DCist: Taxicab Strike Actions Reported Throughout Downtown

Commenters at DCist have been reporting on the taxi strike that’s happening today, and it’s not pretty. For those of you living elsewhere, DC’s taxis operate on a zone system, so you pay based on how many zones your trip takes you through. Mayor Fenty has been pushing to get them on a meter, like every other city in the nation, but the drivers want none of it – at least partially because they can easily take unsuspecting tourists on winding, four-zone trips that could really be done by crossing only two zones.

Still, I’m all for worker’s rights and making a decent wage, so I supported the cabbies that wanted to stick to the zone system. But this is just ridiculous – making traffic even worse during rush hour is no way to win the sympathy of your customers. I can only imagine how much support they lost thanks to this stunt.

Update: Apparently I was misinformed. The zone fare is based on what zone you start in and end in, not how many you pass through. I don’t know who explained it that way to me, or (in retrospect) why I bought it, but that really wouldn’t make much sense, would it?

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You’re currently reading “DCist: Taxicab Strike Actions Reported Throughout Downtown,” an entry on Brock Boland

Published:: 2.14.08 / 11am

Category:: DC Area

Tags:: dc, taxis

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My name is Brock.

I am a web developer, an atheist, a DC resident, and a bit of a movie enthusiast. I try to write about those topics at least now and again, but this site is mostly just a bunch of crap about my life.

I grew up outside Buffalo, NY, and went to RIT. In November 2005, I moved to the Washington, DC metro area. For the most part, it’s been pretty good to me. These days, I live a couple blocks from Chinatown in DC with my lovely wife Erin and our Bichon, Lola May, and work for a PR firm downtown.

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dirtntrees 2.14.08 / 1pm

For what it’s worth, the strike is on from my office view. The hotel across the street usually has a cab line, I haven’t seen a single one all day.

I think this is in reaction to the cabbies strike last week, and people actually COMPLEMENTED them for not clogging up streets like they usually do. This way they get to waste their gas, pollute the environment with emissions, not make any money from fares, clog up traffic, and make everyone miserable from the horn honking.

Way to drum up sympathy there guys. Just learn to take them on a longer route like the cabbies in the rest of the world do. (posted on LiveJournal)

Tom 2.14.08 / 1pm

Actually, the person who “corrected” you is misinformed. It is indeed the number of zones you pass through that determines the fare. If you look at the window in any DC cab the prices are listed in terms of “number of zones”, not some sort of zone vs. zone lookup chart for figuring out prices.

It’s also worth noting that DC cabs are among the nation’s most expensive, and riddled with surcharges for extra passengers (discouraging sharing) and never-ending “special” fuel surcharges. Even if fares were based on which zone you started and ended in, the real problem is that drivers regularly lie to passengers about what they owe — there’s no meter and no accountability. The system is so complex that unless you’re a regular cab user you’re almost certainly going to be taken advantage of by unscrupulous drivers.

The DC Taxi Commission is famously corrupt and powerful; its influence is only now beginning to wane. Most of these planned strikes have been complete flops, too, as they can’t get their own drivers to comply with them. I wouldn’t shed too many tears for the cabbies. Their peers across the river and in Maryland do just fine charging fares that are in line with cabs in the rest of the country.

Brock Boland

DCist: Taxicab Strike Actions Reported Throughout Downtown

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