New York City’s taxis are yellow because the city required licensed medallion taxicabs to use a uniform yellow color beginning in 1967. The rule made it easy for passengers to distinguish legal street-hail taxis from private livery cars. Yellow taxis had existed in New York decades earlier, but the color did not become the city’s official medallion-taxi identity until the late 1960s.
If you’ve ever been to New York City, you’ve probably seen or ridden in a taxi cab at some point. They’re almost impossible to miss. New York City’s taxicabs have been featured in television shows and movies for generations, and their history reaches back to the earliest days of the automobile. Remarkably, some of New York’s first motorized taxis were electric.
Photo: Malinda Kachejian © 2020
Why Are New York City Taxis Yellow?
Yellow became the official color of New York City’s medallion taxicabs as a way to make licensed taxis instantly recognizable. In 1967, the city required medallion taxis to be painted yellow so passengers could distinguish them from private liveries and unauthorized street-hail vehicles.
The connection between taxis and the color yellow was already much older. During the early twentieth century, individual taxi companies used distinctive fleet colors, and yellow taxi companies operated in New York and other American cities. However, New York taxis were not universally yellow during those early decades. Red, green, orange, black, and other colors could all be seen on the streets.
Today, the Taxi and Limousine Commission still specifies an official taxi-yellow paint standard for medallion taxicabs. The yellow body, roof markings, and medallion number remain some of the easiest ways to recognize a legal New York City yellow taxi.
When Did Taxis First Appear in New York City?
Motorized taxi service in New York City dates to 1897, when a small fleet of electric cabs began operating in Manhattan. The vehicles were connected to the Electric Carriage and Wagon Company and the work of electric-vehicle pioneers Henry Morris and Pedro Salom, whose battery-powered Electrobat helped demonstrate that automobiles could replace horse-drawn transportation for commercial passenger service.
The electric fleet expanded during the next several years. These early cabs used battery-changing stations rather than waiting for depleted batteries to recharge, a concept that sounds surprisingly modern today.
The business ultimately collapsed. A major fire destroyed a significant part of the fleet, financial problems mounted, and the Panic of 1907 helped bring the electric-cab operation to an end. Gasoline-powered automobiles were also becoming more practical and less expensive, pushing electric vehicles out of the mainstream for generations.
Harry Allen and the First Great Gasoline Taxi Fleet
New York’s gasoline-powered taxi industry took off in 1907 when businessman Harry N. Allen imported 65 automobiles from France and launched the New York Taxicab Company. His vehicles used mechanical taximeters to calculate fares, bringing greater consistency to a business in which passengers had often negotiated prices with drivers of horse-drawn hansom cabs.
Allen’s operation expanded quickly. Within about a year, his fleet had grown to roughly 700 cabs. His own company did not last long, but the model worked. Other operators entered the business, and metered gasoline taxis quickly became a permanent part of New York street life.
Contrary to a commonly repeated version of the story, Allen’s first taxis were not the reason all New York taxis eventually became yellow. Early accounts describe his imported fleet as red and green. The universal yellow requirement came decades later through city regulation.
The Taxi Business Explodes During the 1920s and 1930s
New York’s taxi industry grew rapidly during the 1920s. Large fleets competed with thousands of independent drivers, and automobiles increasingly replaced the horse-drawn vehicles that had dominated city transportation for generations.
The Great Depression created a serious oversupply problem. With jobs scarce, driving a cab became one of the few occupations people could enter relatively quickly. Competition became fierce, drivers worked extremely long hours, and the city faced increasing pressure to regulate the number of taxis operating on the streets.
How New York City’s Taxi Medallion System Began
In 1937, Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia signed the Haas Act, establishing the taxi medallion system that still defines the yellow-cab industry. The city sold 13,566 medallions for $10 each and limited the number of licensed taxis that could legally pick up passengers by street hail.
The purpose was to stabilize an industry suffering from oversupply and destructive competition. Instead of allowing an unlimited number of vehicles to cruise for fares, each legal street-hail taxi needed a medallion.
The medallion began as a relatively inexpensive license. Over the decades, scarcity turned it into an extraordinarily valuable asset. By the early twenty-first century, some medallions sold for more than $1 million before values plunged during the rise of app-based for-hire services.
