City Comptroller Brad Lander joined the New York Taxi Workers Alliance on Thursday in calling on the Taxi and Limousine Commission to toss out data they say was unfairly manipulated by Uber and Lyft to “cheat” drivers. The data — which tracks how long Uber and Lyft drivers are logged onto their respective apps and how much of that time is spent carrying passengers — is a key element in the TLC’s annual review of the city’s minimum pay requirements for rideshare drivers. But drivers say since June both rideshare giants have been “locking them out” — keeping drivers from signing on to work for hours at a time — in an effort to skew those stats, a figure known as the “utilization rate.” Under the TLC’s minimum pay rules, drivers are due more pay from the rideshare apps if the industry-wide utilization rate drops below 53%. The previous year’s rate is also taken into account by the TLC’s commissioners in setting annual minimum pay standards. NYC Comptroller Brad Lander speaks at a press conference on June 12, 2024. (Barry Williams for New York Daily News) “What’s going on is an effort to cheat drivers both individually and collectively,” Lander said at a joint press conference with the NYTWA. “Individual lockouts of specific drivers make it impossible for them to have a stable work shift or work a reasonable work day, and have led to it being impossible for them to pay their rent [or] pay their bills,” the comptroller said. “At the broader more systemic level, the lockouts are part of a strategy by Uber and Lyft to cheat [the minimum pay] law,” Lander added. B’hairavi Desai, head of the NYTWA, said her group, which represents Uber, Lyft and yellow cab drivers, has formally requested that the TLC pass a rule removing all utilization data since the end of May 2024 from the calculations for future pay formulas. “It’s manipulated data,” she said. “It would be fraudulent on the part of the TLC to keep using it.” A TLC spokesman said the agency was still working on a proposed rule change regarding the utilization rate, and no details on that proposal were available. Hundreds of Uber and Lyft drivers protest low wages and being locked out of their respective apps outside city hall before walking to the NYC offices of Uber on July 17, 2024 in Manhattan, New York. (Barry Williams for New York Daily News) “We share the concerns raised by NYTWA and the Comptroller,” TLC head David Do told the Daily News in a statement. “The harmful lockouts we’ve recently seen happened because multibillion-dollar companies intentionally exploited loopholes in our minimum pay rules to avoid paying hardworking drivers more.” Related Articles Transportation | MTA workers rally for better safety following brutal stabbing of train operator in Brooklyn Transportation | MTA polishes off 100th subway station rehab in project that piggybacks on track work closures Transportation | Subway conductor recounts brutal assault by same man accused of stabbing MTA train operator last week Transportation | NYC to begin lowering speed limits on city streets under Sammy’s law Transportation | New train cars begin to run on Staten Island Railway “This defies the intention of our rules and the underlying local law, so we are in the process of amending and tightening those rules,” Do added. “Drivers are more than what Uber and Lyft refer to as ‘supply’: they are human beings who deserve the protections our city intended.” The lockout crisis came to a head this summer, with drivers telling The News and other outlets that they were getting locked out multiple times per day. The Adams administration brokered a deal between Uber and Lyft in July, with Uber — which controls a larger share of the market — agreeing to end lockouts if Lyft got its utilization rate up to 50%. Both firms told the city they’d stop onboarding new drivers in an effort to hit those goals. Lander, a Democrat who recently mounted a primary challenge against Mayor Adams, called the deal “phony,” adding it lacked “any actual commitments or real changes in the rules to address lockouts.” Desai has previously likened the city’s decision to broker a deal between the two competitors to collusion. So far, Uber’s agreement to stop lockouts appears to have held. But Lyft, which holds a smaller share of the market, allegedly continues to alock drivers out — a charge multiple drivers attested to at the press conference, holding up their phones to show they couldn’t work if they wanted to. “Lockouts are unfortunately the direct result of the city’s complex driver pay system,” a Lyft spokesman said in a statement to The News. “The unintended consequences are that drivers face reduced earning opportunities and riders experience longer wait times.” Lyft — which filed suit to stop the minimum pay law in 2019 — has argued minimum pay rates should be in place without the utilization metric. Lander and the Taxi Workers Alliance argue the utilization data is key to ensuring drivers — whom both Uber and Lyft regard as independent contractors, not employees— are paid while in transit between fares.