s cabs are filthy, uncomfortable rattletraps. The “clear” Plexiglas partitions between the front and back seats (actually, most of them are opaquely grimy), designed to keep the driver from getting shot by a stickup man, can also get a passenger’s face flattened if the vehicle stops suddenly.

The seats in most of New York’s taxis (they’re rejiggered Ford Crown Victorias) are low on the floor. The seats supposedly offer lots of “leg room” but don’t you believe it. The front seats get pushed so far back (I assume for the comfort of the driver) that sometimes passengers can’t even find “foot room.”

Still more reasons to hate New York taxis: The driver’s identification card, only sometimes posted where it’s supposed to be, is generally unreadable behind the filthy Plexiglas shield. At night, lighted by the rough equivalent of a dim flashlight bulb, it’s just as unreadable.

Cell phone madness

Its also rare — extremely rare — to get in a cab in which the driver isn’t chattering away on his cell phone. I’ve had drivers take me to the wrong destination because they were too engrossed in their conversations to listen to where I said I wanted to go or to notice that we had passed my destination.

Much as I hate the taxi industry I also have an equally intense loathing for Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the who's ultimately in charge of regulating taxis.

"The voters be damned!"

Bloomberg campaigned for term limits, got them, and subsequently decided that contrary to the term limits law and he will of the voters, he wanted a third mayoral term. So now he has used his considerable political clout to overrule term limits (which the New York's citizens voted for twice) with the complicity of the City Council. The Council was in effect bribed by having their own term limits lifted, too.

That's only a small part of it. Another item: In his misguided efforts to achieve something that would make his record look good, the mayor unsuccessfully fought for a lunatic congestion pricing plan which would have done little to relieve congestion, but would have driven up the cost of doing business in New York. You’ll find a number of informative rants on the subject here:

Turning yellow cabs “green”

The latest bee in the mayor’s slightly cockeyed bonnet has to do with “green taxicabs” — you know, the kind that spew out less pollution and carbon dioxide and drink up less fossil fuel.

Never mind that Mayor Bloomberg could save New York from tons of hydrocarbons, not to mention a good part of the traffic that’s clogging the streets simply by outlawing cruising. That’s the practice the cabs have of trawling the streets for passengers—a practice that puts just about all 13,000-plus cabs on the city on the street. They're out there 24 hours a day, seven days a week according to a taxi industry legal brief for which I’ll produce a URL shortly.

If we simply had a law like the one in Paris that prevents flagging down taxis in streets, the vehicles could line up at designated taxi stands, engines off, until a passenger came along. And during rush hours, you wouldn’t have potential passengers desperate for a ride wading into oncoming traffic to snare an empty cab.

Less traffic? Less pollution? A safer city? Nope, that would be too easy. Instead, the Bloomberg-controlled Taxi and Limousine Commission suddenly decreed that all new taxis have to be of a new and fuel efficient design that gets 25 miles to the gallon. Nothing wrong with that, right?

Sad to say, wrong.

Cute, clean, green and dangerous —
maybe the mayor’s people can’t read.

There are already some of these cute 25 mpg-or-better vehicles out on the street. I like to ride in  them. They’re of a completely different design than the traditional, modified Ford Crown Victoria that gets only 12 mpg. They’re higher off the ground, therefore more comfortable than the Crown Victoria. They're easier to get into and out of. They seem to offer about the same amount of legroom, but offer passengers the added advantage of being able to sit up straight. And maybe just because they’re new, they’re not as filthy as the Crown Victorias.

A small problem:
they’re also not as safe.

