NEW YORK (AP) -- Both sides claimed victory Thursday on the second day of a New York City taxi drivers strike called to protest new rules requiring all cabs to have GPS and touch-screen videos.
"The strike is in full effect,'' said Bhairavi Desai, executive director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, which organized the strike.
"It's empty at the airport taxi lots, empty on the streets and at the garages. Taxis have remained parked, exactly where they were as of Wednesday morning,'' she said Thursday. "Drivers have held strong. We're proud of them.''
But city officials said the work stoppage was having a minimal effect on travel in the city.
"We're not seeing any major disruptions,'' Office of Emergency Management spokesman Andrew Troisi said Thursday.
It was hard to gauge exactly how many of the city's 44,000 licensed taxi drivers kept their yellow cabs parked on Wednesday and Thursday.
Javaid Tariq, who has driven a taxi for the last 13 years, was holding a picket sign outside Pennsylvania Station near a taxi stand on Thursday morning.
"It is successful,'' he said. "We are united. We won't give up our struggles.''
On Wednesday, the alliance called the strike a ``resounding success,'' but city officials and some other drivers' groups said the strike fizzled.
The strike caused some headaches in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, and for arriving passengers at LaGuardia and JFK airports in Queens.
The city put into place a contingency plan that allowed nonstriking drivers to offer group rides -- meaning they could pick up multiple separate passengers _ and flat fares instead of the usual metered rates.
The alliance said more than 90 percent of drivers stopped working Wednesday. But city officials put the number at about 20 percent.
The Metropolitan Taxicab Board of Trade, which represents 23 taxi fleets, said more than 70 percent of its members' 3,200 cabs remained on the road Wednesday. The group said it anticipated more drivers would return to work Thursday.
"The city has not come to a stop, and people are getting where they need to go,'' Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Wednesday.
At least some cabbies who continued working expressed support for their striking colleagues. Yasser El-Sayed said he stayed on the job Wednesday because he needed to pay his bills.
"I can't afford to strike,'' he said.
At the heart of the conflict are new rules requiring the city's more than 13,000 cabs to have global-positioning system technology and video screens that will let passengers pay by credit card, check news stories and monitor their cab's location.
The cabs must have the new technology as they come up for inspection, starting Oct. 1.
City Taxi & Limousine Commission spokesman Allan Fromberg said nearly 1,600 cabs already have the technology.
The taxi commission says the technology, by eliminating the need for cash, could mean more riders and bigger fares for drivers. It also says the GPS will help passengers reclaim lost property.
The alliance, which is an advocacy group, not a labor union, fears the equipment could be used to track drivers' movements. It also says drivers will get stuck paying hefty fees to cover credit card transactions, and it questions whether the technology will work as well and as smoothly as promised.
In Philadelphia, the city's cab drivers launched a 48-hour strike on Wednesday over similar rules but ended it a day early, after causing sporadic delays.
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