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East Elmhurst (TLC zone 70) is where yellow taxis matter most in Queens outside the airports. 14.1% of its 738,617 pickups were yellow taxis, the top share of 67 zones, against a Queens middle of 1.5%. Those taxi trips are long and Manhattan-bound: a $42.90 median metered fare, and about half paid the Manhattan congestion fee. App trips, meanwhile, look like the rest of northern Queens.
Figures come from TLC trip records (yellow taxis, green cabs and high-volume app trips such as Uber and Lyft), September 2025 to August 2026, totaled by TLC Help.
East Elmhurst at a glance
Zone 70 touches four zones on TLC's map: Flushing Meadows-Corona Park (93), Jackson Heights (129), North Corona (173) and LaGuardia Airport (138; see the LaGuardia page). TLC's lookup table calls it a "Boro Zone". That is a data grouping, not a legal line.
Two kinds of trips
Yellow taxis made 104,003 pickups here but only 23,557 drop-offs: about 4.4 taxi pickups for every taxi drop-off. Their trips are long (median 9.2 miles), and about half of them (49.8%) paid the fee for entering Manhattan at or below 60th Street. Card-paying riders tipped 23% of the fare, the highest yellow tip rate in Queens outside the airports. The trip records show the zone, not the street address, so this data cannot tell you where in the zone these trips begin.
App trips (634,130 pickups) are ordinary for the area: a median of 3.16 miles, a $16.66 fare and $13.75 driver pay. 8.9% of app pickups go to an airport, 6th-highest in Queens.
When rides start
The busiest hour of the week is 7 a.m. on weekdays (about 146 pickups), with 8 a.m. almost as busy. Weekends are flatter and peak in the afternoon: Saturday at 3 p.m. (about 115) and Sunday at 2 p.m. Saturday (about 2,162 pickups) is barely busier than Sunday (2,102). Drop-offs peak in the evening, at 8 p.m. on weekdays and Saturdays.
Month by month: fewer taxis
Total pickups moved between 55,434 (February 2026) and 68,914 (December 2025). The yellow part shrank: from 11,994 in September 2025 to 7,258 in August 2026, a drop of about 40%.
Where trips go
Jackson Heights takes 11.6% of all pickups and LaGuardia 6.6%. Then Elmhurst (5.6%), North Corona (5.5%) and trips inside the zone (4.8%). Astoria and Steinway take about 3% each. Riders arriving here come mostly from Jackson Heights (13.1% of drop-offs), North Corona (7.5%) and Elmhurst (6.8%), and 5.3% come from LaGuardia.
Rules to know here
- East Elmhurst is in TLC's Hail Zone (Chapter 51). Next door, LaGuardia and the other airports are in the Hail Exclusionary Zone, where green cabs may not accept hails. Yellow taxis must not solicit or cruise for passengers at the airports (Chapter 80 §80-19(a)(4)(i)).
- App and other FHV drivers may only pick up base-dispatched trips (80-19(c)(1); who can pick up where).
- The congestion fee is paid by the rider: $0.75 per taxi trip and $1.50 per app trip, as of October 12, 2026 (MTA).
- DOT's data shows no relief stand in zone 70. The nearest is the taxi-only stand on Broadway at 72nd–73rd Streets in Jackson Heights, about 1.1 miles from the zone's edge; for FHVs, 64th Street in Woodside (about 1.3 miles).
Nearby zones
Data on this page
Aggregates of public data. They describe trips and vehicles, never individual people.
Aggregated by TLC Help from TLC trip records, Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 (pickup date; TLC publishes trip files about two months after the month ends and may revise them). 'App' = high-volume for-hire services (Uber, Lyft). Taxi records with a negative fare (reversals) are excluded. Averages, medians and rates use 'clean' trips only: 1 minute to 4 hours, more than 0 and under 150 miles, fare above $0 and under $1,000. 'Fare' is the metered fare_amount for taxis and base_passenger_fare for app trips — before tolls, tips, taxes and surcharges — so it is not what the passenger paid in total. App driver_pay is TLC's 'total driver pay (not including tolls or tips and net of commission, surcharges, or taxes)'. Tips are separate. 'Per engaged hour' divides pay by passenger time only (pickup to drop-off). It leaves out time driving to pickups and waiting for requests, so real hourly earnings are lower; it is not the TLC minimum-pay formula. Monthly cells with 1–9 trips are shown as blank (null). Pairs with fewer than 10 trips are not listed.
