A Manhattan federal court chastised City Hall on Tuesday for failing to comply with a legal deal that was originally intended to make half of all New York yellow cabs wheelchair accessible by 2020.
The historic 2013 agreement between advocates for New Yorkers with disabilities and the Taxi & Limousine Commission, praised ten years ago by United States District Court Judge George Daniels as “one of the most significant acts of inclusion since Jackie Robinson joined the Dodgers,” missed its initial deadline in 2020 and was not extended until 2023.
Daniels put pressure on the city’s attorneys on Tuesday to develop a plan outlining how the 50% target can be achieved in less than two weeks.
Recalling how both parties had decided more than ten years earlier that a settlement was “the practical way to go,” Daniels said, “This is what you promised to do.”
The city is having difficulty meeting the 50% threshold out of 13,587 medallion taxis, Michelle Goldberg-Cahn of City Hall’s law department acknowledged in court. Citing industry upheaval since the original settlement, such as the collapse of medallion values, the rise of app-based ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft, and a pandemic that sank ridership, she added that “it’s very impractical to meet the obligation, almost to the point of impossible.”
By the beginning of 2024, 4,406 yellow taxis—roughly 32% of the fleet—were completely accessible, with 3,753 of them in operation, according to the TLC. There are already about 9,000 wheelchair-accessible automobiles on the road, including vehicles for hire.
Just 231 wheelchair-accessible yellow cabs, or less than 2% of the total, were registered with TLC at the time of the settlement.
