Technology

A new taxi app could give New York City consumers more options during the holidays, so they will not have to deal with unreasonable fares.

As WCBS 880’s Marla Diamond reported, competition is on the rise, and the value of cab medallions is on the decline. Thus, Upper East Side City Councilman Ben Kallos (D-5th) has introduced a universal hail app.

If one Manhattan lawmaker gets his way, you'll be able to hail any NYC taxi from an app on your phone like you do with Uber and Lyft.

On Monday, New York City Council Member Ben Kallos introduced legislation that would require New York City to have its own app for hailing taxi cabs. 

“City taxis need an app of their own to compete, and New Yorkers need to be able to get a cab in the rain without having to worry about surge pricing," Kallos said in a press release.

The city would launch its own taxi hailing app to compete with Uber and Lyft under a bill introduced in the City Council Monday.

Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan) is sponsoring the bill to require the city to create an e-hail app for its regular fleet of more than 13,000 yellow cabs and 6,000 green ones.

“City taxis need an app if they’re going to compete, and New Yorkers should be able to e-hail a cab in the rain without having to worry about surge pricing,” Kallos said, referring to Uber’s practice of jacking up prices when demand is highest.

E-hail yes!

A Manhattan lawmaker is introducing legislation Monday that would require the city to launch a universal e-hail app for yellow and green cabs — the latest salvo against app-based taxi services like Uber.

City Council Member Ben Kallos says such an app would make the old-time, hand-hail yellow and green cabs significantly more competitive against the newer car service firms.

“City taxis need an app of their own to compete, and New Yorkers need to be able to get a cab in the rain without having to worry about surge pricing,” said Kallos, who’s also a software developer.

City Councilman Ben Kallos introduced legislation today that would require the creation of a universal smartphone app for hailing cabs in New York.

The measure is backed by taxi owners and would, in theory, neutralize the threat of e-hail companies like Uber while making it easier to connect with yellow or green borough cabs by app, rather than using the traditional street hail. It follows a similar effort in Chicago,where the city is planning to develop one or several apps that would allow riders to go to one place to hail a cab. Officials in Washington, D.C., are undertaking a similar effort.

“The gist of the bill is it’s designed to allow people to hail yellow and green cabs, where as right now it’s not easy to do that,” Sarah Anders, a spokeswoman for Kallos, said.

It's no secret that New Yorkers don't think too much about pay phones any more. A quick stroll around the city will reveal that many pay phones don't work and many are just empty booths, lacking actual phones. But the pay phones are a vital piece of city infrastructure, especially in disaster situations. With the need to preserve that infrastructure and the opportunity to reimagine the public terminal, NYC's Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT) was tasked with finding a way to preserve pay phones while making them more useful to people in the 21st century.

To accomplish that, DoITT solicited proposals from companies around the world. After a lengthy process, the city has selected a proposal by a consortium of companies collectively called CityBridge. Over the next four to five years, CityBridge will build out what it is calling the LinkNYC network. Each individual terminal will be called a Link and will offer blazing-fast Wi-Fi, touch-screen interfaces, the ability to quickly make 911 and 311 calls, and free charging stations for mobile devices.

"The first payphone was installed in Chicago in 1898 and hasn't changed much since," says New York City Council Member Ben Kallos. "This will revolutionize the structure's design and bring us one step closer to universal broadband in public areas."

The fastest Wi-Fi in town is coming to street corners around the city — and it won’t cost a cent to use.

City officials have reached a 12-year deal to install 10,000 kiosks in all five boroughs, they said, which according to one of the private operators involved will constitute the “largest and fastest” free Internet program in the world. 

City Councilman Ben Kallos (D-Manhattan), who has pushed to expand wireless access, said the network would encourage other cities to follow New York’s lead.

“We are nearer than ever to universal broadband in public spaces and a meaningful step toward closing the digital divide,” he said.

The digital divide grows wider every moment and, with it, income inequality -- but we have a chance to significantly decrease it by requiring free and affordable universal broadband and consumer protections from the merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable. New York State's Public Service Commission is voting on whether such a merger is in the "public interest." The approval of New York State, home of the nation's top media market, New York City, is essential to the current merger.

Who?

Ben Kallos
NYC Council Member

Why did you choose Agile, especially for a non-software environment?

Most people think of government as slow and bureaucratic, but that isn’t a required feature. In fact, it is a bug, mostly tied to old models that were successful in the industrial era. The predominant governing model was the “waterfall method,” an approach that allows for ample input at the beginning of a project, but little—if any—during implementation or once the project is complete. Government must adapt from this industrial model to what it more closely resembles: an information and services based model that allows for continuous feedback along the way.

Ben Kallos, one of the Council's most active and outspoken members on issues involving data and technology, thinks that open-government advocates have a special opportunity at the moment. 

"When you have a new administration and a new mayor, [any revelation] from the data is somebody else's dirty laundry," he said. "Whatever you find, it's somebody's else problem, not the current mayor's."

On Monday, the Council technology committee, under chair James Vacca, will hold anoversight hearing on New York City's open data portal, with civic technology advocates expected to push for improvements to data quality and accessibility, which has also been a priority of Kallos.