A message to Muslim Americans from your friends

.

Name that drug

                   

I'm wondering if anyone has any ideas or information about a new club drug that might be making the rounds in New York City,  possibly a rape drug. 

I picked up a young woman passenger who was put into the taxi in the financial district by a young man. I will tell you that she is the third such "case" that's been put into my taxi within the past few days. I am used to outer borough passengers who prefer to give turn -by turn directions to a taxi driver, and so I was not alarmed until, close to the exit of the Brooklyn Bridge she would only tell me what neighborhood she was going to, also telling me to bring her home.  She had no information to add. By chance I came upon a cop car and got some help.

Enjoy the video. 

PS I DIDN'T RECORD THE POOR WOMAN'S FACE AS I HAVE NO INTENTION TO HUMILIATE HER. I DO FEAR THAT SHE NEEDS AT LEASE TO BE SEEN IN AN EMERGENCY ROOM BUT THE COPS WE'RE SET ON PUSHING THE SITUATION ONTO ME.

After Yom Kippur the New York Philharmonic Brings In The Big Apple's New Year

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/25/arts/music/for-the-philharmonics-opening-night-a-new-name-and-a-big-gift.html?referer=https://www.google.com/

Yesterday was New York City 's annual "back to normal " day. Imagine the Philharmonic opening before Yom Kippur 

I listened and loved it on WQXR.

Thursday night was rocking night all over NYC for taxi drivers. Even me. Although I lost an hour to a car breakdown and a $28.00 fare to an unfortunate schizophrenic passenger I didn't do too badly. Drivers who had no special drama killed it. My Sherpa Share heat map showed zero uberheat all night.

I'm going to popularize Share with NewYork taxi drivers and we'll kick the shit out of Uber and its underpaid fascist shock troop Goobers. 

So let's cast our bread upon the waters and anticipate good things from God.

Welcome to New York City Pope Francis

You tell 'em!

New York Taxis vs. Uber - Anthony Noto Gets It All Wrong.

http://www.bizjournals.com/newyork/news/2015/08/17/yellow-cab-group-cites-data-to-support-case.html


No, he's not the Anthony  Noto who's Chief Financial Officer  at Twitter. He's a reporter for New York Business Journal.  He actually  was reporting about a report in the New York Daily News.  The big error and misinformation  is that across the  board, New York City cabbies  have lost nine percent of their  income  to Uber.

The fact is that the  taxi business  across the  board has lost receipts,  but there are fewer taxi drivers who are working.  Making it simple : If ten taxi drivers in a hundred driver fleet don't show up to work one day and together make 90 percent of  what 100 drivers would have made then the individual drivers lost nothing overall.

Some yellow taxi drivers  went to Green cabs, and  some went to Uber. Some took two weeks off for the summer, went on extended family vacations  in their home countries.

Chart illustrates how many Uber cars were working  in New York City  and how many and how many fares they  picked up. With an alleged 20,0000 cars, not 14,000 as reported by  Noto, they have 3000 actually working on average.

Summertime  is often the  slowest time for taxi drivers. Well to do New Yorkers are out of town, if not for the  summer  at least several  weeks and weekends.  This summer  the strong dollar  weakened the tourist  trade. Things get back to normal  after the  Jewish  High Holy Days.

Here's a  message to the  taxi bosses and Arro, the new taxi app. Uber spends millions on promotions and advertising.  Just showcasing the new app on Taxi TV will not do the trick. Remember HAILO. 

Thanks Thanks to Thanks to Sherpa Thanks to Sherpa Share Thanks to Sherpa Share I Thanks to Sherpa Share I definitely ste eat eat least eat least one  surge passenger from a heat zone. She definitely  canceled her Goober once she sat down in my taxi.😁

C

Uberwar NYC update 9/01/15.

I downloaded an app that's used by Uber drivers for some business related tasks. The function I was looking for was the heat map. It tells the drivers where there are concentrations of passengers that outnumber Uber cars available to them. Drivers get bonuses and passengers within the warm zones pay premiums called surge prices. UberX can sometimes be cheaper than a yellow taxi but not generally so when surge pricing is in effect.

Above is a screenshot showing where the surge heat was at 2:27 this morning. None in Manhattan, a lot in parts of Brooklyn that were called ghettos not so many years ago. In those Brooklyn heat zones a taxi medallion provided an advantage over green taxis and Ubers evaluated by me at $00.00. IMO where people are looking for Uber's at a premium price there are people who'd cancel an Uber car and grab the taxi if it reached them before the Uber. Tonight I did that twice. Yellow taxi drivers should start doing battle with the goobers in their own comfort zones. 

