Part of Chicago’s for-hire fleet earns its paperwork in an inspection lane. The file’s own description sets the scope: “Certain types of Public Passenger Vehicles licensed by the City of Chicago must be inspected as part of the license renewal or change of vehicle associated with the license.” The file is the appointment book — “This dataset shows the schedule of upcoming appointments, as well as some past appointments.” Read whole, it holds 38,647 appointments for 5,330 vehicles since January 2023: 7.3 appointments per vehicle, and that ratio is the story. Of the 32,266 appointments with a decided result, 10,958 — 34 percent — read FAILED, and nearly three in ten of all appointments carry the label RETEST. The three fleets’ decided results split differently: the livery rows’ FAILED share is 44.8 percent, the taxi rows’ 33.8, the ambulance rows’ 18.4.
Public Passenger Vehicle Inspection Schedule (kxfh-a6zz), 38,647 rows, one per inspection appointment, scheduled dates January 3, 2023 onward, retrieved September 7, 2026; the whole file was downloaded and every figure recomputed · fail shares are of decided results (PASSED + FAILED) with the denominator named · vehicle counts key on vehicle type plus number · company names are business entities, counted and never ranked — the file carries no fleet-size denominatorThree fleets, one lane
| Fleet | Appointments | Vehicles | PASSED | FAILED | FAILED share of decided |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Taxi | 33,577 | 3,539 | 19,046 | 9,719 | 33.8% |
| Livery | 3,646 | 1,380 | 1,244 | 1,010 | 44.8% |
| Ambulance | 1,424 | 411 | 1,018 | 229 | 18.4% |
The highest observed FAILED share belongs to the livery category: 1,010 FAILED against 1,244 PASSED. Ambulances — yes, city-licensed ambulances share this file with cabs — pass at the highest rate of the three. Across all fleets the remaining rows split 1,978 PENDING, 2,835 NO_SHOW_RESCHEDULED, and 1,568 NO_SHOW — 4,403 no-show rows in all, every label as filed. Why one fleet fails more than another, the file does not say, and neither do we.
Why 7.3 appointments per vehicle
The appointment book’s biggest single label is FIRST_PERIOD (14,264), with SECOND_PERIOD at 10,455 — and between them sits the churn: 11,288 RETEST appointments, 29.2 percent of the whole file. A RETEST row does not name the appointment it follows, so the reading that failures feed the retest count is ours and labeled so; what the file shows directly is 5,330 vehicles averaging 7.3 bookings, and one taxi — vehicle number 1717 — accumulating 30 appointments all by itself, with taxi 3481 matching it. The remaining appointment labels, exactly as filed and complete: CHANGE_EQUIPMENT (1,715), ROOFTOP_ADVERTISING (424), 311_COMPLAINT (197), CHANGE_AFFILIATION (118), FIELD_NTFCN (85), CHANGE_METER (36), TRANSFER (34), CAMERA (12), POST_ACCIDENT (11), SAFETY_SHIELD (5), and three appointments filed under CHANGE_COLOR.
The appointment booked for 2098
The schedule’s dates run from January 3, 2023 to — as filed — July 15, 2098: a taxi RETEST appointment dated nearly seventy-two years out, carrying the result PASSED. A livery FIRST_PERIOD appointment sits at April 29, 2030, marked NO_SHOW_RESCHEDULED. We print both rows as the file keeps them and invent no explanation. More conventionally: 1,972 appointments carry dates later than September 7, 2026, while the file’s own current flag marks 1,968 rows true — a four-row gap between two ways of saying “upcoming,” left as found.
What else the rows carry
TOYOTA appears on 30,037 of the 38,647 appointment rows — 78 percent — an even stronger showing than in our rideshare register piece, where one June 2026 vehicle in three was a Toyota; here the count is of appointment rows rather than vehicles. Model years run 2004 through 2027. Among the 3,539 taxi vehicles in the file, 578 — 16.3 percent — carry the wheelchair-accessible flag on their rows. And 3,862 distinct company labels appear; the file offers no fleet-size denominator, so companies are counted here and ranked nowhere.
- Source: the city’s Public Passenger Vehicle Inspection Schedule (kxfh-a6zz): 38,647 rows, one per inspection appointment, retrieved September 7, 2026. The whole file was downloaded and every figure on this page recomputed; quoted lines are the portal description’s own words.
- Denominators: fail shares divide FAILED by decided results (PASSED + FAILED only); PENDING and no-show labels are counted apart. Vehicles are keyed on type plus vehicle number (5,330; a handful of numbers recur across types). Appointment-row counts are not vehicle counts, and the page says which it is using each time.
- The license side: the description points to the Public Passenger Vehicle Licenses dataset — our register piece reads it — and to BACP’s public-vehicle licensing page, where the rules themselves live.
- Not here: no company is ranked by failures (fleet sizes differ and the file carries no denominator); no safety conclusion is drawn from any count; the 2098 and 2030 rows are printed as filed with no explanation invented; no person appears in the file or on this page.
Computed by KCM Desk from the city’s vehicle-inspection schedule file, retrieved September 7, 2026. If you spot an error, corrections come first.
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- Did You Know? Chicago, by Its Own Records