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The East Village (TLC zone 79) is one of the biggest pickup zones in New York: 4,051,067 pickups from September 2025 to August 2026, about 11,099 a day. Citywide, only the two airports and three Midtown/Upper East Side zones had more. What makes it different is the weekend: an average Saturday has more than twice the pickups of a weekday, and the busiest hour of the week is 1 a.m. on Sunday.
East Village at a glance (zone 79)
The TLC lookup table labels zone 79 "Yellow Zone", a trip-data label rather than a legal line. Nine zones touch it: Union Sq, Gramercy, Stuy Town/Peter Cooper Village, Alphabet City, Lower East Side, Two Bridges/Seward Park, Little Italy/NoLiTa, Greenwich Village South and Greenwich Village North.
When rides start and end here
On weekdays, pickups peak at 10 p.m. (about 793). On weekends the numbers jump. Saturday evening builds to 1,565 in the 11 p.m. hour, and then Sunday's midnight (1,744) and 1 a.m. (1,861) are the two biggest hours of the week. Almost half of Sunday's pickups (46.3%) happen between midnight and 5 a.m. Friday night shows the same shape: Saturday's 1 a.m. hour averages 1,797 pickups.
Drop-offs come earlier: weekdays peak at 7 p.m., Saturdays at 10 p.m.
Month to month the zone barely changes. May 2026 was the busiest month (361,177 pickups) and June 2026 the quietest (315,314).
Where trips from here go
Trips are spread thin. The top destinations are Lower East Side and West Village (3.5% each), "Outside NYC" (3.4%) and other addresses inside the East Village (3.4%). Incoming riders most often start in West Village (4.5% of drop-offs) or the Lower East Side (4.2%).
Yellow, green and app
App: 2,869,383 pickups. Yellow: 1,181,612 (29.2%). Green: 72 pickups and 1,252 drop-offs. Green cabs may drop off in the East Village but not take hails there (hail exclusionary zone).
Fares and driver pay
App trips from the East Village are about average in length for Manhattan (median 2.81 miles), but the median fare ($22.65) and median driver pay ($17.13) are below the Yellow Zone middle ($24.83 and $18.14). App tips averaged only $1.39. Yellow trips: median 1.91 miles, $14.90 on the meter, 23.0% card tips.
Legal lines
All of zone 79 is south of 60th Street, inside the MTA Congestion Relief Zone. 99.6% of app pickups and 98.7% of yellow pickups carried the fee. The rider pays it, at any hour: $1.50 on app trips and $0.75 on taxi trips (as of 2026-10-12). The zone is also in the Hail Exclusionary Zone and the 96th Street congestion-surcharge area.
Relief stands
The East Village has six DOT relief stands, tied with Gramercy for third in Manhattan. Half of them are for taxis only.
TLC Rule 80-19(d)(7) lets you take any open spot at a relief stand, but you must follow the posted vehicle type and time limit. A relief stand is a place to park and leave the car, not a place to wait for fares. See taxi relief stands in NYC and the relief stand finder.
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 Village: trip facts by sector — Key trip facts for taxi zone 79 (East Village, Manhattan) 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 Village: when trips start, by hour — Average pickups per day in each hour in zone 79, 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 Village: pickups by month — Trips starting in taxi zone 79 (East Village, Manhattan) each month, by sector.NYC TLC Trip Record Data (yellow, green, high-volume FHV), Sep 2025 – Aug 2026 · pulled Oct 12, 2026
- East Village: where trips from here go — Top drop-off zones for trips starting in zone 79, 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 4,051,067 pickups. 'Outside NYC' = zone 265.
- East Village: where trips to here come from — Top pickup zones for trips ending in zone 79, 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 3,362,971 drop-offs.
- East Village: when trips arrive, by hour — Average drop-offs per day in each hour in zone 79, 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 Village: drop-offs by month — Trips ending in taxi zone 79 (East Village, Manhattan) 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 busy is the East Village taxi zone?
Zone 79 had 4,051,067 pickups from September 2025 to August 2026, about 11,099 a day. Only five zones in the city had more: LaGuardia, JFK, Midtown Center, Times Sq/Theatre District and Upper East Side South.
When is the East Village busiest?
Saturday night into Sunday. An average Saturday had about 18,880 pickups, more than twice a weekday (8,870). The busiest hour of the week is 1 a.m. on Sunday, with about 1,861 pickups.
Where are the relief stands in the East Village?
DOT lists six in zone 79 (checked 2026-10-12): taxi/FHV stands on East 2nd, East 3rd and East 11th Streets, and taxi-only stands on East 1st Street, East Houston Street and East 5th Street. The East 11th Street stand is posted 5 a.m. to midnight.
Do East Village riders tip app drivers much?
Less than in most of Manhattan. App tips averaged $1.39 a trip here, 4.8% of the fare, against a middle value of 5.7% for Manhattan's Yellow Zone zones. Yellow-cab riders paying by card tipped 23.0%.
Sources
Last reviewed against the official sources on .
- NYC TLC Trip Record Data nyc.gov
- TLC Taxi Zone Lookup Table d37ci6vzurychx.cloudfront.net
- MTA: Congestion Relief Zone taxi and FHV tolls mta.info
- NYC Open Data: Taxi and FHV Relief Stands (DOT, vqu8-xef9) data.cityofnewyork.us
- NYC DOT: Taxi and For-Hire Vehicle Relief Stands nyc.gov
- TLC Rules, Chapter 80 (Drivers) nyc.gov
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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.