For ladies who lunch and drunk hipsters alike, New York City’s yellow taxis have been a one-for-all staple. Did you know that one-fourth of NYC cab drivers quit within a year? A quarter of cab passengers earn less than $25,000. And JFK has a 4-acre taxi pit stop that includes a cone-delineated space for prayer (above). These are some of the interesting facts I picked up while reading Design Trust for Public Space’s Taxi 07: Roads Forward (free download online).
An extensive look at New York City’s taxi system and how it can be improved, the recently-released book is a well-designed and well-photographed study devoted to NYC’s fleet of 13,000 yellow ones. It not only clarifies the current system, like the ways a cab can be owned and operated, but it provides recommendations for the future, including group ride locations, rideshare fees, metro card overlap, and fast-pass-like incentives for cab drivers to venture off into the borough wilderness.
