| You'd be hard-pressed to find a film set in New York City that doesn't feature a canary-hued taxi cab in the background. But contrary to popular belief, taxis haven't always been bright yellow. In fact, when businessman Harry Allen imported the first gas-powered taxis to New York City from France in 1907, the cabs appeared in shades of red and green. Allen's cabs were the first in the Big Apple to feature toll calculators, aka taximeters, a feature he sought out when getting into the industry, thanks to his experience being price-gouged on a short trip through Manhattan. In an expensive act of revenge, Allen's whirlwind dive into the taxi business included hiring uniformed cab drivers to haul around customers in brand-new cars; within a year, the businessman had expanded from a mere 65 cabs to 700. Allen wouldn't hold a cab monopoly though; his employees soon demanded higher wages and began to strike over unfair business practices. Competing cab companies cropped up, and to stand out, they began painting their cars in easy-to-spot colors: yellow, orange, green, or with black-and-white checkered trim. New York City's taxi industry was plagued with issues for decades thanks to the Great Depression, legal and labor disputes, and an increase in traffic accidents. To combat those problems, the city enacted a medallion system in 1937 under the Haas Act, a law that limited the number of available taxis and cut down on street gridlock. But it was about 30 years later that the city added on a new regulation that would give cabs their iconic hue — by 1970, licensed cabs in New York had to be painted yellow, specifically Dupont M6284. The reasoning? The bright color could help passengers pick out permitted cabs, which all charge the same fair rate, from unlicensed taxis, which weren't allowed to be painted yellow. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment