In 2011, Gary Roth, a TLC policy analyst during 20, penned a damning internal memo that forewarned a possible taxi medallion crisis. By 2014, the City was able to inflate the price of medallions to over $1 million and had made nearly $855 million off the backs of the mostly immigrant workforce. The City also manipulated public medallion price data. In 2019, a bombshell New York Times investigation exposed a City-sponsored scheme to raise municipal revenue by artificially inflating the value of medallions by over 500 percent. “He promised that the City of New York would guarantee our investment and that it would be solid.” “Bloomberg mentioned that the American dream was just a step away from us and we were buying a piece of New York,” says Salazar. To Salazar’s surprise, Bloomberg himself was there to give a few brief words of encouragement. As he describes it, the ballroom was packed with over 100 interested cab drivers, all eager to learn as much as they could. Thus, in 2004 after seeing one of the ads promoting an upcoming medallion information session at a LaGuardia Airport hotel ballroom, he made sure to attend.
S AND S TAXI DRIVERS
The fliers read: “Do you want to own a piece of New York?” Yellow Cabs Were a Path to a Middle Class Lifeįor many drivers like Victor Salazar, who spent so many countless grueling hours behind the wheel of their cabs and barely getting by, the opportunity to be an owner of their own business was too good of any opportunity to pass up. The taxi medallion crisis began in 2004 during the Bloomberg administration when cab drivers across the City were lured into purchasing medallions by alluring ads placed strategically in immigrant newspapers that promised drivers a way to buy into the American dream. As of 2018, eight drivers have died by suicide. Some succumbed to the intense financial pressure. On average, cab drivers owed $600,000 medallion debt a nearly impossible sum to pay back as they worked in a dying industry. With Uber and Lyft flooding the market and the City’s failing to quickly regulate ride-share apps, yellow cabs couldn’t compete.Ĭab drivers were left struggling to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in accumulating debt for medallions that became virtually worthless overnight. Highly regulated, as of 2014, the City had limited the number of yellow cabs available to about 13,500.īut rideshare vehicles had no such limits the amount of them on the streets tripled between 20, from 40,000 vehicles to over 120,000. As of September, taxi medallions are a meager $80,000. But since the proliferation of Uber, Lyft, and other rideshare apps beginning in 2011, the medallion value has plummeted. The value of medallions soared due to the City’s artificial inflation of medallion values to drive up revenue. At their height in 2014, yellow cab medallions were selling for $1 million.
Since 2011, yellow taxi revenues have dropped by more than 30%. Yet, over the past decade, driving a yellow taxi has now become a never-ending nightmare due to the taxi medallion crisis.ĭONATE NOW How NYC Inflated Prices and Manufactured the Taxi Medallion Crisis At one time, the profession was, for many immigrants, a solid pathway towards building the “American dream”. Traditionally, yellow taxi have served as the international icon of New York City and its drivers are often been viewed as the city’s unofficial ambassadors. It all culminated when the de Blasio administration announced that it has reached an agreement with the New York Taxi Workers Alliance ( NYTWA) and Marblegate Asset Management, the largest medallion lender, to initiate a taxi medallion debt restructuring plan that would provide affordable repayment rates to drivers as well as ensuring a city-funded guarantee on the principal and interest for medallion loans.įor the cabbies celebrating, the mayor’s announcement, as well as the overwhelming public support they received, served as a vindication of their decades-long struggle for survival.
They had just endured an arduous two-week-long hunger strike and a nearly three-month-long encampment to demand an equitable city debt relief plan, also known as the “Taxi Medallion Crisis”. On a picture-perfect early November afternoon, dozens of yellow taxi drivers danced and feasted in a celebration outside City Hall.