Where Green Cabs Get Hails: Pickups by Zone

In short: Green cab work is concentrated in a few neighborhoods. From September 2025 to August 2026, green cabs made about 527,000 pickups, and East Harlem North and South alone had about 39% of them. The 15 busiest green zones had 76%. Pickups fell 13.9% from the year before in TLC's monthly zone counts. Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn all fell; the Bronx grew (+8.5%), though from a small base (Staten Island went from 47 to 73 pickups).

Green cabs (street hail liveries, or SHLs) may take street hails only in the Hail Zone: everywhere in NYC except Manhattan south of East 96th and West 110th Streets and the airports (TLC rules, chapter 51). For the overall decline of the fleet, see green cab statistics. This page is about where.

The numbers at a glance

The map

By borough

Manhattan still has most green pickups (309,711 in the latest year in TLC's counts), concentrated in East Harlem, Central Harlem, Morningside Heights and Washington Heights. Queens is second (123,117), Brooklyn third (82,895). The Bronx had just 11,922, and Staten Island 73.

Within Manhattan, about 12% of green pickups (36,400) were recorded in zones that TLC's data labels "Yellow Zone". Most of those (21,646) were in the Central Park zone, which runs from 59th Street to 110th Street and so lies on both sides of the hail line, and the next largest were Upper East Side North (3,693) and Bloomingdale (3,169). A data label is not the legal boundary, and these records can't show whether any single pickup broke a rule.

Trend vs the prior year, zone by zone

Every one of the 15 busiest green zones lost pickups. East Harlem North fell least (−6.6%); Astoria (−33.8%), Morningside Heights (−28.3%) and Central Park (−27.8%) fell most. Month to month, green trips in the trip records went from 48,754 in September 2025 to 40,528 in August 2026 (dataset trips-green-trip-type-by-month).

Hail vs dispatch, by borough

Each green trip record has a trip type: 1 = street hail, 2 = dispatch (from a base or an e-hail app). Some records leave it blank.

Manhattan green work is almost all street hails. Outside Manhattan, dispatches are about a tenth of trips. The Bronx stands out: 69% of its green trips have no trip type recorded, so its hail share can't be read reliably. Staten Island has too few trips (71) for any pattern.

For a driver, the split matters because a dispatch can start anywhere in the Hail Zone, while a hail depends on being where people raise a hand. In Brooklyn and Queens, where dispatches are about one trip in ten, a base or e-hail app adds some work beyond the busy hail corridors. In Manhattan, green work is nearly all hails, so it stays tied to the few upper-Manhattan zones on the map above.

What the data can't tell you

• Whether a pickup was legal. Zones don't follow the 96th/110th Street line, and trip records don't show the exact street.
• Why trips fell. The data show the drop, not the reasons. TLC's view is summarized on green cab statistics.
• Earnings. Pickup counts aren't pay.
• SHL pilot ("P") cars may not accept street hails (TLC SHL Pilot Program). This page counts only green cab trip records, and it can't tell you anything about pilot cars.
• Small differences between sources. TLC's monthly zone counts (c5iv-bn4s) and our trip-record counts differ by a few hundred trips because of cleaning and revisions.

Rules for working a green cab: who can pick up where, can green cabs pick up in Manhattan?, can green cabs use taxi stands?, on-duty unavailable, cruising and SHL. Compare all industries in busiest pickup zones. More on the places hub.