Most taxis are part of a fleet, and the fleet owner gets the money from the advertisers. The advertisers pay more than $10,000 per year for each advertisement.

Many years ago the Hertz company owned lots of taxis and they decided to make all of their taxis yellow so that people could easily see them and so that the taxis would stand out against the sea of other cars. Other companies thought that was a great idea so they made their taxis yellow too. Soon New York City passed a law that all taxis had to be yellow. The Hertz company got out of the taxi business and now they are a rental car company, but their colors are still black and yellow and their idea to make all taxis yellow stuck.

In New York City there are 35,000 full time taxi drivers and another 15,000 part time taxi drivers. In order to become a New York City taxi driver you have to have had your driver’s license for more than a year, speak English proficiently, know the geography of New York City, and know the rules that govern and protect taxi drivers and riders.  Most taxi drivers do not own their own cars because it is too expensive. A medallion costs over a million dollars!

Mayor Bloomberg decided that he wanted to see if there could be a better taxi than the ones that we have now. So there was a contest to see which car company could make the best taxi. Nissan won the contest. Their design, called the Taxi of Tomorrow will have a sun roof, USB chargers for passengers, air conditioning and heat controls in the back seat, better safety for drivers and passengers, and more leg and head room for passengers. The Taxi of Tomorrow will start hitting the streets in the middle of October!

The Five Boro Taxi, nicknamed the Boro Taxi, is a green taxi that will pick up passengers in the four outer boroughs and in upper Manhattan. Yellow taxis are not that common in these areas, so it will make taxis available to all New Yorkers. We chose to make them green so that they would stand out and people would see them. We originally thought that we were going to make them orange, but when we tested orange out we realized that in the sun the orange ones looked too much like the yellow ones.

I have been TLC commissioner for almost four years. I am not sure what I will do next, but before I was in the government I was a professor of law, and I think I might like to go back to teaching.

Before I was TLC commissioner I worked in city government, but I did not know a lot about transportation and taxis. Mayor Bloomberg offered me the job and I decided to take a risk and try something new. As commissioner, I have learned so much about taxis and transportation that I wouldn’t have learned if I had not taken the risk.

I have loved helping the taxi drivers and increasing their salary to make sure that they get paid fairly for their hard work.

He or she should picture themselves as taxi passengers and think about what they would want. He or she should also work hard and try their best!