Since yellow cabs never wanted to come to Brooklyn, at least not past Williamsburg, Brooklynites have been gifted a taxi system of our own with the city’s green cabs. With cheaper medallions and an inability to pick up hails in prime Manhattan spots, the green cabs were supposed to be the cure for what ailed taxi-less areas in the outer boroughs, and a map put together by DNA Info shows that it’s working, kind of. If you live in Northwest Brooklyn, you’ve got plenty of cabs, but south and east of Prospect Park, and Red Hook, cabs still aren’t stopping.
DNA Info got data for every green cab hail between August 2013 and June 2014 and mapped out where customers were picked up in August 2013, January 2014 and June 2014. Some areas of Brooklyn like Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Downtown and DUMBO showed plenty of pickups. As you got further south and east though, the pickups started to dwindle, with just a handful of rides in neighborhoods like Bay Ridge, Red Hook, Sheepshead Bay and East New York.
The good news is that as time went on, the taxis spread out across the borough, and the TLC is promising to increase the number of them to 18,000 across the city. So, if you live an underserved neighborhood, it seems like just a matter of time before you too can experience the joy of always seeing cabs around except for the one goddamn time you really need one.