What Is a New York City Taxi Medallion?
A taxi medallion is the license that authorizes a yellow taxicab to operate as a medallion taxi in New York City. The metal medallion is attached to the vehicle, and its identifying number also appears in several places on the cab and on the passenger’s receipt.
The medallion is important because yellow taxis have a privilege other for-hire vehicles do not have: they can legally accept street hails anywhere in New York City’s five boroughs. Yellow taxis can also accept electronic hails through TLC-licensed apps.
As of 2026, New York City law provides for 13,587 yellow taxi medallions. That number is remarkably close to the size of the fleet established when the medallion system began in the 1930s.
The Checker Cab Becomes a New York City Icon
Few vehicles are more closely associated with old New York than the Checker taxi. Checker built large, durable automobiles specifically suited to commercial taxi service. Their roomy interiors, high roofs, and heavy construction made them ideal for the punishment of city driving.
For decades, Checker cabs became one of the defining images of New York streets. They appeared in countless photographs, television programs, and films, becoming almost as recognizable as the city’s buses and subway entrances.
Checker stopped automobile production in 1982, and the surviving New York Checker taxis gradually disappeared from service. According to the Taxi and Limousine Commission’s historical records, the last Checker taxi in the city’s medallion fleet was retired in 1999.
Photo: Brian Kachejian. Modern yellow taxi cab in New York City.
Why All Medallion Taxis Became Yellow in 1967
By the 1960s, New York had both licensed medallion taxis and private livery vehicles. The distinction mattered because medallion taxis were permitted to pick up passengers who hailed them from the street, while traditional livery cars generally operated through prearranged calls.
The city wanted passengers to be able to identify legal street-hail taxis instantly. In 1967, all medallion cabs were required to be painted yellow. That rule, rather than any single early taxi company, created the uniform yellow fleet New Yorkers recognize today.
The decision also created one of the strongest pieces of visual branding any city transportation system has ever had. A yellow car moving through Manhattan traffic is recognizable as a New York taxi even when the photograph contains no other obvious landmark.
The Taxi and Limousine Commission Is Created in 1971
Before 1971, the New York City Police Department’s Hack Bureau played the major regulatory role in the taxi business. That changed when the city created the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission, commonly known as the TLC.
The TLC is a New York City agency responsible for licensing and regulating yellow taxis, for-hire vehicles, green taxis, commuter vans, and paratransit vehicles. It is not a division of the NYPD.
The agency regulates drivers, vehicles, medallions, fares, inspections, equipment, safety standards, and many other parts of the for-hire transportation industry.
Crime, Driver Safety, and the Partition Era
Driving a New York taxi could be especially dangerous during the city’s high-crime years of the 1960s and 1970s. Cab drivers carried cash, worked alone, traveled into unfamiliar neighborhoods, and often worked late at night, making them vulnerable to robbery and assault.
Partitions between drivers and passengers became one of the most visible responses to those dangers. Lockboxes, distress systems, improved communications, and later security cameras also changed the working environment.
The familiar partition became so closely associated with the New York taxi that it eventually seemed like part of the vehicle itself. Modern rules allow different safety configurations, but the decades when nearly every cab seemed to have a heavy divider remain an important part of taxi history.
Technology Changes the Yellow Taxi Experience
Taxi technology changed dramatically as the twentieth century gave way to the twenty-first. Electronic passenger-information systems, GPS, credit-card readers, digital receipts, and electronic payment reduced the industry’s dependence on cash and made trips easier to document.
Smartphones created an even larger change. Passengers who once stood at the curb with an arm raised could suddenly summon a vehicle from an app. Yellow taxis eventually joined that world as TLC-licensed e-hail systems allowed passengers to request taxis electronically and, in some cases, receive upfront fare quotes.
The fundamental street-hail experience survived, but the technology behind the ride became almost unrecognizable compared with the mechanical meters used by Harry Allen’s fleet in 1907.
What Is the Difference Between a Yellow Taxi and a Green Taxi?
Yellow taxis can accept street hails anywhere in New York City. Green taxis, officially known as Street Hail Liveries or Boro Taxis, were created to improve legal street-hail service in neighborhoods that historically received fewer yellow taxis.
