Faint praise for D.C.’s taxicabs of the future: ‘They’re not that ugly.’

It also discussed taxi color.

Specifically: “The Mayor shall . . . issue rules requiring all taxicabs operating in the District of Columbia to be of a uniform color.”

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D.C. Taxi Color

1.

Poll: Which of the potential D.C. taxi color schemes is your favorite?

Green and white

Red and black

Red and white

White with green and yellow

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See Results | DisclaimerThis is a non-scientific user poll. Results are not statistically valid and cannot be assumed to reflect the views of Washington Post users as a group or the general population.

The council tasked the D.C. Taxicab Commission with envisioning a color scheme. The commission created the One Color Panel, a four-person subgroup, passing the job on to it. The One Color Panel’s recommendations on Wednesday will be the first step in the coloric unification of the District’s cabs.

“Taxis are our ambassadors,” Cheh says. Tourists chug into Union Station, and taxis are the part of Washington that comes out to greet them. “It’s like,” Cheh explains, “how you turn up on your first date.”

Right now, Washington turns up on its first date looking confused.

Especially compared with its fellow cities around the country. Take Los Angeles. In the city of Los Angeles, which has a population of 3.8 million, there are nine licensed taxi companies, each with their own colors and markings. Nine companies, nine colors.

In the District of Columbia, which has a population of 618,000, there are 118.

Beginning, alphabetically, with the ABC Cab Company, whose vehicles are white and “cinnamon brown,” and ending with the Yourway Cab Company, whose color is “light briar brown,” with a whole passel of similarly poetic colors in between.

“It’s a regulatory choice,” explains Al LaGasse, executive vice president of the Taxicab, Limousine and Paratransit Association. The reason L.A.’s taxi scheme looks like a rainbow and Washington’s looks like the jumbo-size Crayola box is because “it’s easier to get into the business in D.C. than it is in other cities.”

Other than New York, LaGasse can’t think of another city with a required uniform color scheme. Not off the top of his head. Years ago, he thinks, Atlanta might have looked into it. London’s used to be all black, but that’s not the case anymore.

“Oh, wait,” he says. LaGasse works with a guy who used to be stationed in Baku, Azerbaijan. The co-worker says that all of the cabs in Baku were required to be purple.

So there it is. Washington, D.C., and Azerbaijan.

‘Designs are not good’

Maybe one issue is that the proposed designs are, indeed, that ugly.

Ugly is in the eye of the beholder. But when these four prototypes were introduced to the public last year on Dec. 10, there was an immediate discomfort, a visceral irritation, a proprietary “No!” from D.C. residents. Even Cheh didn’t like them. She thought them “garish.”

The commission received more than 35,000 responses to an online poll about the colors. They were overwhelmingly negative. People thought the sample cab designs were too cluttered. Drivers believed the complex color combos would make paint jobs a nightmare. Neville Waters, the spokesman for the commission, forwards a sampling of the e-mail responses.

Emotional: “I am so disappointed with the level of quality of the proposed designs.”

Straightforward: “Those taxi designs were not good.”

And, the crux of the matter: “I was disappointed not to see the most obvious color choice, solid yellow, as an option.”