Taxi, Uber Rides In Manhattan Will Soon Get More Expensive

NEW YORK, NY — Taking a taxi or Uber ride in Manhattan will get more expensive next year after a newly approved state surcharge takes effect. The 2019 state budget Albany lawmakers passed over the weekend will impose fees of up to $2.75 on most rides to, from or through the borough south of 96th Street starting Jan. 1.

The legislation adds a $2.50 fee for yellow cab rides and a $2.75 fee for all other car services, including app-based services like Uber and Lyft.

The flat fee doesn't apply to "pooled" rides, in which a single car picks up and drops off multiple passengers. But those rides will be subject to a 75-cent charge for each rider who starts or ends their trip below 96th Street or travels through that area on the trip.

The surcharges are one piece of a so-called congestion pricing plan that aims to reduce traffic jams while bolstering the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's coffers as the agency grapples with crises in its subway and bus systems. The fees will generate $415 million a year for the MTA to fund mass transit improvements, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.

A commission Cuomo empaneled recommended such fees in January, in addition to a heftier $11.52 toll for all cars entering Manhattan below 60th Street and other measures that would aid the city's traffic and transit woes.

"Congestion pricing, I believe, is a concept whose future has come," Cuomo said Friday.

The charges come amid the continued expansion of app-based ride-hailing services that has made business tougher for the city's traditional taxi industry.

Cuomo noted that yellow cabs will see smaller fees for their rides given their "harder financial burden." But the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a group that represents cab, livery and other drivers, said the scheme go too easy on the app-based services while further burdening an industry whose struggling workers are being driven to suicide.

"Albany is rewarding a business model that is directly trying to gut MTA ridership and is directly responsible for the congestion choking our streets," Bhairavi Desai, the alliance's executive director, said in a statement.

Yellow cabs have already contributed nearly $1 billion to the MTA since 2009 due to an existing 50-cent surcharge on their trips.

Uber, on the other hand, embraced the fees and said it will continue to support a "comprehensive" congestion pricing plan to fund mass transit.

The company praised the discount for pooled trips, which are used more widely among app-based car services, though the city's Taxi and Limousine Commission wants to make it easier for cab passengers to share rides.

"Uber supports the agreement between the Governor and the Legislature to target a per-trip fee on Manhattan riders where there is convenient access to public transit, and to adopt a first-in-the-nation tax discount on shared trips," Uber spokeswoman Danielle Filson said in a statement.

In addition to the surcharges, the state budget allows for at least 50 new cameras to catch drivers who block bus lanes in the city, which officials say are a major cause of bus delays.

The budget also reportedly convinced Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration to fund half of the MTA's $836 million Subway Action Plan, an emergency initiative to stabilize the system, after months of resistance.

Transit advocacy groups, though, said real fixes won't come to the ailing subways abent concrete steps toward a comprehensive congestion pricing plan. Four groups — StreetsPAC, Transportation Alternatives, the Straphangers Campaign and Riders Alliance — called on Cuomo to commit to a timeline for implementing congestion pricing and fund the needed tolling infrastructure.

"If the governor is serious about alleviating the crisis, he must ensure that the initial steps laid out in this budget — for-hire vehicle surcharges, bus lane expansion and enforcement — be the catalyst for meaningful reform," the groups said in a joint statement.

(Lead image: An Uber car sits in Manhattan in June 2017. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)