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Taxi! Keeping Tabs on City Cabs

APRIL 20, 2010

New data highlights New York City’s taxi habits to help you find a cab when you need one.

When a taxi medallion (what an operator needs in order to get a license to drive a New York City taxi) costs between $588,000 and $799,000, city cabbies tend to mean business. Which means you won’t always find a ride when you need one.

Taxi pickup data, collected by the Taxi and Limousine Commission via GPS tracking and crunched by a Soho analytics firm examines the pickup point of every New York City cab ride taken in the first six months of 2009 in an attempt to get a handle on the city’s taxi habits and find new ways to help keep you moving.

Knowing where to stand is key. According to a recent New York Times article, if it’s Monday at 9 a.m., your best bets are Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central. If it’s a Saturday night, your best bet is the bar-packed Lower East Side. Overall, Columbus Circle is a better bet than the Port Authority bus terminal, and the West Village wins over Washington Heights. If you’re looking for technology to do the thinking for you, a mobile app called CabSense analyzes GPS data points from city taxis to help you find the best location to catch a cab.