Taxi & Limousine Illegal Street Hail CRACKDOWN
The city is slamming the brakes on rogue livery drivers.
Officials are hellbent on stopping livery hacks who take illegal street hails -- writing more tickets for the infraction in the first four months of 2011 than in all of 2010 combined, new figures show.
Agents from the Taxi & Limousine Commission racked up a record 3,016 summonses for illegal hails through April, a nearly 15 percent jump from the total of 2,584 written last year.
Liveries are not allowed to take street hails -- and when they do, riders often get wildly overcharged. Industry insiders also argue that the practice devalues the price tags on yellow-cab medallions.
STOP RIGHT THERE: Undercover TLC officers, posing as cab hailers, bust livery drivers last week for illegal street pickups in Midtown.
Most summonses were racked up during undercover stings -- and last Wednesday The Post had a front seat to the action.
A reporter watched as TLC undercover agents, posing as passengers with luggage, ticketed 19 livery cars in a three-hour period on Fifth Avenue between 55th and 56th streets.
The results were dumbfounding -- and occasionally dangerous. Those busted included:
* A furious driver who begged officers, "Please don't give me a summons." He'd quoted a fare of $20 for a 21-block ride to 34th Street and Fifth Avenue.
He was cited for the illegal hail and failure to display a license.
* A town-car driver, yakking on his cellphone, slowed down to rubberneck and laugh at another driver being pulled over. He got a $200 ticket for the cellphone infraction.
* Two drivers stopped to pick up actual passengers during the TLC sting. One quoted a fare of $25 to the Gansevoort Park Avenue hotel, and the other wanted $40 to go to the Soho Grand.
* In one harrowing incident, a driver in a limousine bearing Connecticut plates who'd quoted a $10 fare to Penn Station screeched away, trunk open, from the curb when he saw the agents' badges.
He blew through a red light on Fifth Avenue and made a wild right-hand turn from the far left-hand lane onto 55th Street. The TLC squad got his plate and issued tickets.
"These guys are absolutely brazen," TLC boss David Yassky told The Post. "We will keep going until people get the message."
The ticket blitz was boosted by a slew of April summonses. TLC officers hit livery drivers with 1,300 illegal-hail tickets, compared with just 64 in the same period a year ago, according to the data.
In all of 2009, The TLC wrote just 708 tickets to drivers who illegally picked up fares.
A first offense carries a $350 fine, followed by $500 for a second offense and then a possible loss of license.
Posted by CSL Transport Admin
at 3:27 AM EDT
