Union Sq Taxi Zone (234): Trips, Hours & Fares

Union Sq is TLC taxi zone 234 in Manhattan, and it is one of the busiest places in the city to start a ride: 3,686,517 pickups in the 12 months from September 2025 to August 2026, about 10,100 a day. Only five of Manhattan's 69 zones had more pickups. Two out of three of those rides were Uber or Lyft trips; yellow taxis did 32.2%.

The zone's pattern is simple: people arrive in the morning and leave in the evening. Weekday pickups peak around 9 p.m., while weekday drop-offs peak in the 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. hours.

Union Sq at a glance (zone 234)

The TLC lookup table labels zone 234 a "Yellow Zone". That is a label in the trip data, not a legal boundary. On the TLC zone map it touches eight zones: East Village, Flatiron, Gramercy, Greenwich Village North, West Village, Midtown South, Murray Hill and Penn Station/Madison Sq West.

When rides start and end here

Weekday pickups are lowest at 4 a.m. and then rise almost every hour until the evening. The hours from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. each average more than 760 pickups. Saturday is the busiest day overall (about 11,060 pickups on an average Saturday, against 10,270 on a weekday), and its peak moves later, to 10 p.m.

Sunday is different. Its busiest hour is midnight, the tail of Saturday night, and 26% of Sunday's pickups happen between midnight and 5 a.m. By Sunday evening the zone is much quieter than on a weekday evening.

Drop-offs show the other half of the story. On weekdays, 17.8% of trips ending here arrive between 7 a.m. and 10 a.m., but only 8.8% of pickups start in those hours.

Across the year, the busiest month was October 2025 (340,395 pickups) and the quietest was August 2026 (272,121). With only 12 months of data, we can't tell whether that drop is a trend or just summer.

Where trips from here go, and where they come from

No single place dominates. The top destination code is "Outside NYC" (zone 265, 4.6% of pickups), followed by Murray Hill (3.8%), East Chelsea and West Chelsea/Hudson Yards (3.6% each). The ten biggest destinations together take only about a third of all trips. Riders coming in most often start in Midtown Center (4.7% of drop-offs), East Chelsea or West Chelsea/Hudson Yards.

Yellow, green and app: who serves this zone

App trips: 2,498,828 pickups. Yellow taxis: 1,187,571. Green cabs: just 118 pickups but 1,182 drop-offs. That gap follows the rules: the zone is in the Hail Exclusionary Zone, so green cabs may not take street hails or start pre-arranged trips here. They may drop off. See who can pick up where.

Fares, trip length and driver pay

The typical yellow trip from here is short: a median of 1.5 miles, 12.8 minutes and a $13.50 metered fare. Card-paying taxi riders tipped 24.1% of the fare. App trips go further (median 2.27 miles) and the median app driver pay was $18.12 per trip, a little under the $18.14 middle value for Manhattan's Yellow Zone zones. App riders tipped an average of $1.86. Pay per engaged hour ($65.20) counts only time with a rider, so it is not what you earn per hour online.

Congestion Relief Zone and other legal lines

All of zone 234 lies south of 60th Street, so it is inside the MTA Congestion Relief Zone: 99.5% of app pickups and 98.8% of yellow pickups carried the fee. As of 2026-10-12 the per-trip charge is $1.50 on Uber/Lyft trips and $0.75 on taxi trips, paid by the rider. The zone is also inside the 96th Street congestion-surcharge area and the Hail Exclusionary Zone (south of East 96th and West 110th Streets).

Stands and practical notes

DOT's relief-stand data (updated 2026-10-01) places three relief stands in this zone. A relief stand lets you park and leave the car for up to one hour.

App drivers: TLC Rule 80-19(d)(2) says a for-hire driver must not pick up passengers at any taxi stand, and the East 16th Street relief stand is signed for taxis only. More in taxi stand rules and the relief stand finder. To compare this zone with others, use the zone explorer or the Manhattan zone rankings.