Traffic came to a standstill on two New York City spans on Thursday as armadas of yellow taxi drivers participated in a call for obligation absolution in the midst of the Covid pandemic, which has annihilated the previously battling industry and left numerous drivers in emergency.
A convoy of taxicabs shut down the Brooklyn Bridge and the Queensboro Bridge on Thursday evening, prompting nearby traffic admonitions.
The most recent in a series of fights, the gathering of drivers, sorted out by the N.Y. Taxi Workers Association, is requesting obligation alleviation because of lost salary in the midst of the pandemic.
With the quantity of drivers working off 75% as of June, the latest month information is accessible for from the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission, and ridership down 90%, drivers state they can’t stay aware of emblem credit installments.
Marblegate Asset Management, the greatest holder of taxi advances, has given around 2,000 emblem proprietor drivers an advance installment occasion since mid-March, notwithstanding bringing a few advances down to $300,000 (with $25,000 needed to fund the rebuilding) and cutting the normal month to month advance installment from around $2,800 to $1,500.
These costs, cabbies contend, are still excessively high, especially for drivers actually battling to discover travelers in the midst of the pandemic.
The affiliation is asking banks like Marblegate to slice advances to $125,000 and decrease regularly scheduled installments to around $750 to “free the drivers once again from destitution,” calling the organization’s offer a “lifelong incarceration to borrower’s jail.”
In an announcement to Forbes, a Marblegate representative said the organization concurs that rebuilding advances “is the best way to start to balance out the taxi business and get drivers in a good place again,” yet accepts a “one-size-fits-all methodology” would burglarize proprietor drivers of the value they’ve worked for quite a long time to fabricate.