The Taxi & Limousine Committee agreed Wednesday to carry out a 30-cent extra charge on every city taxi fare -- part of a historic plan to make half the city's yellow cabs wheelchair-accessible. The 30-cent extra charge will be assessed starting next January on all metered   yellow and green cab fares. The money will be put in a fund to help yellow cab owners make their vehicles wheelchair-accessible. Only about 400 of the more than 13,000 yellow cabs now on city streets can accommodate wheelchairs. Hopefully, that number will rise to more than 7,500 by 2020. Mayor de Blasio in the city Washington proposed the 30-cent charge to support the upgrades. Consequently, disabled New Yorkers said the addition of more accessible cabs would be life-changing. "We can't go anywhere more conveniently," said Jean Ryan of Brooklyn, who uses a wheelchair. For the birth of her grandson, she had to wheel a mile and a half in a snowstorm to get to the hospital, she said. Ronnie Raymond of Manhattan wept as she described spending "hours trying to get somewhere that takes everybody else 20 minutes." Some supporters for the disabled said more was needed to be done. "I dream of a world where it's 100% accessible and we have cabs just like anyone else," said Jason DaSilva, a Brooklyn filmmaker who suffers from multiple sclerosis and uses a wheelchair. It's particularly important because the city's subway system is  ly inaccessible to wheelchair riders. Some other cities, including London, with its famous black cabs, require that all its taxis be fully accessible. Some citizens expressed sympathy for the wheelchair-using riders, many of whom carried neon signs  that read "Taxi" next to a wheelchair symbol. "The goal of this committee should be 100% accessibility -- and I hope sooner rather than later," said Frank Carone from the Taxi & Limousine Committee. It can be safely inferred from the passage that   _  .
The 30-cent extra charge on every city taxi fare is already quite popular. About 1300 yellow cabs now on city streets are accommodating wheelchairs. Wheelchair riders are  ly content with the city's subway system. There is a long way to go before the plan can be applied successfully.