I'm all in favor of letting cabbies pick and choose their fares. But if we do that, we also need to allow competition in the taxi market.
Sort of - the law gives the guy a monopoly on picking up street passengers. But again, these laws are broken often - livery drivers will still pick you up sometimes, depending on where you are. Definitely not in front of Grand Central, though.
Consider that a cab ride from grand central to westchester would cost far more than 9 dollars.
Dude. Chelsea is in Manhattan. It's uptown of the west village. It was a 5-10 minute ride. Perhaps your comments would be better focused if you were familiar with... any of this.
On point, how you could possibly turn a 5-10 minute cab ride to a city resident's home into a victimized cab driver being forced into an unwilling financial transaction is literally - literally - beyond me. Especially when the transaction in question - driving a passenger somewhere - is pretty much the sole responsibility and contribution of a cab driver.
EDIT: Ok, not to Westchester but outside the city limits. Basically the law forced a guy who doesn't make that much money to engage in a transaction with you against his will. He wasn't the bad guy here.