The city began issuing green-cab permits in 2013. Green taxis may accept street hails throughout Brooklyn, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Queens, except at JFK and LaGuardia airports. In Manhattan, they may accept street hails north of East 96th Street on the East Side and north of West 110th Street on the West Side.
Green taxis may also accept prearranged trips through licensed bases or electronic dispatch. Their apple-green color was deliberately chosen to make them just as easy to distinguish from yellow taxis and ordinary for-hire vehicles.
Uber, Lyft, and the Taxi Medallion Crisis
The arrival of app-based services such as Uber and Lyft transformed New York’s for-hire transportation market. Passengers suddenly had access to enormous numbers of app-dispatched vehicles that did not require yellow taxi medallions.
The change put enormous pressure on traditional yellow taxis and contributed to a collapse in medallion values. Owners who had borrowed heavily when medallions were selling for extraordinary prices found themselves carrying debts tied to assets worth a fraction of what they had paid.
The city later created medallion debt-relief programs to help financially distressed owners. The crisis became one of the most dramatic chapters in the history of a license that had originally cost only $10.
What Happened to the Ford Crown Victoria and the Taxi of Tomorrow?
As Checker cabs disappeared, other vehicles took their place. The Chevrolet Caprice became common during the 1990s, while the Ford Crown Victoria became the workhorse of the fleet during the following years.
New York later launched its Taxi of Tomorrow program, selecting the Nissan NV200 as a purpose-built taxi. The first NV200s entered service in 2013. At the same time, hybrids, minivans, wheelchair-accessible vehicles, and other TLC-approved models increasingly diversified the fleet.
The result is that a New York yellow taxi is now defined more by its license, markings, and color than by one particular make or model.
Photo: Brian Kachejian. Modern New York City taxi cabs.
New York’s Yellow Taxis Today
Yellow taxis remain the only vehicles licensed to pick up street-hailing passengers anywhere in New York City. By law, there are 13,587 yellow taxis, and each must operate under a medallion.
The industry continues to change. In 2024, the TLC adopted rules requiring future taxi hack-ups, the process of putting a vehicle into medallion service, to use wheelchair-accessible vehicles. The change is part of the city’s effort to increase the accessibility of the yellow taxi fleet.
In 2026, the TLC also unveiled a special medallion design commemorating the 250th anniversary of the United States. The decorative metal medallion is a small detail, but it connects today’s taxis with a licensing system that began under Mayor LaGuardia nearly ninety years earlier.
Ride-sharing apps changed the business, new vehicle designs changed the fleet, and technology changed the way people summon and pay for rides. Yet the basic New York experience remains recognizable. Stand at the curb, raise your hand, and that yellow car still means the same thing it has meant for generations: a ride through the city.
More New York City Transportation History
Readers interested in how New Yorkers move through the city can also explore our local guide to getting around New York City, our history of the Second Avenue Subway project, our look at Grand Central Terminal, and our history of Penn Station.
New York City Yellow Taxi History at a Glance
| Year | Milestone |
|---|---|
| 1897 | A small fleet of electric taxicabs begins operating in Manhattan |
| 1907 | Harry N. Allen launches the New York Taxicab Company with 65 imported gasoline-powered cars |
| 1937 | The Haas Act establishes New York City’s taxi medallion system |
| 1967 | All medallion taxis are required to be painted yellow |
| 1971 | The New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission is created |
| 1982 | Checker ends automobile production |
| 1999 | The last Checker taxi is retired from New York City’s medallion fleet |
| 2000s | Credit-card readers, GPS, passenger screens, and electronic payments transform the taxi experience |
| 2013 | Green Boro Taxis and the first Nissan NV200 Taxi of Tomorrow vehicles enter service |
| 2024 | TLC adopts rules requiring future yellow-taxi hack-ups to use wheelchair-accessible vehicles |
| 2026 | New York City law provides for 13,587 yellow taxi medallions; TLC introduces a U.S. 250th-anniversary medallion design |
History of New York’s Yellow Taxi Cab: Why NYC Taxis Are Yellow article published on ClassicNewYorkHistory.com © 2026
