NEW YORK (AFP) — Start spreadin' the news: New York's City cabbies announced on Tuesday they will strike for 48 hours to protest city-mandated installation of global positioning devices on their hacks.
New York's notorious cross-town traffic may get even slower for 48 hours on Wednesday and Thursday, unless the city revokes an order to install GPS transponders and other electronics at a cost of 1,200 dollars per car.
Cabbies will protest New York City's Taxi and Limousine Commission mandate to install Global Positioning System locators to keep track of them, as well as touch-screen monitors allowing passengers to pay by credit card.
"The strike will begin tomorrow at 5:00 am and will go on for 48 hours," said Bhairavi Desai, head of the Taxi Workers' Alliance, which represents about 10,000 drivers.
"The technology is going to cost 1,200 dollars per year to the drivers. It's a loss of wage, when most of them already drive 12 hours a day seven days a week," Desai said at a press conference outside Pennsylvania Station.
It is there that many out-of-town visitors first glimpse the swarm of yellow NYC taxicabs charging down Seventh Avenue, jostling fender-to-fender to pick up curbside customers.
The city has 13,000 taxicabs licensed to pick up passengers. It wants to know where each one is, and to make drivers accept credit-card payment.
"This system is stupid. This is not a building, it is not a shop. What do you do if the passenger walks away?" asked taxi driver Abul Chawdhury.
"To pay with a credit card takes time, and you don't have time to drop passengers in Manhattan" as it is.
"It should not be mandatory. It will make a lot of problems, let me tell you."
New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg announced measures to guarantee minimum service during the strike, by suspending a rule preventing drivers from picking up more than one passenger at a time and by placing more traffic cops on duty.
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