Fleet record · Source dated 2026-08-09 · Retrieved 2026-08-10
The fleet number, counted rather than repeated.
Every taxi-advertising page on the internet opens with a fleet number and none of them says where it came from. This one does: the count below is every row in the Taxi & Limousine Commission's authorized medallion vehicle file, read from the city's own API.
Row counts and group-by aggregates read straight from the Socrata API, no sampling and no estimate. Source: NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission, Medallion Vehicles - Authorized, NYC Open Data, dataset rhe8-mgbb.
What the vendors publish, against the record
Both figures in circulation sit above the licensing file. Neither vendor names a source or a date, which is the part that matters when the number is the first input in your reach math.
| Published claim | Source | Against the licensing record |
|---|---|---|
| 11,000 (approx.) | Blue Line Media | 6.9% higher |
| over 13,500 | Alluvit Media | 31.2% higher |
| 10,291 | NYC TLC licensing file | Record |
What the fleet is made of
Three splits change how a buy behaves: accessibility build, who drives the medallion, and how old the vehicle is.
Accessibility build
| Wheelchair accessible (WAV) | 6,286 | 61.1% |
| Standard vehicle | 4,005 | 38.9% |
Wheelchair accessible vehicles are the majority of the fleet. They are taller, which changes sightlines for a roof unit and matters if your creative depends on being read from a sidewalk rather than from a car behind.
Medallion type
| Named driver | 6,265 | 60.9% |
| Owner must drive | 4,025 | 39.1% |
| Not stated | 1 | 0.0% |
The split matters because hours on street, not vehicle count, is what a daypart-weighted plan is really buying. Ask a vendor how many shifts per day the vehicles on your buy run, and get it in writing rather than inferred from the medallion type.
Vehicle age
70.7% of authorized vehicles are model year 2022 or newer. 15.0% are 2019 or older. A recent fleet is why roof hardware fits and why in-car screens are common.
What this does not tell you
Authorized is not the same as on the road tonight. The licensing file counts vehicles cleared to operate; it does not publish shift hours, garage utilisation, or how many of those vehicles carry advertising hardware at any given moment. It also publishes no impression figure, which is why the 10,900 impressions per taxi per day number in circulation is a vendor claim rather than a measurement. Ask any vendor which of the 10,291 they can actually deliver, in which neighbourhoods, and how they counted the eyes.
Published rates, formats and the reach model · Verified campaign archive
Frequently asked questions
- How many yellow taxis are there in New York City?
- 10,291 medallion vehicles were authorized on 2026-08-09, according to the Taxi & Limousine Commission's own authorized-vehicle dataset on NYC Open Data. That is a count of every record in the licensing file, not an estimate. Media vendors publish 11,000 and "over 13,500"; both are above the licensing record.
- How many impressions does a taxi ad get per day in New York?
- No city dataset publishes impressions. The 10,900 impressions per taxi per day figure that circulates online is a vendor figure published by Blue Line Media, not an audited measurement. Treat any impression number as a vendor claim until the vendor tells you how it was counted.
- Is taxi advertising bigger than rideshare in New York?
- Not by fleet size. Authorized medallion taxis are 10,291 vehicles against 104,595 active for-hire vehicles, so taxis are about 9.0% of licensed for-hire vehicles in the city. Yellow medallion taxis are the vehicles licensed to take street hails in the Manhattan core, which is where they concentrate and why they still carry street-level reach in the most expensive part of the city to buy.