For First Time, Yellow Cabs Take Back Seat To Ride Service Vehicles
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- For the first time ever, more New Yorkers are using ride service vehicles like Uber than the city's famed yellow cabs.
The New York Times crunched the numbers provided by Uber and found people took an average of 289,000 Uber rides every day in July compared with 277,000 taxi trips.
And those trips weren't limited to Manhattan. The paper says more than half of the increased pickups were in Queens.
Transportation consultant Bruce Schaller said there are also four times more ride service vehicles in the city now compared to just two years ago and that means more traffic.
"It's much easier to get a ride when you need one," Schaller told WCBS 880's Peter Haskell. "On the other hand, particularly in Manhattan, these vehicles have increased congestion."
Schaller feels the big problem is when cars don't have passengers.
"The big increase in vehicles that are circulating within Manhattan, they're not driving in the morning and parking and then driving home at night," he said.
Schaller favors some form of congestion pricing.