Hailing a New York City cab while black may get a little easier in the coming days, if new technologies now being released have the expected impact.
Racial discrimination by taxi drivers is a phenomenon that has long plagued New York City cab seekers of color, many longtime residents and visitors say.
Even famous actor Danny Glover has had what many people of color describe as a common experience. The movie star caused a stir more than a decade ago when he filed a complaint with the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC), claiming in part that he had been denied rides by several of the city’s yellow cab drivers because of his race.
“I was so angry,” he said in a press conference to discuss the incident. “The fact that my daughter’s here to go to school, it really upsets me that if she’s standing on the corner waiting to get a cab, she can’t get a cab. It happens to her, it happens to countless people every single day.”
All of that could change, however, with the advent of new mobile apps that seek to streamline the process of hailing a cab, while rendering drivers essentially colorblind regarding the race of potential passengers.
Racial discrimination by cab drivers persists
Mr. Glover had his alleged run-ins in 1999. Fourteen years later, some claim not much has changed.
“I recruit a white person or innocent-looking female to wave me a cab every time I visit,” says William Hayes, a 27-year-old, African-American school principal from Cleveland. “I’ve had taxi drivers ride by and pretend to look down as they approach. I’ve also had them pull up with the door locked and ask where I was headed. If I said Brooklyn then they would all of a sudden be on their way to pick up someone else a couple blocks up.”
Another black visitor to the city, 25-year-old Erin Jackson, says she was shocked at what she perceived as discrimination when visiting old classmates in New York City from Atlanta.
“We were downtown one night and one of the girls I was with told the taxi guy we were going to Harlem. He drove off with the door open,” she says. “I was appalled, but they weren’t surprised at all. After that we got into the cabs first, then told them where we were going.”
There were 4,237 complaints of service refusal made to the TLC last year, according to figures from the agency. When it comes to getting to the bottom of possible discrimination by taxi drivers, the numbers only tell part of the story.
Is it race, or destination discrimination?
TLC representative Allan Fromberg says there is no easy way of isolating how many complaints are due to racial bias. He believes refusals based on trip destination happens far more frequently. “This, of course, is simply due to the fact that drivers prefer to stay in the central business district of Manhattan where the second someone gets out of their car, someone else gets in,” says Fromberg.
While Fromberg believes the economic advantages to drivers of staying in Manhattan play a larger role in why passengers are refused taxis, the experiences of Hayes and Jackson suggest race is also a factor.
In New York City, where people live is often highly-correlated to their race.
A cursory look at the most recent census reveals that the majority of the city’s black and Latino populations live in Harlem, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens – all outside the central business district of Manhattan where taxis prefer to operate. Cab drivers’ reported refusal to pick up people of color might likely be a de facto byproduct of the racial segregation of the city’s neighborhoods. Race is a fair indicator of where someone might be going.
Yet, where cab drivers prefer to operate should be inconsequential. It is illegal for drivers of New York City’s TLC-regulated yellow cabs to turn down passengers wishing to travel within city limits and certain surrounding areas.
Responses to taxi discrimination to date
In response to strong evidence that destination discrimination persists, there have been some efforts to curb the refusal of passengers. In 2011, Mayor Bloomberg increased fines for drivers who do so from $300 to $500 for the first offense with steeper penalties, up to having their licenses revoked, for further infractions.
In the same year, the Report-A-Taxi mobile app launched allowing passengers a convenient platform to do just as the name suggests, sending many types of complaints to the TLC.
Another innovation, however, could also change how taxis operate — and make it easier for people of color to overcome destination biases.
“E-hailing” has benefits for customers and drivers
A state court ruled Tuesday to dismiss a lawsuit that has kept mobile apps for hailing taxis out of the city. Now services including Uber, GetTaxi and FlyWheel – which have revolutionized the process of hailing cabs in other cities around the world — are poised to launch in the Big Apple.
Fromberg of the TLC has high hopes for the technology saying, “We believe that some apps would be bias-proof since the responding driver has no knowledge of a hailer’s name, appearance, ethnicity or even their destination.”
After downloading a mobile app, a passenger can “e-hail” a cab by entering his or her current location into the device. In Manhattan below 59th street, participating cabs within one mile will have a chance to respond to the hail. The range expands to 1.5 miles in other areas of the city. The first driver to make it to the hailing passenger gets the ride.
The benefit to drivers is the ease of finding passengers who are sending out requests, rather than driving randomly for the chance of finding a fare. Drivers will have the ability to sign up to receive alerts from various services during the one-year trial period the TLC has sanctioned for testing these apps.
New mobile apps make hailing taxis equitable
For African-Americans seeking cabs, this means race won’t be a factor when initiating “e-hail” pick-ups.
Steve Humphreys, CEO of FlyWheel, agrees apps such as these can have the effect of reducing racial discrimination by taxi drivers.
Flywheel — which is already active in San Francisco, Miami, Cleveland and other cities — works with existing taxi fleets and individual licensed cab drivers to allow riders to hail, track and pay with a few taps of their smartphones and a one dollar surcharge. Humphreys says the app eliminates a cab driver’s refusal to pick up a passenger due to race because users are anonymous within the system. While it requires users to enter a pick-up location, they don’t have to give a destination.
“Flywheel has a strict no-tolerance policies for drivers that don’t adhere to our standards, such as picking up hails based on their personal preference,” says Humphreys. “FlyWheel has always taken the view as a company that discrimination is morally and socially wrong. We’ll contribute to change by helping people also experience the reality that it’s economically wrong and self-defeating as well.”
Follow Donovan X. Ramsey at @iDXR