We May Soon Be Free of Those Horrid Taxi TV Screens
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Those annoying taxi TV screens that can turn a great night into one of frustration and fury as you fumble to hit the mute button may finally be silenced once and for all. According to the Post, the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission (TLC) will vote this Thursday night on whether or not the screens should be removed in favor of smartphone or tablet payment systems. As it stands, sources say that the the proposal will most likely pass. Apparently officials have been “flooded” for years with complaints about the TVs and they’ve also been a big reason that riders opting for Ubers as an alternative to the yellow cab, the agency admits.
“Both drivers and passengers routinely report to the TLC that they find the default settings and volume on the Taxi TV distracting and that the ‘mute’ and ‘off’ buttons on the Taxi TV often do not work,” the proposal says. Some drivers even paid their passengers to turn the screens off. “All I do is listen to people in the back seat trying to turn it off,” one told the Post.
The screens were first introduced back in 2006 by the Bloomberg administration, installed in 13,587 taxis as part of the Taxicab Passenger Enhancement Project. The city hoped that they would bring in ad revenue while also entertaining passengers, but Creative Mobile Technologies and Verifone, the companies processing the credit-card payments and taxi trip information, were the only ones to profit from the mind-numbing loop of Jimmy Kimmel and useless ABC news.
If the city approves the proposal on Thursday, the change will first be tested in 1,000 taxis, eventually expanding to the entire fleet by 2017.
[Via NY Post]
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