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Mayor Bloomberg Threatens More Tickets for Cabbies Until Taxi Deal is Reached

By DNAinfo Staff on June 10, 2011 4:17pm  | Updated on June 11, 2011 3:43pm

By Jill Colvin

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MANHATTAN — Mayor Michael Bloomberg threatened to hammer livery and yellow taxi drivers with a ramped-up ticketing blitz Friday. He hopes it will strong-arm them into agreeing on a new medallion plan.

"I'm telling you this: We are going to start enforcing the law on livery cabs a lot more than we have before, and if they break the law and pick up illegal hails, we're going to fine them," Bloomberg said during his weekly radio show.

The same thing goes for yellow cabs.

"We're going to start enforcing the laws here more [too]. This is just craziness," he said. Taxis have been under scrutiny for failing to take passengers to the outer boroughs.

The ticket blitz is intended to pressure both groups of drivers into an agreement on the mayor's "5 Borough Taxi Plan," which aims to make it easier to hail cabs outside of lower and midtown Manhattan.

"There's no question that people are ill-served in this city," Bloomberg said.

But so far, every iteration that's been proposed has been slammed by one side or the other, grinding the process to a halt.

Yellow cabs, for instance, have criticized plans to sell more yellow cab medallions, while livery drivers have said they can't afford new fees.

"Every time you made a deal, either the yellow cabs love it and the livery cabs hate it, or the livery cabs love it and the yellow cabs hate it," Bloomberg said. "No matter what you do, both sides think they can outwear you.

"We cannot continue," he said.

The city has recently raised the fines on yellow cabs who refused fares to the outer boroughs. The Taxi and Limousine Commission has urged passengers to report problems.

At the same time, the TLC has dramatically stepped up enforcement of rules barring livery cabs from picking up passengers on the street.

A whopping 1,178 drivers were ticketed citywide in March, four times as many as the 256 tickets in the previous month, the TLC said. Nearly 370 summonses were issued in Manhattan in May, 52 percent of which were issued for street hails above 125th Street.

Livery drivers have been rallying against the tickets, which cost $350 per offense.

"It's not fair," said Angel Pimenteo, 42, who runs Premium Radio Dispatch and said he'd received approximately 20 tickets last month alone, setting him back thousands.

Hamilton DeLossantos, 30, a livery driver from the Bronx who works in Washington heights and Inwood, accused the city of setting up traps to try to force drivers to accept a plan that he says would leave him with nothing since he wouldn't be able able to afford a medallion.

"It's very tough," he said.

Upper Manhattan City Councilman Robert Jackson is pushing for legislation that would make street hails legal and reduce the fine from $350 to $75 until then.