The taxi fleets that successfully sued the Mayor to lift his regulations pleaded that the little cars weren’t as safe as the big Fords. I assumed for many weeks this was just an industry red herring. I was wrong, as I learned when I examined court papers filed by the taxi industry. Some examples of safety problems:

…just weeks ago, the TLC [Taxi and Limousine Commission] was forced to issue a warning and directive stating that one of its mandated after-manufacturer vehicle alterations - the addition of vinyl seat overings – hinder the deployment of side curtain and front seat air bags in the hybrids. Had the TLC taken time to read the owners manuals of the approved vehicles, it would have seen that they explicitly warn against the installation of vinyl seat coverings. The TLC, however, ignored this safety warning and many others in its rush to mandate hybrid taxis.

Oh, and even one of the manufacturers agrees these fuel efficient babies aren’t safe as taxis:

…Toyota, who created and licenses hybrid technology – refuses to support the use of its cars as taxis due to its engineers’ concerns. A Toyota spokesman said: “Our engineers are nervous about it because they were not designed for commercial use. (NY Times, April 27, 2008) Another Toyota representative explained that the hybrids “have not been designed to withstand the rigors of 24/7 commercial use.”

And in the “You’re doing a
heckuva job, Bloomie” department…

In October 2004 the TLC [Taxi and Limousine Commission] conducted a sealed bid auction fort the CNG or hybrid (collectively “alternative fuel”) licenses. The City set the minimum bid price at an amount significantly below the then-prevailing market price for unrestricted licenses because the TLC recognized that alternative fuel vehicles are more costly to own and operate than conventional gasoline-powered vehicles…

…At the time of the auction, the TLC knew that there were no commercially available alternative fuel vehicles that meet TLC specifications for use as a NYC Taxi….Despite the lack of available alternative fuel vehicles, the TLC went forward with the auction …Eighteen of the licenses were successfully bid on…The bidders proposed the use of hybrid Ford Escapes, but the TLC refused to allow them to use these vehicles because they did not meet the TLC specifications for interior room. The TLC rejected all other vehicles the bidders proposed, and did not offer any other vehicles that could be used with the alternative fuel licenses…

Congatulations, license bidder —
you’ve successfully bid on…nothing.

Because the TLC refused to issue the bidders licenses and refused to approve any vehicles for use with the alternative-fuel licenses, on April 21 2005 the bidders sued the TLC demanding that the TLC close on their licenses.

We were for the Hondas before
we were against them —but now we’re
umm...ahh...ummmm....

In July 2008…the Honda Civic Hybrid and Honda Accord Hybrid were removed from the list. Plaintiffs were told that the Honda Civic Hybrid was removed due to particularly poor performance. Later in July, however, the Honda Civic was inexplicably added back to the approval list. In August 2008…the Honda Civic was also removed again.

Here are my own cranky solutions
to New York congestion and taxi problems

1. Outlaw taxi cruising. Require all taxis to wait for passengers at taxi stands, or to be summoned to specific addresses by telephone. It works in Paris, where the streets are even crazier. It'll work here, too.

2. Detroit’s on the rocks. Require them — require them I said — to manufacture hybrid cars safe enough to be used as taxis. Just tell them, “no taxis, no bailout.”

3. With city taxis lined up at taxi stands, it’ll be easy enough to subject them to a daily filth inspection. If they’re filthy inside, cut off their medallions (which the City auctions off like permanent real estate for a minimum upset price of $700,000. In fact, in the aftermarket those medallions sell for well over a million bucks. Is it any wonder a taxi ride costs so damn much in New York, while taxi drivers barely eke out a living working 12 hour days?

4. Stop the city’s cabbies from talking on the phone, with or without hands-free devices. If they’re caught talking on any telephonic devices in their taxis, don’t cut off their medallions. Cut off their ears.

5. Put a moratorium on those million dollar taxi medallions. (An exception can be made for individuals who own just one medallion and are trying to make a living.) After two years, all other medallions should become invalid and the taxi owner (usually a multi-car fleet) will be forced to rent taxi medallions from the city for an annual and more reasonable price. The city will collect a steady income stream — instead of an occasional taxi medallion windfall that the city then has to pay for by spewing more taxis onto the street. And because taxi overhead will be so much lower, drivers who lease their cars should be able to earn more, while passengers pay less.

