By Lisa Kassenaar, Bloomberg News
NEW YORK -- For those who hate battling for a taxi on a crowded New York corner and then fumbling for the fare, relief may be just around the corner.
The city's 12,766 yellow cabs are scheduled to get wireless connections next year that will track drivers and help alert them to waiting customers. Riders will be able to pay by credit card, to check flight data, or to buy movie tickets. The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, after gathering ideas from 70 companies, such as Bank of America Corp. and Sprint Nextel Corp., may announce this month the companies selected to add the services.
"This will bring a dinosaur industry into the 21st century," said Michael Levine, owner of Ronart Leasing Corp., a taxi company based in Queens that has 350 cars, and that Levine's grandfather started in
1937. "It's about time something happened."Yellow cabs, the only taxis in the biggest US city allowed to pick up people who flag them down, carry 238 million passengers a year and bring in about $1.5 billion. In Manhattan, where people in three of four households do not own a car, cabs carry babies home from hospitals, move furniture, and shuffle visitors between appointments.
The link from taxis to cellular networks and satellites would follow last year's 26 percent fare increase, the city's first in eight years, to increase the average driver's pay to more than $12 an hour.