Manhattan Taxi Zones Ranked: Pickups, Drop-offs & Pay

In short: Manhattan's 69 taxi zones had 130.0 million pickups in the 12 months to August 2026. That is 43.6% of all yellow, green and Uber/Lyft pickups in the city. Midtown Center was the busiest zone (4.74 million pickups), followed by Times Sq/Theatre District and Upper East Side South. Apps made 69.4% of Manhattan pickups and yellow taxis 30.4%. Yellow cabs still won more than half the pickups in only three zones: Central Park and the two Upper East Side zones. The full ranking is in the table below.

The numbers at a glance

Every Manhattan zone, ranked

Sort the table by any column. Click a zone name to see its own page with hourly patterns and top destinations.

The top and the bottom

The five busiest zones were Midtown Center (4,742,983 pickups), Times Sq/Theatre District (4,208,384), Upper East Side South (4,057,069), East Village (4,051,067) and East Chelsea (3,701,471). All five are in the area TLC's lookup labels "Yellow Zone".

The quietest zones are places with few homes or streets. The three harbor-island zones (IDs 103, 104 and 105: Governor's, Ellis and Liberty Island) had 52 pickups between them. Next come Highbridge Park (24,678), Battery Park (40,165), Randalls Island (51,525) and Inwood Hill Park (77,640). Their names tell you what they are: parks and islands. Randalls Island had more than twice as many drop-offs (114,320) as pickups, so many riders who go there leave another way, or from a different zone. The data can't say which.

Where yellow cabs are still strong

Yellow cabs made more than half the pickups in only three zones: Central Park (59.9%), Upper East Side North (52.4%) and Upper East Side South (50.9%). Penn Station/Madison Sq West was close behind at 49.4%. In the 55 zones labelled Yellow Zone, yellow taxis made 33.4% of pickups. In the 14 zones labelled Boro Zone (Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood and nearby, plus Roosevelt Island), they made only 9.5%. Marble Hill (0.9%), Inwood (2.2%) and Washington Heights North (3.5%) were the lowest.

Green cabs matter only in the north. 88% of Manhattan's 309,402 green cab pickups were in Boro Zone zones, led by East Harlem North (137,458). That fits the rule that green cabs may not take hails south of East 96th Street and West 110th Street. See who can pick up where for the legal lines, which are not the same as the data labels.

More pickups than drop-offs, and the reverse

Some zones send out far more trips than they receive. Midtown Center had 738,333 more pickups than drop-offs, the East Village 688,096 more, the Lower East Side 621,997 more and Times Sq/Theatre District 570,300 more. The opposite was true in East Harlem South (156,403 more drop-offs) and Morningside Heights (141,111 more). A zone with more drop-offs than pickups is one where you are more likely to end a trip without a new rider nearby, but the counts alone do not prove that. For the citywide picture, see busiest taxi zones for drop-offs.

When each zone peaks, and what app trips pay

Each zone page shows its own hourly pattern. Across Manhattan, the busiest hour differs by neighborhood. 11 zones, mostly in upper Manhattan and on the West Side, peak at 8 a.m. on weekdays. 5 zones peak at 1 a.m. on Sunday (Saturday night): the East Village, Lower East Side, Little Italy/NoLiTa, Greenwich Village South and Alphabet City. 10 zones peak at 7 p.m. on Saturday.

Median Uber/Lyft driver pay per trip was highest for trips starting in World Trade Center ($23.64), Times Sq/Theatre District ($23.53) and Financial District South ($23.42). It was lowest in Marble Hill ($12.19), Central Harlem ($13.01) and Central Harlem North ($13.07). These figures count zones with at least 100,000 pickups. Pay per trip is not pay per hour: a short, cheap trip after a short wait can be worth more to you than a long trip after a long wait. Our Uber/Lyft pay by hour of day page looks at time.

Data caveats

• Period: pickups from September 2025 to August 2026, from TLC's published trip records. TLC releases files about two months after each month ends and can revise them.
• Who is counted: yellow taxis, green cabs and high-volume app services (Uber, Lyft). Black car, livery and luxury limo trips that are not app trips are not in these files with fares, so they are left out.
• Suppressed cells: medians need at least 250 trips. That is why the harbor-island zones show dashes.
• Pay: "App median pay" is TLC's driver pay field: after commission, before tips and tolls. It is not the TLC minimum pay formula and not hourly earnings.

What the data can't tell you

A zone is an area, not a corner. The table can't tell you where in Midtown Center riders stand, which hotel or office they came from, or whether a pickup was legal. It also can't show cash tips in yellow cabs, how long drivers waited, or trips by non-app car services. The data label "Yellow Zone" is not a legal boundary; see NYC taxi zones explained.

Compare other boroughs: Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Staten Island. All 263 zones are in NYC taxi zone data. For rules, stands and offices in the borough, see the Manhattan location page and the places hub.