63 A.D.2d 1036 | N.Y. App. Div. | 1978
Proceeding pursuant to CPLR article 78 (transferred to this court by order of the Supreme Court at Special Term, entered in Albany County) to review a determination of the Department of Transportation which denied petitioner an exemption from the Transportation Law as an operator of a taxicab service. Petitioner is a corporation supplying various types of transportation services to the general public from its headquarters in Westchester County. Many of its activities are subject to regulation by the Department of Transportation and, in the course of proceedings relating to its authority as a contract carrier of passengers, petitioner asserted that a portion of its operations constituted a taxicab service exempt from such control. Primarily at issue was petitioner’s use of 11 passenger vans between points in Westchester County and airports in New York City (La Guardia and John F. Kennedy). Following lengthy hearings, the respondent Commissioner of Transportation concluded, among other things, that petitioner’s endeavors in that respect did not amount to taxicab service. The instant article 78 proceeding, limited to an attack on that determination, ensued. Article 9 of the Transportation Law invests the respondent with broad power to regulate and supervise a contract carrier of passengers by motor vehicle (Transportation Law, §§ 200-209) which is defined' as meaning "a person or corporation who or which engages in the transportation by motor vehicle of passengers for compensation, other than in the operation of a bus line” (Transportation Law, § 2, subd 22). However, that term does not include "motor vehicles operated in what is commonly known as taxicab service, unless such service becomes, or is held out to be regular service between stated points, localities, areas or territories not wholly within a municipality” (Transportation Law, § 2, subd 22, par [b]). Although no regulation pertaining to the size of vehicles employed has ever