But it all has to start with dumping Mayor Bloomberg. Despite a considerable amount of image doctoring, he’s not a successful mayor. He’s just as incompetent as George Bush. Send him back to Wall Street, with the rest of the investment world failures.

As giant cranes tumble on New York pedestrians, a smallfry politician offers a plan to protect you. With this.

Man, it’s getting tougher and tougher to live in New York and – sorry Mike – before I get to the smallfry, it’s time to start socking it a little harder to outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

For a long time Bloomberg appeared to be on a quest for – what was it again, the Presidency of the United States? Anyway, his quest led him to nanny the city into smoking bans in bars, calorie postings next to menu items in fast food restaurants, a failed try to tax citizens from the outer boroughs who dared to drive into Manhattan, and a whole lot of traveling away from the city – instead of staying where the Mayor’s ought to have been keeping an eye on things.

Meanwhile, certain basic services that have always been the city’s responsibility got, uh, shall we say neglected?

When the mayor’s away
the rats will play

For example, while the Mayor traveled around the United States last year, evidently in a failed attempt to seek a Presidential nomination, his health inspectors were giving passing grades to rat-infested restaurants.

Had the mayor but stayed home and walked around his city a bit more often, he might have seen what thousands of residents of Greenwich Village saw: a virtual rat menagerie attracting crowds as the cute little critters skittered around the restaurant.

Eventually that led to TV news coverage of the restaurant rat zoo and an ensuing scandal. The health inspector who for one reason or another – Do I detect the aroma of bribe money? – gave the rodent-infested eatery a passing grade was relieved from duty.

Of course – to deliberately and horribly mix a sackful of metaphors – that was closing the barn door after the rats were out of the bag. But hey, better late than never.

You’d think the mayor might be inspired by this ratty scandal to do a top-to-bottom review of what, whether and how the city’s myriad inspectors were doing their jobs, which were designed to protect the public’s health and safety. But no.

Look out…below-o-o-o-oh!

So then, surprise! Last March, a giant construction crane collapsed, flattening a townhouse and killing seven people below, after a building inspector gave a passing grade to the crane – which it turns out he hadn’t inspected.

Well, Bloomberg was busy fighting for his failed congestion pricing plan at the time. Had he but succeeded, future victims of collapsing cranes at least wouldn’t be inhaling the fumes from quite so many cars – Mayor Bloomberg’s limo excepted.

Little wonder, with not only his presidential ambitions thwarted, but also his mayoral record tarnished, the mayor has been appearing even crankier than The New York Crank. In fact, if you Google “Mayor Bloomberg getting testy,” you’ll find something like 27,000 entries.

When the bigwigs fail,
the lightweights rush in

Already, the local political vultures are pouncing on the carrion of Michael Bloomberg’s mayoral career. Recently, I received an e-mail that New York State Assemblyman Johnathan L. Bing sent to all of his constituents.

In yet another case of rats, barn doors and bags, Assemblyman Bing revealed his efforts to pass legislation that hereafter would penalize inspectors more severely after the cranes they don’t inspect collapse on people.

Here’s an idea worth bagging

But best of all, as part of the collapsing crane discussion in his e-mail, Assemblyman Bing announced this stunningly helpful initiative:

Assemblyman Bing will be hosting an event later this month with the American Red Cross to inform constituents about emergency preparedness and to give away free "Go Bags" containing supplies that New Yorkers should have in case of emergency.

"Go Bag?"

That’s the knapsack-sized bag up at the top of the page. So hey, I’m not worried any more. If a 10-ton crane falls on my head, I’ll simply unzip the knapsack that no doubt I’ll be carrying with me everywhere, whip out a bandage, and put it on my crushed skull. Why, there might even be a bottle of water for me to sip, assuming I’m still alive and not quite totally paralyzed.

