Open Summons - Active For-Hire-Vehicle (FHV) Owners

Today I decided to hack around on some of the NYC Open Data and got started with the list of open and active summons issued to for-hire-vehicles (FHV).  It's my understanding that these are the black cars and limos that you can order over the phone.  Here is a document that describes them in more detail.  The data set is available at https://nycopendata.socrata.com/d/fndu-yzn3.  It does not seem terribly useful since it only contains open requests, so it is hard to draw too many conclusions from.  The data set also doesn't look too popular with only 11 downloads at the time of this writing and no comments.  Despite all this, I think it's a fine jumping off point for exploring the broader NYC open data sets.  As of my download, there are 4590 rows going from the date range of July 2012 all the way back to 2008.  The majority of the issues (4032) are for this year.

Here's a look at the distribution of the charges:



These appear to reference sections of the FHV rule book.  For the first one, by a large margin, 59A-25(A)(1) the rule book says:

Passenger Trips by Pre-Arrangement Only

No For-Hire Vehicle Owner will allow Owner‟s Vehicle(s) to transport 
Passengers for hire other than through pre-arrangement with a Base 
licensed by the Commission.  

So they got caught picking up street fares!  Can't say that's too surprising, but it's interesting that they're caught.  No wonder they always seems so suspicious.

The second most common is 59A-27(D) which is:

Correct Defect Directives.  A For-Hire Vehicle Owner must comply with all Commission notices and directives to correct defects in the Vehicle. 

The third one, 59A-11(B)(1) I found interesting:

A Vehicle Owner must not allow any of its Vehicles to be dispatched unless its driver possesses a Valid For-Hire Driver‟s License.

Yikes.  It's important to remember that these are only open summons though.

That's it for now.  Check back here for updates as I post additional findings as I play around with the exciting NYC open data and also discuss the technical details of any interesting analysis.