The charge would apply to Uber and other e-hail customers getting picked up or dropped off, but only pick-ups from the airports for passengers of Yellow cabs.
A Port Authority plan announced Tuesday would impose a $4 surcharge on taxi rides to and from New York City’s three regional airports. The proposal swiftly ignited outrage from groups representing tens of thousands of Yellow cab and app-based drivers.
The charge would apply to Uber and other e-hail customers getting picked up or dropped off, but only pick-ups from the airports for passengers of Yellow cabs. Passengers headed to midtown Manhattan would pay a total of $6.50, including a $2.50 congestion pricing fee that the state’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority imposed earlier this year to help pay for subway repairs.
The proposed surcharges are part of a package of fare and toll increases spread across Port Authority of New York and New Jersey operations, said Rick Cotton, executive director of the agency that operates JFK International, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty International airports. In announcing the plan, he asked "customers to share in supporting the infrastructure investments the region so desperately needs and deserves.”
The plan came a day after for-hire vehicle drivers marched on City Hall in lower Manhattan, talking of suicide and pleading with City Council members to help bail them out of debt as a driver glut has made it difficult for many to pay for their vehicles.
Stealing Food
Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the 23,000-member New York Taxi Workers Alliance, said the Port Authority wants to "steal the food off” the dinner tables of drivers. She promised the agency a political fight and warned it to prepare for driver-led airport shutdowns.
"Customers will take out their anger on drivers,” she predicted. "We’ll see a ridership drop and we’ll see fewer and less generous tips. I feel like it’s an insult to have to keep explaining to these government officials that drivers are in an unprecedented crisis and you are destroying their lives.”
Port Authority spokeswoman Lindsay Kryzak said the proposals will be the subject of six agency hearings permitting public comment, with the first scheduled for July 16 at the Port Authority headquarters at 4 World Trade.
"I can’t speak personally to the taxi industry and its problems,” Kryzak said. "I can only say that as we made toll and fare adjustments, this proposal was modeled from other airports around the country. And we felt this was a natural place to ask people to pay.”
The Independent Drivers Guild, which represents e-hail drivers, joined Desai in slamming the Port Authority announcement. Unlike those riding in Yellow cabs, e-hail passengers would pay the extra fee both when arriving and leaving the airport.
"The war on professional drivers needs to end,” said Brendan Sexton, the group’s executive director. "This new airport tax will hurt 100,000 of New York’s lowest income immigrants, most of all the app-based drivers who have struggled with poverty wages for years and are already highly taxed.”
