How many taxis are there in Tokyo?
Guess before you scroll — the answer is below
The answer
45,000 taxis
Roughly 45K.
Tokyo has around 45,000 taxis, more than three times New York’s yellow cab fleet. The doors open automatically, the drivers wear white gloves, and the average driver is over 60 — a demographic problem the industry has not solved.
How to get close to this number
Read the question rather than the slug: it asks how many taxis the city has. Scale from the New York medallion figure on this site — around thirteen and a half thousand — and note that this city is far larger and has a stronger taxi culture. Three times that is the right order.
The cap is the structural difference. New York fixed its fleet at a number set in the 1930s, which is why it barely moved; this city did not impose an equivalent cap, so the fleet grew with demand. A count that scales with a city and a count frozen by regulation diverge enormously over ninety years.
The demographic detail is the unresolved problem: the average driver is over sixty. A profession with no incoming generation has a fleet size that is about to fall regardless of demand, and it is one of the clearest examples of the ageing trend described in this site's Japan population question showing up in a specific industry.
Where this number comes from
| Source | Tokyo Hire-Taxi Association |
|---|---|
| Figure refers to | 2023 |
| Last checked | |
| Unit | taxis |
Numbers move. If this one has drifted from its source, let us know.
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