Throughout history, NYC has faced many challenges — whether it be a devastating hurricane, an attack on the city, a financial collapse, or most recently the COVID-19 health crisis. Each time the city has gone through one of these very difficult situations, taxis have been there to help keep the city running. This most recent time is no different, with taxis playing what may be their largest role ever, in helping get essential workers throughout the city. During these past few months in NYC, taxis, with the support of Curb, have:
- Provided rides 24/7 to help get essential workers to the front lines around the city
- Enabled tens of thousands of healthcare workers (from institutions such as NYC Health + Hospitals, NYU Langone Health, and Mount Sinai Health) to get to and from the hospitals at all hours of the day and night
- Set up multiple citywide community programs to enable city and state agencies to transport at-risk New Yorkers
Taxis available even during the city-wide curfew
Due to limited transportation options and the need for social distancing, taxis have become an even more important method of transportation and played a vital role across the city. Even during our city-wide curfew, when all other vehicles were restricted from use in central Manhattan, taxis operated 24/7 with the help of the Curb platform to get essential workers around the city.
Healthcare workers across NYC get the Curb App
Within the healthcare industry alone, we onboarded tens of thousands of healthcare workers onto our Curb app over the past few months. Many of these workers provided non-stop care for the largest healthcare systems in the city including NYC Health + Hospitals, NYU Langone Health and Mount Sinai Health. With the Curb app set up on their phone, they could easily request and contactlessly pay for taxi rides to get to wherever they were needed most. Combined with our concierge booking options and 24×7 call center for administrators, the platform serviced over 200,000 trips during the worst months of the pandemic.
Providing rides for NYC government programs
In addition to helping healthcare organizations and numerous state and local agencies like the NYC Department of Health & Mental Hygiene, Curb worked with the New York City Emergency Management Department to provide taxi rides to help New Yorkers access multiple city programs that provided everything from meal delivery to transporting key personnel safely throughout the city.
Rising up to the challenge
The sheer amount of requests that we received from healthcare systems, companies and government agencies to facilitate transportation during this crisis was overwhelming. But just as the city rose to the challenge, we did too. Getting all these new programs up and running quickly was non-stop work, but our team worked tirelessly to solve complex challenges with incredibly limited timelines. We set up many programs that enabled us to provide rides not only through the Curb app but also through our desktop Curb Concierge platform or even through traditional phone calls for the booking of rides by administrative personnel. We pulled out all stops and did all we could to help.
While the city has faced challenges in the past with traditional street taxis, this time was dramatically different, in a very good way, as Curb technology enabled us to coordinate and offer a massively scalable service through taxis to efficiently get people wherever they needed to go.
Now as we begin the next phase of rebuilding the city, we couldn’t be more proud that taxis, enabled with Curb, were able to help out and continue to do so in the response to the latest challenge that we have faced. We hope that as we collectively begin the process of getting back to work, you’ll thank all those drivers who were out there helping the city get through this challenging time and were there to help the city rise up once again.
