New Office of Inclusion to Tackle Taxicab Bias

NEW YORK — New York City officials on Tuesday announced the creation of a new office to address bias-related refusals by taxicab and for-hire vehicle drivers.

The Taxi and Limousine Commission will form an Office of Inclusion, which would develop anti-discrimination training for drivers, expand public outreach to encourage people to report drivers for refusing to pick them up, and take part in the prosecution of those drivers.

The move comes as the City Council is proposing to place a one-year freeze on for-hire vehicle licenses for ride-hailing services like Uber; that proposal has met opposition from some civil rights groups, who have defended Uber and its peers as a welcome service for many black and Latino New Yorkers, who otherwise might have difficulty hailing a cab.

Donovan Richards, a councilman from Queens, made the initial proposal to create the anti-bias initiative in the taxi commission; it won the support of Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Council speaker, Corey Johnson, who jointly announced the plan for the office.

Richards, who is black, said that addressing discrimination was a condition for him and several other African-American Council members to support the Uber cap.

“There’s nothing more degrading than that feeling of being left at the corner,” Richards said of the experience of many African-Americans of standing on the curb with their hand in the air as they watch empty cabs go by, refusing to pick them up. The discussion of how best to regulate ride-hailing vehicles created the opportunity to “have a real moment and real dialogue about the industry,” he said. “We should certainly be leveraging this opportunity to correct these issues.”

Uber, the largest of the app-based ride-hailing companies, has moved aggressively against the proposed cap legislation, which would largely freeze the number of ride-hailing vehicles for a year while the Taxi and Limousine Commission studies the industry. Uber last week started running television ads opposing the cap, charging that it would hurt minority riders who yellow cabs cruising for fares often ignore.

Richards said Uber’s campaign against the cap appeared to have backfired among Council members who see it as overly aggressive.

An Uber spokesman, Josh Gold, said in an emailed statement that ride-hailing apps have already gone a long way to alleviate the problems of discrimination that the new inclusion office is meant to address. “What it will not do is make taxis serve all corners of all five boroughs,” the statement said, adding that over half of Uber trips start outside Manhattan, while the vast majority of yellow cab trips begin in Manhattan.

Regarding charges that the Uber ad campaign is too aggressive, Gold’s statement said: “This is an education campaign, not an attack.” Johnson, the Council speaker, said he spoke over the weekend with the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has raised concerns about limiting the number of Uber drivers.

“We don’t think that anything we’re doing is going to take us back to the bad old days,” Johnson said. “We’re not diminishing service.”

The new office would also focus on drivers who refuse to take riders to a requested destination, such as outside Manhattan, another frequent complaint and one that often affects minority riders.

Hazel N. Dukes, the president of the NAACP New York State Conference, voiced skepticism over the ability of the taxi commission to effectively address bias.

“This is not new, and the TLC, what have they done?” she said of the issue of bias. “Complaints have lodged there for a long time, and people don’t get any results.”

Richards said the Council would consider budgeting additional money to the taxi commission for the anti-bias program, including hiring investigators and doing community outreach.

The number of for-hire vehicles has ballooned in the city in recent years with the popularity of ride-hailing apps. There are now more than 100,000 for-hire vehicles, up from about 63,000 in 2015.

The proposed cap is part of a series of measures that could come before the Council as early as this month, which also includes legislation to create minimum pay rules for drivers who work for app-based companies like Uber and Lyft. If the legislation passes, New York would become the first major U.S. city to set a limit on ride-hailing vehicles.

In a survey of the 51 Council members conducted over the last several days by The New York Times, 32 said they would support the cap, while only three said they would oppose it. Eleven said they were undecided, but some of those appeared more likely to support the cap in response to the agreement on yellow cabs and bias.

Legislation needs 26 votes to pass if all members are present. Two of the members who said they supported the cap said they would be out of town during the next Council meeting, on Aug. 8, when the measure is expected to come up for a vote.