- East Elmhurst: trip facts by sector — Key trip facts for taxi zone 70 (East Elmhurst, Queens) by sector, 12 months.NYC TLC Trip Record Data (yellow, green, high-volume FHV), Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 · pulled Oct 12, 2026Taxi tips: tip_amount records credit-card tips only (cash tips are not recorded), so taxi tip rates use credit-card trips (payment_type 1). App tips are the tips field on every trip. Tip rate = tips ÷ fare. Medians and rates need at least 250 trips in the cell (else blank); counts of 1–9 are blank. Pickup-side stats (fare, pay, tips) describe trips that START here.
- East Elmhurst: when trips start, by hour — Average pickups per day in each hour in zone 70, on weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays (all sectors).NYC TLC Trip Record Data (yellow, green, high-volume FHV), Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 · pulled Oct 12, 2026Average over all such days in the window, holidays included.
- East Elmhurst: pickups by month — Trips starting in taxi zone 70 (East Elmhurst, Queens) each month, by sector.NYC TLC Trip Record Data (yellow, green, high-volume FHV), Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 · pulled Oct 12, 2026
- East Elmhurst: where trips from here go — Top drop-off zones for trips starting in zone 70, as a share of all its pickups (12 months, all sectors).NYC TLC Trip Record Data (yellow, green, high-volume FHV), Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 · pulled Oct 12, 2026Out of 738,617 pickups. 'Outside NYC' = zone 265.
- East Elmhurst: where trips to here come from — Top pickup zones for trips ending in zone 70, as a share of all its drop-offs (12 months, all sectors).NYC TLC Trip Record Data (yellow, green, high-volume FHV), Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 · pulled Oct 12, 2026Out of 587,303 drop-offs.
- East Elmhurst: when trips arrive, by hour — Average drop-offs per day in each hour in zone 70, on weekdays, Saturdays and Sundays (all sectors; hour of pickup).NYC TLC Trip Record Data (yellow, green, high-volume FHV), Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 · pulled Oct 12, 2026Hour is the trip's pickup hour (TLC records both, but a trip is binned by when it started).
- East Elmhurst: drop-offs by month — Trips ending in taxi zone 70 (East Elmhurst, Queens) each month, by sector.NYC TLC Trip Record Data (yellow, green, high-volume FHV), Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 · pulled Oct 12, 2026
- All 263 taxi zones: trips and key facts (map-ready) — One row per TLC taxi zone (LocationID 1–263) with pickups, drop-offs, sector mix, app driver pay, fares and tip rates — the source for zone maps, hubs and the zone explorer.NYC TLC Trip Record Data (yellow, green, high-volume FHV), Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 · pulled Oct 12, 2026Medians/rates need ≥250 trips (else null). labels are LocationIDs as strings; zones[] has names, boroughs, service_zone (from taxi_zone_lookup.csv), suggested slugs and neighbouring zone ids (shared boundary, from taxi_zones.zip).
Frequently asked questions
How many rides start in East Elmhurst?
TLC trip records show 738,617 pickups in zone 70 from September 2025 to August 2026, about 2,024 a day, 22nd of the 67 Queens zones outside the airports.
Why do so many yellow taxis pick up in East Elmhurst?
Yellow taxis made 104,003 pickups here (14.1%), the highest share in Queens outside the airports. The trip data shows only the zone, not the exact street, so it cannot say why. On TLC's map the zone borders LaGuardia Airport (zone 138).
Where do yellow taxi trips from East Elmhurst go?
Far. The median yellow trip is 9.2 miles and 29.4 minutes, with a $42.90 metered fare, and 49.8% paid the MTA Congestion Relief Zone fee for entering Manhattan at or below 60th Street.
When is East Elmhurst busiest?
Weekday mornings: the top hour of the week is 7 a.m. on weekdays (about 146 pickups), with 8 a.m. almost the same. On weekends the peak is mid-afternoon.
Are yellow taxi pickups here growing or shrinking?
Shrinking over the 12 months. Yellow pickups fell from 11,994 in September 2025 to 7,258 in August 2026, while total pickups stayed around 55,000–69,000 a month.
Sources
Last reviewed against the official sources on .
- NYC TLC Trip Record Data nyc.gov
- TLC Taxi Zone Lookup Table d37ci6vzurychx.cloudfront.net
- TLC Rules Chapter 51: Definitions (PDF) nyc.gov
- TLC Rules Chapter 80: Rules Applicable to All Drivers (PDF) nyc.gov
- MTA: Congestion Relief Zone taxi and FHV tolls mta.info
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TLC Help is not a law firm and is not affiliated with the NYC Taxi & Limousine Commission or OATH. Explanations on this site are general information, not legal advice. Legal representation is provided by independent attorneys and OATH-registered representatives in our network.