NYCYellowCabTaxi.com

NY House Dems call on city to bail out thousands of cab drivers suffering because of taxi medallion ‘crisis’

by
Mouhamadou Aliyu with his cab on Thursday. (Barry Williams/for New York Daily News)

With thousands of struggling New York City yellow cab drivers like Mouhamadou Aliyu desperate for a bailout, elected officials on Thursday quarreled over who should pay for it.

Aliyu, 47, emigrated from the Ivory Coast to New York in 1994 in hope of a better life. Now, thanks to plummeting yellow cab medallion values and predatory lending practices, he’s $700,000 in debt and often considers killing himself.

“I’m under water. I can barely survive,” said Aliyu, who bought a taxi medallion for $370,000 in 2004. “We are asking for relief because we really have nothing to do with all this suffering, but we’re the ones who are paying the price.”

Read more

‘Cash Cab’ is filming in NYC again this summer, with a pop culture twist

by
Cash Cab” host, Ben Bailey, drives his cab around the Upper East Side

This commute comes with a (potential) cash payout.

Ben Bailey’s “Cash Cab” is set to begin filming in Manhattan again this summer, this time under a new network.

The taxi cab game show has been acquired by Bravo, after airing two revived seasons on Discovery, the network confirmed. The 11th season was its last on Discovery.

Read more

Notorious Debt Collector in Taxi Industry Is Arrested

by
Several weeks after a New York Times investigation into the taxi trade, the New York City sheriff’s office arrested an industry leader for impersonating a city marshal

Anthony J. Medina, who was charged with pretending to be a city law enforcement official to intimidate yellow cabdrivers, was arrested after an investigation in The New York Times.

In the rough-and-tumble New York City taxi industry, Anthony J. Medina was an enforcer.

For years, Mr. Medina was the go-to debt collector for banks that lent money to drivers seeking to buy a permit to own a cab. If a driver fell behind on payments, it was Mr. Medina’s job to ensure the driver paid up. Sometimes, he temporarily seized the car. Other times, he confronted people on the street. Occasionally, drivers said, he flashed a gun.

Read more

New York City’s safest cabdrivers join TLC’s honor roll

by

Patience is not lost on Ali Abubakar among the hustle of a New York rush hour.

A yellow-cab driver from the South Bronx, Abubakar, 43, was one of 493 professional drivers the city honored Wednesday for their sterling driving record. Abubakar completed 10,830 trips between 2016 and 2018 without a single moving violation, crash involving injury or city safety violation.

His secret of navigating chaotic city streets: patience and faith.

Read more

Cash-strapped veteran cab driver hangs himself in his Queens garage

by

A Queens cabbie who drove a yellow taxi for three decades hanged himself in his garage after suffering massive financial woes in the era of Uber, officials and friends said Wednesday.

Nicanor Ochisor, 65, was found hanging from a wooden beam in his garage on 58th Road near 69th Lane in Maspeth Friday morning, police said.

Taxi advocates quickly blamed the Romanian immigrant’s suicide on the glut of drivers working for app-driven, for-hire companies like Uber and Lyft taking money from medallion drivers.

Read more