John Asmah has been driving a yellow cab for 25 years and financed his own medallion in 2000. His bank was not among the ones willing to participate in the city-backed debt-relief program. What does he have to pay?

“$450 per week,” Asmah said.

With a mechanical engineering degree, he came to driving after he was laid off from his aerospace industry job.

What You Need To Know

  • Taxi drivers say rides are down, and another fee may drive passengers away

  • There's already an additional $2.50 congestion charge to drive below 96th Street

  • The TLC says yellow cabs have raised more than $1 billion for the MTA since 2009

Now, he's facing a new challenge: concern that passengers having to pay more to ride his cab will drive down business.

“Our business keeps going down, and our overhead keeps going up,” he said.

Bhairavi Desai, of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, says the $1.25 per fare charge in the congestion pricing toll proposal the MTA board approved Wednesday is coming at a time when rides are down 50% from before the pandemic. And only 60% of taxis are even out on the street. She says taxis already pay a congestion fee.

“The meter starts at $3, and then there’s 50 cent MTA, $2.50 MTA, and now $1.25 MTA and then $1 toward something called an accessibility fund, which is run by the city,” Desai said. “Out of $8.25 at the starting rate on the meter, the majority of that is going to the MTA.”

The 50 cents is for every fare and was added in 2009; the $2.50 just to drive below 96th Street was included in 2019.

According to the TLC, taxis have raised over a billion dollars for the MTA. For-hire vehicles just under that, with their $2.75 a ride fee since 2019. They feel with this new charge, taxis should pay the same congestion fee as they do, $2.50.

The Independent Drivers Guild president Brendan Sexton in a statement saying in part: “There is no reason to give a break to the fat cat private equity funds that own 80% of the yellow taxi medallions. Black car trips are already taxed much more heavily than yellow taxis, which don’t even pay sales tax.”

But Desai says app-based drivers are still guaranteed minimum pay.

“The TLC regulates the minimum per minute and per mile that the companies have to pay the drivers on each trip,” says Desai. “Yellow cab drivers don’t have any of that protection.”

Meanwhile, Uber said in a statement they should at least get an overnight discount, since it incentivizes the use of a taxi or Uber rather than driving drunk.

But the mayor and other experts say it’s yellow cabs that should be exempt. MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber says any change though could delay the implementation of congestion pricing.