Relief Space vs Trips: Where Drivers Have Nowhere to Stop

In short: NYC has 547 relief-stand spaces on DOT's list, and they are not where the trips are. Measured against pickups, Manhattan has about 2.7 spaces per million pickups and Queens (outside the airports) about 3.0, but the Bronx has 1.4, Brooklyn 0.1, and Staten Island none at all. Brooklyn had 70.3 million pickups in a year and 7 relief spaces. Citywide, about 65% of pickups outside the airports start in a taxi zone with no relief stand. A relief stand is where you may park and leave your car for up to one hour; it is not a taxi stand.

The numbers at a glance

Spaces per million pickups, by borough

Read the numbers this way: in Manhattan there is about one relief space for every 370,000 pickups a year. In Brooklyn there is one for every 10 million. For FHV drivers the gap is wider, because 218 of the 547 spaces are signed for taxis only, and 85% of all non-airport pickups are app trips. In the Bronx, only 25 spaces are FHV-usable for 33.4 million app pickups.

Busy zones with no relief stand

Only 53 of the 260 non-airport taxi zones have a relief stand inside them: 31 in Manhattan, 10 in the Bronx, 9 in Queens, 3 in Brooklyn and none on Staten Island. Busy Brooklyn zones such as Crown Heights North (about 9,200 pickups a day), East New York and Bushwick South have none. In Manhattan, the two zones with the most relief spaces are on the West Side: Clinton East, which borders Times Sq/Theatre District, has 7 stands (46 spaces), and Clinton West next to it has 7 (34 spaces). Times Sq/Theatre District and Midtown Center have none inside their own borders. The zone with the most spaces is Sunnyside in Queens (8 stands, 54 spaces).

Method and caveats

• Stands: DOT's Open Data list of relief stands (vqu8-xef9), downloaded October 12, 2026 (data updated October 1). It has 110 stands and 547 spaces. Type comes from DOT's relief_sta field (TAXI/FHV or TAXI).
• Placing stands in zones: each stand is a short street segment. We put it in the TLC taxi zone that contains the segment's midpoint, using TLC's zone shapefile. A stand on a border street counts in one zone only, so a "no stand" zone can still have one across the street.
• Pickups: yellow, green and Uber/Lyft pickups, September 2025 – August 2026, from TLC trip records (the trips-zone-index and trips-pickups-by-borough datasets). Non-app car service trips are not counted. JFK and LaGuardia are left out because DOT relief stands are city streets and the airports have their own taxi holding areas.
• Signs rule: DOT says its map "may not be reflective of all current posted regulations" (NYC DOT). Follow the sign where you park. Under TLC rule §80-19(d)(7), you must obey posted vehicle types and time limits at a relief stand; the fine is $50 (TLC Chapter 80).

What the data can't tell you

It can't tell you how full stands are, how long drivers search for parking, or where drivers can find a bathroom. Pickups are a stand-in for where drivers are; drivers also wait and drive empty in places the trip data doesn't show. Some drivers rest in zones far from where they pick up. The ratio is a way to compare boroughs, not a measure of need set by any agency.

Where to go from here: the full rules and borough list are in taxi and FHV relief stands, counts and trends in relief stand statistics, and FHV access in can Uber drivers use taxi relief stands. Compare with taxi stands by borough and trips between boroughs. The term is defined in relief stand. More on the places hub.