I’ve enjoyed a number of ride-along vintage Youtube videos of New York city. But then I stumbled into this one from 2018. Hmm. Is it worth a ride? I decided yes, to see what’s rolling down Manhattan’s streets these days, having seen the Checker, Dodge, Chevy and Ford eras. Well, the Ford CV era is truly gone, and we are now fully in the Toyota era.
It’s been a few years since I was last there, and that was just before Uber and Lyft. The yellow cabs were a mixture then; plenty of Cvs along with some Toyota Siennas, Ford Escape hybrids and a smattering of others. But now it seems to have settled into a Camry groove, along with some Prius Vs.
In case you’re not familiar with Manhattan traffic, there’s really not a lot of private cars on the streets; it’s mostly yellows and blacks, the latter being Ubers and Lyfts, which seem to be a lot of Camrys too except for the more expensive level of service where black SUVs dominate.
Evolution: the survival of the fittest.
As I usually say on here the plural of anecdote is not data; but I see a lot of cabs in Chicago (but not nearly as many as I used to thanks to livery and ride sharing) and Toyota rules here as well, but with a bit more diversity. Prius and Prius V of the last generation are quite popular, with the Camry in first and a small amount of Xbs for good measure. The Fusion probably takes second after the Toyotas. Everything else is a tiny minority from what I notice. There’s a random Altima here and there.
For livery/black cars Lincoln cars/crossovers/Navigators and GM full size SUVs dominate, with a small amount of Cadillac sedans. The Ford Expedition used to be popular but from what I’ve been told by drivers it’s no longer on the Uber approved list, which kind of makes sense because I haven’t seen any newer than 2 years old and they’re probably being cycled out of service. Once in a while you get the odd Infiniti or MB or even Tesla. I actually know the black cars more these days as at a former job I was taking one almost every day.
During a 2015 family trip we rode in a Camry hybrid twice, a Prius V once, a Ford Transit Connect once, and a Chevy Suburban once on our only Uber ride. The drivers did not seem to be trying to hypermile . . .
“Evolution. The survival of the fittest.”
Well said.
The Camry cab is a very common sight here in Toronto as well, along with a few other random vehicles. It has the roominess and reliability of the Crown Victoria with better mileage, though the Ford is still one of the toughest cars on the road.
Toyota dominates here in Aotearoa (NZ) too. Taxis (mostly white) are overwhelmingly Camry hybrids closely followed by Prius gen 3 with a few of the hideous latest gen. Non Toyotas are rare enough to be memorable: one Skoda Superb, one Ford Mondeo, and one solitary Ford Falcon to remember the former dominant species by. With Ubers, Prius rule the roads with some Honda Inspire and Leafs coming on stream. My personal hobby is looking for the highest odometer; I’ve seen 600k on a Prius 2. Tough little beasts.
KiwiAlistair, I visited Christchurch years ago (it might have been 1986) and a 1967 Chevy Impala was still providing taxi service at the airport. It was in great shape, and I wondered at the time how many miles it must have had on it…
Didn’t Toyota also used some Crown Comfort as taxicabs in Australia as well?
https://www.imcdb.org/vehicles_make-Toyota_model-XS10.html
The gas mileage of a Toyota hybrid is so much better than a conventional vehicle in city traffic (by a factor of at least 2) that there is really no alternative for a rational ride service provider.
It was an odd decision to not make being hybrids a requirement for the NYC Taxi of Tomorrow, which turned out to be a Nissan NV 200 non-hybrid. They couldn’t mandate them like they wanted to, but there are still quite a few in the mix today as seen here. They don’t have power sliding doors. They also aren’t mostly wheelchair accessible, so not very Tomorrow that way either.
For a while Ford Escape hybrids (one in the video) were popular, and when they didn’t come as hybrids Ford C-Max hybrids which of course are also over. Some Prius V’s also, also in the video. The Toyota Sienna cabs are a special cab model with no third row and a bench seat second row, seen more as outer borough on call green cars, which makes more sense.
Taxi cabs are rare beasts in Indianapolis. Minivans still make up a decent part of the small number I see.
