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BY ALYSSA GIACHINO, NICOLE BODE and LEO STANDORA
Wednesday, July 25th 2007, 4:00 AM
Taxi drivers on a collision course with the city over new tracking technology and credit card payment systems may play the strike card today.
The Taxi Alliance is widely expected to warn that medallion cabbies will walk off the job Sept. 1 if the Taxi and Limousine Commission holds to its plan to install the new gear in their hacks.
The 8,400-member Alliance has been moving toward a strike declaration for months.
"If the City Council and Mayor Bloomberg continue to stay silent as drivers' privacy and economics are trampled on, we will strike," Alliance Executive Director Bhairavi Desai said yesterday.
The TLC said the Global Positioning System tracking devices are meant to be used only to help cabbies get around the city, reunite passengers with lost belongings and perhaps catch criminals who prey on cabbies.
But drivers say the system will invade their privacy, create a new breed of backseat drivers who disagree with GPS directions and cost them money.
Recent estimates put the cost of the new equipment and maintenance at $2,800 to $5,400 per cab over three years.
The Alliance said each credit card transaction also would cost the driver 5% of the fare.
Just about every driver around Penn Station yesterday turned their thumbs down on the GPS and up for a strike.
"If it goes though, I'll have to pay more money and I'll be making less money," said Herjit Sangh, 55, of Queens. "You do the math."
Constantine Tentomas, 69, also of Queens, predicted that even if installed, the GPS system would be a bust.
"Everything they put in the taxis since I started in 1977 has failed," he said. "It's gonna break; riders will destroy it."