In a July 18th Daily News OpEd, Mayor de Blasio claimed that “more than 2,000 new for-hire vehicles are being added to our streets every month.” The reported total as of that time was 64,500 according to the article.

That rate sounded quite high to me in light of the total number of for-hire vehicles, so I checked some TLC data to verify the math. To find out the growth rate, I looked to the last time a public count was released, which was in the TLC Annual Report. The report said that as of December 31, 2014 there were 58,295 cars. So the total for-hire fleet has gone from 58,295 at the start of the year to 64,500 in July. We don’t know when in July de Blasio pulled his count, but let’s assume his data was at the start of July as opposed to July 18th when the article ran. That would be a 6 month time period, where the number of cars went from 58,295 to 64,500. A total change of 6,205 new cars over 6 months amounts to roughly 1,000 new for-hire vehicles a month - about one half of the rate that de Blasio had said in his OpEd.

So it seems that either the city is overstating the for-hire growth rate by about two times or they are underreporting the total count of for-hire vehicles in the article. Eager to hear explanations either way.

Note that the lack of more granular data makes it hard for citizens to understand what is going on here. I would love to see the TLC release counts monthly instead of annually.

Update: (8/31/15)

Twitter user @_alastair points to more data that shows that the increase was indeed lower than the Mayor posted in the OpEd. Still would love to hear from the administration on this.