Same here in “Forgotiana”, most of the cabs are minivans of some variety or the other. Somehow there are still a few Crown Vics in service as well; they must either have 500,000 miles on them by now or someone has a stash of them somewhere. Of course the police still have a few CVs in their fleet as well, apparently they are indestructible.
Having spent the last week in Toronto, I can confirm that Toyota is the cab/ride share brand of choice, Camrys and Prii are popular for cabs, though for ride shares Toyota SUVs are popular. For the Uber driver with a CH-R, I recommend getting another SUV as my back has not yet recovered from entry/exit.
Never been to New York, but this it’s not what my ill conceived expectations expect.
The traffic isn’t bad. In fact things are typically far worse in Fresno in any given day. Even Madera can be worse. Maybe the video was shot on Sunday morning at seven?
Taxis here in Madera are still mostly old Crown Vics, retired cop cars, usually painted a dark green.
It’s far too neat and clean to be New York. Where is the trash? The graffiti? Must be an alternate reality New York.
People aren’t dressed right. Where are the long wool coats? The wool scarfs? The fedoras?
Parts of it are crazy, just a giant video screen running ads everywhere you look. After a while I stopped looking at the cars, pretty mundane stuff really, and got lost in the screens.
Where are the red light runners? Here, when the light turns green for you, you wait for several runners to go before you do.
Where are the intersection blockers? People jam up intersections all day, every day here.
In general these people in this alternate reality New York drive nicer, cross the street nicer, and act like good citizens on the road. It shames my town.
There’s this thing called “gentrification”. New York is pretty big on that. 🙂
It’s very different than how it was in the 70s and early 80s when I used to get there several times a year.
I did notice the modest traffic too. Given all the delivery/plumber/service trucks at the curbs, I don’t think it’s a Sunday morning though.
New York traffic can be quite inconsistent, but the north-south avenues move much better than the cross streets, which can really get backed up badly between the avenues. The lights on the north-south avenues are synchronized, so that if there’s no backups, one can sail down (or up) a major avenue surprisingly quickly, as was the case in this video.
“It’s far too neat and clean to be New York. Where is the trash…?”
Maybe this is what you were thinking of (taken in 1968–not sure what street).
It was so authentic back then!
That is the NYC my relatives tell stories about.
I drive in NYC 3 or 4 times each month. That video is not truly representative of what one experiences. Paul is correct, the side streets are worse than the avenues, but depending upon where you are in town the whole experience can be quite slow – It can take easily an hour to drive across town (Manhattan is around 2 miles wide at its widest point). They’ve recently passed legislation limiting the number of rideshare cars that can be registered in the city, as they’ve found that at any point something like 60% of rideshare cars are without passengers, truly just clogging up the streets. The hope is to have the number of cars on the streets at a time reduce over time (as well as continue to protect the yellow cab drivers, who are losing their shirts given the costs of buying a medallion to drive a yellow cab). Chronic double parking is one of the biggest causes of slow downs – both commercial vehicles and lengthy rideshare drop offs/pickups. The reduction in the amount of street parking also coincided with the cost of street parking nearly doubling in the last few years – it costs more now to park on the street in New York than it does in a garage in most American Cities. The subway system is in need of a lot of investment to upgrade and make more reliable, money the city doesn’t have, which further drives people in to rideshares, reducing subway fee collections – something of a vicious cycle. They are now going to charge a surcharge on taxis and rideshares that travel into (a broadly defined) midtown (below 96th street) to both raise money for mass transit as well as try to reduce traffic, which people are upset about. At any given point, especially on one of the avenues, when you look around easily 4/5ths of the cars you see are taxi/rideshare (they have to have a specific license plate).
The toll to enter the city from NJ is now $15, and they’re looking in to tolls to enter Manhattan from Brooklyn Queens.
Oh, and there are plenty of people who cross streets against the lights – don’t be fooled.
The video is better at 2X speed.
What is that Sienna doing 25 seconds in!? Would have been quite tempted to honk at them.
What are they doing 3 minutes in, everyone seems to be unsure of which lane they want.