Starve a goober, smash the surge and make money.

Aiming an Arro at Uber's heart.

Hailo was a taxi hailing app that was destined to fail miserably and that it did. The Taxi and Limousine Commission had blocked the industry from developing its own E hail system, obviously mimicking the referees of professional wrestling matches. Now there's ARRO rolling out this month. I hope to be using it soon along with thousands of other cabbies. I'll be seeking the heat too with the heatmap app by SherpaShare. Don't go to a knife fight wearing a blindfold.

Politics make strange bedfellows. Here's a notice of an anti Uber demonstration to be led by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance and Bhairavi Dessai. The notice was posted by fleet managers in the taxi driver waiting room at "my" garage. Dessai is  the one who worked with Michael Bloomberg to bring in the green taxis and with Bloomberg and Attorney General Eric Schneiderman to destroy taxi fleet leader Yevgeny (Gene) Friedman after he messed with Bloomberg and Uber. I doubt any fleet owner wants to fill his shoes, so the default "industry leader" will be Bhairavi "no skeleton in my closet" Dessai.

Line jumping taxi 1K38 Alltaxi.com Cornell Medical Center 6:57 pm

I like to go to pick up passengers at Cornell Medical Center, which is located at the end of East 68th Street for a whole number of reasons. For one thing it's set up.in a way that lets me wait on an orderly line rather than me racing up and down the streets competing with people who are younger than me. Their reflexes and vision are sharper than mine are. So waiting on a line and getting the luck of the draw, the good fares or the not so good ones, makes sense for me. Also the management of Cornell is thoughtful enough that they allow us taxi drivers to use the good clean restroom facilities of the E.R. while we don't have to worry about getting a parking ticket.

Also I like the idea of serving patients, visitors and the doctors, nurses and workers. Each deserves to be treated with respect, possibly more so than any.random passengers.

So it really bothered me that this character pulled in front of me while I was stopped, waiting for the taxi that had just picked up passengers at the front of the line to pull out, and for the taxis ahead of me to move up a spot. I didn't like it but I'd never thought of making a big deal about it. BUT when two people got into his taxi and a couple of moments later emerged and started walking towards my taxi I got angry. Very angry. This dirtbag was refusing to take them where they wanted to go. Just what they needed as they left the hospital - a rude insult.

Also it was the second insult this slimeball delivered to me directly. Here he's telling me : "I cut you off so that I'd get a fare before you, but these people are not going to be a profitable transaction. So here, chump, they're yours."

Well, I am not any cabbie's back up driver.

I walked over to him. I told him I'm going to report him to the TLC. He flipped the bird, and told me to go fuck myself.

New York City tightens rules for Uber

Last Monday morning the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission voted to tighten it's oversight of Uber. Starting next month Uber will have to give passengers accurate estimates of surge pricing fares, which can be several times their normal advertised rates.

Drivers will be physically unable to input data into their Uber apps while their car is in motion except for one touch to accept a job. Drivers will not be allowed to have more than one app and the app must be attached to the car. The app will not be allowed to have turn by turn navigation directions, and any software change in e hail apps must be reported to the TLC. The original proposed rule required TLC approval of such changes. Uber touts the retreat by the TLC as a major victory. By requiring Uber to report such changes, it's still implicit that the TLC can disapprove a software change.

Also last Monday it had been expected that State Supreme Judge Chen in Queens, was going to require the City to explain why the mayor should not order an immediate ban on Uber. This did not take place. The city made a motion to move the case to Manhattan, apparently a delaying tactic.

Meanwhile traffic has been moving almost ten percent more slowly in Manhattan than in 2011. The TLC and Department of Transportation are sponsoring a City Council Bill to temporarily freeze the addition of livery cars while an environmental impact study is being conducted. Uber did a mass e mail to its customers who live in bill sponsor Steve Kevin's Brooklyn District attacking him. The bill is expected to pass and be signed into law by mayor deBlasio.

Tomorrow is a big day for Uber in New York City.

Tomorrow two important events will take place in New York City that could mean the end of Uber and Lyft as we know them. In the morning the Taxi and Limousine Commission will be meeting at 10:30 to vote on proposed rule changes regarding e hail driver apps. It may finally have dawned on the city's mayor deBlasio that driver apps cause distracted driving and distracted driving causes injuries and deaths as well as property damage. The changes would prohibit driving with more than one app. This one app would have to be engineered so as not to accept driver input while the car is in motion, except that the driver could accept a job with one touch only or with a voice command. The one app limit would force drivers to decide what company they drive for. It would crimp Uber's practice of poaching drivers who use Uber in addition to the app.of an established car service. Uber, backed by speculators, lures drivers into exclusive contracts with one time bonuses. The app would have to be attached to the car and would no longer give a driver turn by turn navigation directions, another advance for public safety. Uber has the support of Google, Facebook, and other tech giants who are threatening mayor deBlasio with a possible loss of jobs.