Hide-And-Go-Tax mayor socks New Yorkers with a killer water bill.

Water bill?

No, not for bottled water. I’m talking about the “free” stuff that pours out of the faucets in New York.

In a town fed by one of the planet’s best reservoir systems, with rainfall in excess of plentiful for the past few months, with no forseeable likelihood that New York is going to run out of the stuff in the next 100 years, New Yorkers are about to get socked with what is likely to be yet another staggering increase in their water bills.

The price of drinking tap water, brushing your teeth, taking a shower or flushing a toilet is going up by double digits once again. Said a blog called DMI Blog last year:

Compounded annually, the 54% increase in water and sewer rates in New York City that the Water Board is projecting over the next four years will mean more maxed-out homeowners going into foreclosure, more affordable housing managers struggling to keep their buildings afloat, and (since all costs trickle down) higher rents for the millions of rent stabilized tenants, many who already pay half of their income on rent.

And that was a year ago!

What’s behind the increase?
Follow Mayor Bloomberg's failings.

It turns out that behind two years of average double-digit increases is Mayor Bloomberg, picking his citizens’ pockets as they bend over the water cooler. And at the same time he's failing to do a proper job of collecting on water bills the city is already owed.

Hey, I don’t begrudge the mayor money to run the city. But how about a straightforward fairly graduated income tax hike and some city hall management efficiency, rather than a sneak attack on citizens who, regardless of income, suddenly have to pay through the nose to pee – least if they want to flush?

Another expose of the Mayor’s attempt to quietly pick his fellow citizens’ pockets appeared last Friday in the New York Post.

New York City Comptroller, William C. Thompson, who no doubt now finds himself inhabiting the Mayor’s Snit List revealed:

The Water Board leases the water and sewer infrastructure from the city. The board's rent payments to the city are based on a formula that until recently simply reimbursed the city for water-related debt service on bonds issued before the Water Authority was created.

But, since 2005, rental payments under that formula have exceeded the amount needed to pay down this old debt. This "excess rent" will total $77 million in fiscal year 2008 and grow to over $175 million by fiscal year 2011. This cash flows into the city's general fund, to be used as any other general revenue.

In other words, the Mayor is jacking up the city’s water bill and siphoning the excess into his general revenues. It’s a hidden tax, and its purpose is plain:

Pickpocket Mike wants to fund his city without having to raise income or real estate taxes.

An honest tax hike only looks bad
if you’re running for something.

An equitable income tax hike will make you look bad – despite its probable legitimacy – if you decide to run for office. Say, for Vice-President. Or for Governor of New York State next year. Or for senator to fill Hillary Clinton’s seat if she gets elected to the presidency. (Given the Mayor’s penchant for switching and abandoning parties, it’s a bit difficult to say which party’s principles he stands for or what ticket he would run on.)

Oh, and then there’s the matter of getting the mayor do his job. Part of that job is collecting monies already owed the city so he doesn’t have to raise the ante for honest people who do pay on time. The DMI Blog article pointed out that there’s a…

…plethora of billing errors that prevent the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) from enforcing collections resulting in more than $600 million in unpaid water bills…

This is a mayor who has traveled to Beijing in search of “new ideas” and around America last year in search of – well, who knows what, but at the time it looked like electoral votes.

Meanwhile, nobody in City Hall was minding the store. Which may account for everything from that uncollected $600 million to death-dealing crane collapses that resulted because Mayor’s building inspectors weren’t really inspecting.

The price of mayoral negligence is death

That crane collapse – a killer of seven people – was just the tip of the iceberg, Scott Stringer, the Manhattan Borough President revealed.

"We've had partial building collapses; we've had fires in buildings," said Stringer, "we've had cranes pummeling down shafts in buildings; we've had loss of life injuries. This incident is just the latest example of needless people dieing because we do not have proper safety protocols in this city."

Hey, it’s worth your money and your life to trying to survive in New York City when you have a mayor sniffing around everybody’s job in everybody’s city but his own. As for you folks who think you can save costs by conserving water, fuhgheddaboudid.

Said the DMI blog: "…they still need to collect a certain amount, so the more water we conserve, the more they'll charge us for it!"

Sweltering New Yorkers endure a forced march, traffic clogs the streets, and Mayor Bloomberg’s “congestion pricing” won’t fix it

I woke up at 5 AM this morning to the sounds of thunder and a loud tattoo of rain on the air conditioner outside my bedroom window.

By the time I got downstairs to breakfast, CNN was reporting that most of the West Side subways were suffering severe delays or had come to a dead stop due to flooding. Yeah, flooding. The City of New York is getting to resemble a third world country. It rains for two hours and the city's mass transit arteries suffer the municipal equivalent of a stroke.

As I write this, CNN has posted a story saying that the whole subway system, including that on the East Side, is kaput for the moment.

"Due to severe flooding throughout the subway system, there are extensive delays on all subway lines," said a statement from the Metro Transit Authority (MTA). "Customers are advised when at all possible to use bus service." http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/08/08/nyc.weather/index.html

Bus service? You gotta be kidding!

I figured that it would be crazy to go down into the Number 6 subway line during this kind of mess. Unfortunately, I forgot that you should never put your trust in the Metropolitan Transit Authority. So this morning I hiked over to Fifth Avenue where there are bus lines that would get me fairly close to my office.

Lotsa luck! Where normally there are sometimes four or five people during rush hour waiting at the stop that serves me, there were now about 100 New Yorkers lined up for the next bus – more than could crowd onto a bus even if the bus arrived empty. A bus crawled right past them – already packed too full to take on more riders.

I started to walk. Bus stops further down the line were equally crammed with discouraged would-be riders. But I wasn’t the lone hiker. Platoons of grimly resigned people were trudging toward midtown. It was not a good day for a long walk. The temperature humidity index is supposed to make it feel like 105 degrees by noon today.

Meanwhile, Fifth Avenue was clogged – with buses, taxis, trucks, a few private cars, and lots and lots of limos and chauffeur-driven SUVs. Nothing was moving. Nada. Zip. The city has gridlock growing on its gridlock. The photograph above is just a bit of what I saw.

The goose egg nightmare

What effect would congestion pricing have? On a day like today, draw yourself a huge goose egg.

Desperate commuters from the outlying boroughs – and from the ‘burbs where there are also service “delays” today – desperate commuters can’t very easily walk the five, or ten, or twelve or 40 miles to the office. Even if it costs them two hours or more of extra commuting time in a gridlocked automobile, or an extra eight bucks, they’ll drive.

And on an “ordinary” day?

The guys in the limos won’t miss the eight bucks. The trucks have to get through, no matter what. The taxis will still be here. You may scare away a few automobile commuters, but you won’t achieve more than that.

To the extent that congestion pricing works at all, more hapless commuters than we have today will be driven into the dangerously crowded subways or aboard the jam-packed buses at rush hour. Which will simply make travel easier for limousine-riding billionaires like the mayor. They'll simply pay the eight bucks and laugh all the way to their power breakfasts.

Who wants a practical solution? Not the mayor.

A practical thinker might suggest that if Mayor Bloomberg really wants to get more people on mass transit, the first thing he’d do is work to improve mass transit. Improve the infrastructure and they will come. Drive them into the crumbling infrastructure with a punitive equivalent of a fine for driving and they will merely suffer.

The mayor might try to find way to help speed up construction of the under- construction- for-40-years Second Avenue Subway. Find funds to help the Metropolitan Transit Authority (admittedly not under his control) put more buses into service. Encourage cyclists instead of having his cops arrest them at every opportunity.

