Every penny counts for Kim Jamin, a taxi driver virus-ravaged New York, whose diet has reduced instant noodles despite working 14-hour shifts a day, seven days a week. Since the crown pandemic emptied the streets of the passenger, 58-year-old from South Korea must live on about $65 per day. He buys almost up, the food assume that he take a week’s rations. the can from the cheapest brand of Ramen find two meals of the day. “Forget about diet,” he says. On May 2, the seven passengers, has recorded five non-tilt. The other two gave him less than $3 per person. While both the majority of his fellow taxi drivers have to leave because they get sick with COVID-19 fears that dozens of their slain colleagues, or because they believe that it is useless to scrub a city abandoned to the bus-Kim says no decision has but more work. “I can every penny, nickel and dime do,” said Kim, who each Kost lives in Queens and just doodles and points obtained in a notepad. “The only way I could survive,” he adds, “I have to work every day.” This is the reality for hundreds of New York taxi drivers stay on the road, looking for scarce rates as low catchment record meets. The number of city taxi fell from about 506,000 in the first week of March to about 28,500 in the week of May 4, according to the commission Metropolitan Taxicab of Trade (MTBOT), the largest taxi group in the city, representing more than 5,500 yellow taxi owners, City taxi & Limousine Commission (TLC) has not put its data open, but the MTBOT, which represents about half of the entire taxi industry says prices have fallen for their fleets by 94%. “It ‘s an impressive number we’ve ever experienced before,” said spokesman Michael MTBOT Woloz. “The theater is dark. Restaurants are closed. All the traditional rates are gone.” Outside the Grand Central Terminal at 9:00 on a Monday again, taxis are lined up, but the most vain expectation. The hub of world-class transportation is nearly empty and the silence of the usual noise replaced the rush hour traffic. “It ‘s like at this time a movie,” Eleissawy Mohamed, a 63-year-old taxi driver, said the abandoned metropolis. Under a drop of thousands of pilots rates have stopped working. In the first week of March, about 3,660 taxi drivers were still on the road, after MTBOT feedback. Now the group has counted fewer than 600. Thousands of people have signed up to provide meals for the sick or elderly residents to $53 price is understood as part of a new citywide program to help vulnerable populations and earn more money driver. Thanks to the recycling their jobs, said the TLC these drivers are “help us to ensure that no one goes hungry.” But how Jamin, many of the city’s taxi drivers who approach slowly from the severe hunger itself. A new survey by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance (Nytva) that about 23,000 taxis and chauffeur app car-sharing is, found more than 82% of the pilots of the money has run out for food to buy or say that will soon come to this point. Of 919 drivers surveyed, more than 700 felt they were able to pay the rent or mortgage in March and April. The Independent Pilots Guild, serving more than 80,000 for-hire drivers in the city, with 45% of its members had requested safe food late April for help. Nearly 70% of the pilots corporation said they were unable to make rent or mortgage in April with more able to say that they will not be able to pay in May. The TLC has said it is still monitoring the toll death, but Bhairavi Desai, executive director Nytva says at least 50 riders from COVID-19 have died so far. “It ‘s shocking,” says Desai. Desai feared pandemic is for many drivers already have financial difficulties applications undergo a “breaking point” because of the competition with a run and buy crimping loans they took permission medallions are the city requires a yellow cab to possess. In 2018, at least eight professional drivers in the city have died by suicide, which claims defendant crippling debt. The industry had shows signs of improvement, especially after the flood of suicides, has grabbed the attention of local legislators, according to Desai and Woloz. Then the pandemic will strike. “The yellow taxi, the ultimate symbol of New York City,” says Desai. “But these are men and women who every time we think that the fund decided in the final, falls again from scratch.” Now the future of the taxi driver insecure than ever. As new 19-COVID cases slowly fall in New York City, lawyers are confident will recover the secular taxi industry as it is after the terrorist attacks of September 11 and after Hurricane Sandy in 2015, “New York City is the largest and best “TLC spokesman Allan Fromberg says, and we expect that the future is rosy in the new age ‘Desai and Woloz yellow cabs also say an important part of the town recreation, transport people and goods as some commuters. Avoid crowded subways could be. “They know how to navigate through a crisis,” says Desai. “In all the disaster drivers cities must work on hold”. But the predictions of some in the business world are sad. “The crown is the final nail in the coffin yellow cab”, says 36 year old driver Khurshid Ahmed, the $370,000 owed on his medallion loans. “I am bound to this place until my last breath,” he adds. “I see no future.” Jacob Smith, 49, from Ghana, agrees. Standing on 5th Avenue, they were equipped with pedestrian access, which used to be rush hour, has the yellow taxi driver and father of two little hope. “When the doors open, I’m not sure people will come back,” he says. Smith Career once to change anyone, anywhere, and he do. “New York is famous for the cabin,” he says, “but the crown will be the end.” Almontasir Ahmed Mohamed, 33, also weighs a career switch to green driving machine for six years. He studied engineering at a Kingsborough Community College part-time and I wonder if he sees again his family in his native Sudan. “I stopped thinking about my future,” he says. “The virus has me confused my plans.” For Kim, however, the United States his home for nearly 40 years, according to the back of South Korea is not an option. Nor is it the task of driving his taxi because everything is known. “This is my job is to death,” he says. ‘There is no other job I could do. “But when he started his own health at risk to get behind the wheel, she says Kim least one passenger in the day to make a racist comment to tell him to return to his country or to speak better English.” I do not think the city has respected us as doctors and nurses, the police, the workers underground, “he says.” we’re working on it. “” Without the yellow taxis, “he adds,” the city can not move. “With reporting Paul Moakley
New York taxi drivers are in danger as the crown and uncertain future Brave
