Livery cabs, unlike yellow medallion taxis, are banned by city regulations from picking up fares on the street, with their fares limited to passengers who call dispatchers.
Northern river boatmen expanded their business by making calls to find new customers without breaking the community's strict rules on picking up fares out of turn.
On the law enforcement side, the police started a decoy program in May 2000 in which officers began posing as livery-cab drivers, cruising neighborhoods and picking up fares.
As with other gyratories, traffic comes in fast, angry waves with aggressive responses to anyone holding up traffic, even to taxis picking up fares from outside a supermarket.
Livery cabs, unlike yellow medallion taxis, are prohibited by city regulations from picking up fares on the street and are allowed to get passengers only through dispatchers.
Mr. Safir said he thought installing partitions and picking up fares only via dispatchers would provide drivers with the most security.
Data from GPS machines installed in the cabs would allow the city to track, on a weekly or even daily basis, whether the cars are frequently picking up fares.
A plan drawn up last May to sort out the country's public finances risks trapping the economy instead.At Syntagma, the Athenian square opposite the parliament, taxi-drivers picking up fares report falls of 40% or more in custom.
In the months since Councilwoman Julissa Ferreras, a Democrat of Queens, introduced the legislation in December, advocates for sex trafficking victims have raised concerns that cabdrivers might discriminate against some customers in an effort to avoid picking up fares who appear to be engaged in sex work.
An Atoc spokesman said: "Picking out fares that will only be paid by a very small proportion of customers, gives an incredibly partial impression of ticket prices.
