As data rolls in, the Taxi and Limousine Commission says its $8.3 million estimate of overcharging by scamming cabbies "will shrink significantly." Much has been made of how drivers pressed a suburban rate button on their meters, charging passengers twice the normal city rate. But now TLC Commissioner Matthew Daus says many cabbies did so accidentally, and only at the end of trips when fares had already been calculated (they may have been trying to turn meters off, investigators think). "How can you overcharge a person at the end of a ride when you don't get money for it?" asked Daus at a City Council hearing yesterday.
“We have been vindicated,” said Bhairavi Desai, of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a drivers’ group. Originally 35,558 out of the city's 48,300 total city drivers were implicated in the scam, according to the Post, and many worried official accusations would sully the profession's good name. “The TLC acted as judge, jury and executioner,” said Desai.
Still, the TLC says the findings—based on a two-month study of electronic receipts—are preliminary and warned against "painting drivers with a broad brush" one way or the other, reports City Room. Underway is a larger investigation of millions of GPS records and cab rides since 2007 that Daus says "will determine who did what and why.” As for passengers who actually paid double, Mayor Bloomberg said recently that the city would most likely not issue refunds, though an alert system has been set up to prevent further overcharges.
