The latest New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) numbers paint an increasingly bleak picture for the green cabs that arrived in Northern Manhattan and the outer boroughs in 2013, as an alternative for neighborhoods not typically served by yellow taxis. Unfortunately for the people who purchased a green cab – also known as a “Boro Taxi” – it was right around the time that app-hail companies, like Uber and Lyft, began upending the entire industry.
TLC data shows there were just 539 working green cab drivers in February – a nearly 93% collapse from May 2015, when 7,521 operators were picking up street hails. Green cabs averaged 1,304 daily trips in February, according to TLC data, down almost 98% from the peak of 57,637 trips per day in May 2015. The number of those on the road fell to 522 in February, lower even than the 671 that remained in service during the early days of the pandemic in April 2020.
At their June 2015 peak, more than 6,500 green cabs were working in Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens, Staten Island and north of East 96th Street and West 110th Street in Manhattan. The collapse of the green cab industry has hit those behind the wheel hard, even now that drivers can accept pre-arranged trips from for-hire vehicle (FHV) bases and ride-hailing apps.
At its peak in May 2015, green cab drivers averaged $114 a day from trips, totaling $862,099 in revenue across all drivers, which doesn’t include additional earnings from credit card tips. In February, those earnings dropped to roughly $52 a day, according to TLC data. That’s in contrast to competitors in the taxi and FHV industry, which has regained significantly larger portions of their shares of pre-pandemic ridership. TLC data shows that high-volume FHVs had 19.8 million trips in February, almost 99% of pre-2020 levels. Yellow taxis are at 47% of pre-pandemic trip levels. The green cabs, meanwhile, are at just 6.5%.
“Economically, it doesn’t give you results like the yellows, because the greens can’t go into the central business district of Manhattan,” said Jose Altamirano, president of Livery Base Owners, which represents more than 250 bases citywide. Altamirano added that those restrictions leave green cab owners and drivers to battle over leftovers, while the more than 82,000 vehicles from app-based services compete for passengers alongside close to 11,000 yellow taxis.
TLC has pushed a pilot program aimed at boosting business for the struggling green cab sector. The agency approved changes in May 2023 that allow up to 2,500 out-of-use green cab licenses to be reactivated – but minus required upfront and operating costs that include green paint jobs, partitions, metered trips, rooftop lights and vehicle markings. Licensed vehicles in the street-hail livery pilot program are mandated to have trips booked through livery bases and cannot be hailed on the street, unlike the green cabs.
A September 2025 report on the initiative found that only 563 permits from the test were actively in use as of last June after 3,509 were initially issued. A TLC spokesperson said that, as of February, there are 441 licenses in good standing.
The report last year noted that the drop in driver demand suggests that the business model envisioned by TLC “is of limited viability.” Additionally, the New York Taxi Workers Alliance filed suit against TLC in state court, charging that the pilot program runs counter to state law by not allowing street hail livery vehicles to be hailed on the street.
Citing pending litigation, TLC officials declined to comment on the lawsuit, though a spokesperson said the trial run has been extended through June.
Source: The City