Neat Jeep Wrangler at 5:16, though I wonder how secure the top is? So far that seems to be about the oldest vehicle I have seen aside from a 2nd gen Odyssey. Just spotted a circa 2001 Camry about 23 minutes in and a NYPD Crown Vic. Wow, that 92-96 F-Series at 29:50 sure looks rough, that unsecured load sure gives me the willies. The graffittied building at 36:50 sure is interesting, looks like the windows have been coated with paint.
Thanks for sharing this video and a bit surprising how much the automotive streetscape has changed since I last visited in 2011 or so. I am going to see if I can find when the last Crown Vic Taxicab was retired. I was a bit surprised to see the pre-2015 Camries in service, they must be getting close to retirement. Boro Cabs, the Lime Green ones sure are new, at least for me. Looks like used Camry Taxis cost about 2-3K Dollars and have about 250K Miles on them. So, when do the 2018 Camries start showing up?
So few of the original Victorian/Edwardian buildings survive until you go well south. After a few twists and turns we’re in SOHO–then the architecture is really beautiful and well-maintained, as we drive along an actual cobblestone street (I wasn’t sure if there were any of those left in Manhattan.) The people in the 1900 streetcar video would feel right at home here–you can almost hear the horses clip-clopping over that rough stone pavement.
I wonder what the citizens of 1900 would think of the rest of the city (especially Times Square, with all those larger-than-life TV screens)! Surprisingly, everything looks rather orderly–pedestrians and motorists seem to be obeying the rules. Traffic isn’t too heavy either, though I wonder what happens when a car breaks down right in the middle of Broadway (or even worse, the Lincoln Tunnel)!
Below: Casino Theatre, 39th & Broadway, 1900. Typical of the architectural masterpieces that once existed along this route by the hundreds. The romanticism of the Victorian Age replaced by the concentrated brutality of the Bauhaus school.
Camry is good family car, does not quite last as taxi, After few years in service, its body is quite beat up. Few years back, Mayor Bloomberg commissioned a taxi of future programs, Toyota Camry did not win, the winner was Nissan NV2000 van. Nevertheless, Camry SE model and Accord Sport are popular among the car service and Uber drivers. In my own opinion, the prefect taxi car is now discounted Prius V, but Toyota chopped off the product lineups in 2017. In Japan, they prefer Toyota Crown Comfort. Its durability is legendary, can Crown Comfort survey in the streets of NYC like Crown Victoria, Caprice and Checker?
A few notes from a Manhattan resident:
The vast majority of taxis and car service vehicles are hybrids. Even with their complexity, they have been proven to be very reliable even when in service 24×7.
From 2007 to 2013, we had a very progressive transportation commissioner named janette sadik-kahn. She started a number of initiatives that continue today. Bus lanes were greatly expanded. Bike sharing and bike Lanes were prioritized. Parking and toll fees have gone up exponentially. In short, everything imagineable to discourage driving in Manhattan has been done. The only major battle left is congestion pricing which is inevitable
The other boroughs have very different driving patterns from Manhattan. I’ve read that at times, up to 25% of all traffic in Brooklyn, is people circling blocks looking for parking.
“… people circling blocks looking for parking.”
That’s all those Uber/Lyft drivers when they are done for the day. 😉
Lots of news stories of how “Millennials prefer urban living”. They also “prefer” being picked up and dropped off by ride sharing cars. Public Transit is “too icky” So much for being “green” and all. I’m being sarcastic a bit, but it is an issue, IMHO.
I can see cities upping taxes for ride sharing cars when it gets to be too much.
it’s no joke. i work with many millennials on late night shifts – for the record most of them are very likeable, hard-working people – and they definitely use uber pool to go home. i thought it was only at night for safety reasons but i’ve noticed the ubers line up on my street in the morning to take young management types to work.
I hardly ever use taxis in Vienna (no need with other modes of public transport are so efficient) but there is no question Toyota products are becoming ever more popular. It’s definitely not the M-B reserve it used to be. Toyota Austria in fact pushes its products as ideal for taxi use. A strong selling point is that the hybrids are not threatened by any planned prohibitions on diesel vehicles from entering certain zones. see below.
https://www.toyota.de/geschaeftskunden/taxi-programm.json