NY Taxi & Limousine Commission Sets New Plans
Gail Chiasson, North American Editor
Further to our article on the NY Taxi & Limousine Commission likely voting Thursday (Oct. 15. 2015) to get rid of Taxi TVs: Well, a vote did take place to bring in new technology, but Taxi TV screens are neither in nor out.
Jason Gross, global head of product & marketing, Taxi Systems, VeriFone Media
The Commission did vote on introducing a new one-year pilot project in 2016 involving 1,000 Yellow Cabs in New York City, and up to four technology providers can bring their projected ideas into 250 of the cabs each.
Yellow Cabs currently have a meter, a driver information monitor, a passenger information monitor, and a payment reader. Under the new pilot program, the technology provider applicants can propose use of a tablet, a GPS, a new payment system and more, but there is no mention one way or the other of Taxi TVs.
Currently, all Yellow Cabs in New York – about 13,000- have a Taxi TV screen supplied by either VeriFone Media or Creative Mobile Technologies (CMT). To remove them, would be at the expense of the medallion owners. Further, the new Green Taxis introduced in autumn, 2013, in the Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Upper Manhattan sectors (‘Boro taxis’) also all have Taxi TV screens, the majority of which are from VeriFone Media and the remainder from CMT.
“The drivers wanted them,” says Jason Gross, promoted this week to the position of VeriFone Media’s global head of product and marketing, Taxi Systems, reporting to Amos Tamam, senior vice-president, Taxi Systems.
“I think that the numbers of people disliking the screens and/or complaining about them have been greatly overblown,” says Gross.
We would expect both VeriFone Media and CMT to be two of the applicants to provide new technologies for the pilot project. The companies have both worked at improving their product offerings since originally installing their taxi screens between 2006 and 2008.
“There has been no date given for applications for the new systems yet, but there was no mention by the Commission about use or non-use of Taxi TVs as part of the pilot project,” says Gross. “We want to investigate what offerings we would want to add into a new system. We know that the screens provide a valuable service and their offerings could be enhanced. In fact, I’m personally excited to see what we might come up with, what kind of a vision that we could show for the future. We have a history of innovation.
“We expect to learn of the application requirements in the coming weeks, but with a pilot project of one year, I can’t imagine that whatever is finally decided upon could be put in place before 2017 at the earliest.”
It’s rather difficult to predict what other companies might be applicants for the pilot project at this early stage. VeriFone bought Curb earlier this week which would take it out of the running. Square Inc. is believed to have tried a pilot project for a payment system for the taxis in the past, but we understand that it didn’t succeed.
The NY Taxi & Limousine Commission sets the rules and regulations governing the taxis in New York, including limiting the number of cabs. Ownership of a taxi medallion for New York now costs approximately USD 1 million.
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