Also tomorrow a lawsuit against the City of New York, the mayor, the head of the Taxi and Limousine Commission, and the Attorney General of New York State opens up also at 10:30 in the morning. Lenders to taxi medallion owners say that these parties are permitting Uber drivers to unlawfully answer street hails. They are demanding that the law be enforced. 

Tomorrow evening I should have the updates.

It looks like Uber has created an opportunity for taxi drivers in New York City.

When I left NYC in November for three months the fleet I drive for had so many drivers a driver could come to shape up and wait two hours only to be told that there was no car for him and to come back tomorrow.

In order to avoid that unpleasantness I opted for another - a commitment to work six nights a week, which allowed me to come to the garage at five p.m. knowing that I will work regardless of how many other drivers had been there since three. At my age this was becoming quite trying.

When I returned to my garage in February the situation had turned because several of the drivers took a payoff from Uber and left. Now I work a more humane pace, as I.had planned to do, only expecting to be sent home one or two nights a week. Well, that's not the case now. My garage has a good location, otherwise I'd switch. Hmmm maybe I will switch to get those bonuses then come "home"....

If I could freeze frame the Uber situation I'd benefit. I'd have to adopt the attitude of our elected officials and stop worrying about a few pedestrians getting killed by app distracted Uber drivers who are exempt from State and TLC safety standards....

How Uber drivers Jack up their fares and it doesn't matter to me.

Many Uber drivers are clever, and in it for the money. In New York City, where Uber X drivers are licensed by the Taxi and Limousine Commission as livery drivers, surge prices are important to the professional Uber X drivers and these higher prices are important to driver income in many other cities. Uber uses an algorithm that determines the balance between passengers and vehicles on an ongoing basis and when the cars are in greater demand than they are available the fare goes up. Some Uber drivers are taking the situation in hand and trying their hand as surge rain makers. One Los Angeles Uber driver posted a "how to" video that didn't stay online for long. On the forum Uber drivers discuss how to make a surge happen. Their methods include cancellation while en route to a pickup and manipulation of the rider app, which many travel with.

I'm a yellow taxi driver in NYC who so far continues to benefit from Uber drivers activity. I drive for a fleet and all of the fleets are experiencing driver shortages during most shifts. Many taxi drivers went to Uber. At the same time business for the individual yellow taxi drivers still driving yellow doesn't seem to have been negatively impacted, not yet. In other words the decline in yellow taxi customers (which I think is being exaggerated) is matched by a decline in the number of yellow cabs on the streets. The danger lies ahead if Uber makes another leap and taxi owners who can't cover their shifts are driven out of business. Right now Citibank is trying to repossess 90 medallions currently held by Evgeny Friedman, the taxi mogul everyone loves to hate. Friedman hopes to be awarded "too big to fail" status. He controls 800 medallions. It's possible that if these medallions are put on auction by Citibank 14 billion dollars of value could evaporate in New York City and a domino effect may then hit other cities. I'm not a medallion owner.

Attention Uber NYC drivers who feel like they've had enough abuse from Uber.

You probably can escape the fate of an Ubered driver  and become a taxi driving business man or woman. I'm not going to tell you that driving yellow in New York City is the perfect life, but it probably beats driving UberX by far and if you want it driving yellow taxi now opens a door to really having your own small business.

This is a real print out of a real yellow taxi driver's income for a long, hard, rewarding day of work. I figured that this driver made over $240 clear after lease, fees, and customary tipping back.. I estimated his expenses on the high side.

If you own your Uber car you can probably convert it to a yellow taxi. You also would have the option of having one or two drivers working under you and earning money for you while you rest or enjoy a day off.

Yellow taxis will soon have e hail apps installed. I oppose the apps on safety grounds and there are court cases now ongoing that might result in the apps being banned or changed. Yellow taxi drivers and owners feel pressured to use e hail apps. The driver apps will not use smart phones but will be installed in already existing equipment that is used for communication purposes.

If you want to know more about switching from Uber to Yellow you can contact Queens Medallion Leasing at 21-03 44th Avenue Long Island City right next to the upper roadway exit on 21st Street during normal business hours or other taxi management company.