The city’s controller has already suggested something like this – a way to help out but still keep subway riding affordable for the average working stiff.
http://www.ny1.com/ny1/NewsBeats/transit.jsp

But don't count on Mayor Bloomberg for anything like that. Shuffling money around, even for a good cause, won’t get him the kind of notice he wants when he’s running for President. As reported at various times on this blog, the Mayor is definitely out to run as a third party candidate, which will make him the most arrogant spoiler in U.S. politics since Ralph Nader.

Oh yes, as if to confirm the matter once again, the New York Daily News caught the off-guard mayor talking about his presidential ambitions.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2007/08/08/2007-08-08_juror_mike_was_dc_dreamin-1.html

Hey Bubblehead, how many times do I have to tell you not to shoot your mouth off among strangers on elevators?

It this what New York Mayor Bloomberg’s cops are planning to do to peaceful protestors and people who expose cops violating the law?

According to a blog called The Real Estate Observer, connected to The New York Observer, a weekly newspaper, New York’s “finest” may be planning to beat the crap out of some people the cops don’t like.

The story is entitled, "Cop-Blog Ranters Vow Vengeance Against 'Radical' Bicyclists." You'll find it at this address: http://therealestate.observer.com/2007/03/copblog-ranters-vow-vengeance-against-radical-bicyclists.html


How all this came about is a bit involved, so please bear with me. It starts with another website, Uncivil Servants.org. Uncivil servants is related to a group called Transportation Alternatives. The Uncivil Servants website is dedicated to exposing illegal and dangerous parking by all kinds of city employees – not just cops – on the sidewalks, in front of fire hydrants, in bus stops and other locations.
http://nyc.uncivilservants.org/

The site posts photographs and videos of illegally parked cars and forged parking permits, and highlights a general "to-hell-with-the-law-or-public-safety" attitude of some of the city’s employees who use their cars for personal commuting and then park wherever they feel like parking.

This exposure has led to considerable rage among New York Police Department officers. They've expressed their feelings on their own blog, NYPD Rant. You’ll find it at:
http://p066.ezboard.com/NYPD-RANT/bnypdrant64609

It’s not easy to access everything on that’s posted on NYPD Rant. Full use requires registration. Quite frankly, The New York Crank didn’t bother trying. But I saw enough to confirm the Real Estate Observer’s story. Specifically:

“Commenters have posted pictures of Paul White and Matthew Roth, two honchos at Transportation Alternatives, who are supposedly going to be riding in… [another group’s protest ride].

"’These lawbreaking cycle pirates must be stopped!!" writes Blue Trumpet on NYPD Rant.

“Gimmelosttime adds: 'Someone please hammer these 2 turds this weekend.’"

The site is difficult to navigate, but also refers to quotas – presumably arrest or ticket quotas – which the NYPD officially insist do not exist. Surf around the website for a while and you'll also find a picture a police badge with the number covered by masking tape - what cops have been known to do to avoid identification when they engage in illegal behavior in uniform.

And there are other encitements to bad cop behavior, including what I sincerely hope is an out-of-context quote from Mayor Bloomberg that "you can't fire someone for things they do outside the office." It's not hard to translate what that one means in its cop rant context: "If you're not on duty and you find one of those Transportation Alternatives people, give him a thorough tuneup."

So what is Mayor Bloomberg doing about physical threats of violence against civilians who have committed no crime? Or about investigating “nonexistent” police quotas that encourage cops to improperly ticket other peoples' cars and make improper arrests?

Why, exactly what he appears to have done about documented (sometimes with license plates photographs) illegal parking by city employees.

Nothing.

P.S. I haven’t been to the news stands yet, but someone called to say that this week’s issue of New York Magazine evidently diss-es one of the two New York Mayors Who Would Be President (the other is Rudy You-Know-Who) by calling attention to Bloomberg inadequacy in managing his job.

More on this topic after the article makes it to the web next week, so you can refer to it yourself. Also to come one of these weeks: What most of America doesn’t know about Giuliani.