The TLC released a compliance report for the first six months of its new For-Hire Vehicle (FHV) Wheelchair Accessible Vehicle (WAV) program, which went into effect in January 2019.
When the TLC was developing its new WAV requirements, FHV industry leaders sued the TLC and pushed for legislation in Albany to overrule the requirements. This ultimately led to the TLC negotiating a compromise, allowing FHV bases to develop centralized dispatch locations to ensure the deployment of more WAVs and holding them to specific wait-time standards.
The Black Car Assistance Corp. (BCAC), which was among the groups leading the FHV Coalition, selected Uber as their preferred WAV provider. According to the BCAC, Uber serviced 74% of trips in under 15 minutes and 93% of trips in under 30 minutes, which satisfied both of the TLC’s response time requirements for 2019 and positions them well to exceed the 2020 requirements.
According to the BCAC, 156 bases did not sign up with a WAV dispatcher – and of these, only 34 succeeded in being compliant with the WAV requirements. The other 122 bases are facing corrective actions from the TLC.
