Is Meters vs. Zones Debate Over?

Some customers encountering the calculator are initially taken aback, he said, mistaking the device for a time-and-distance meter. But by the end of the trip, most seem to like it.

"I've had people get in my car and when I turn this on, right away, they get upset," he said, explaining that the meter starts with the base fare of $6.50 plus $2 for the radio call. "They say, 'Why is it $8.50 when we haven't moved?' I tell them when we cross a zone, it automatically calculates the zone. And then at the end, all I have to do is hit one little button and it will give you a receipt, with everything that was charged. It explains everything -- like a radio call, luggage, if there are three passengers, whatever."

Tapscott estimates the cost of the calculator at $600 a cab and says he is sold on the device.

"If I have to vote on it, I won't vote on the time-and-distance meter," he said.

Yellow Cab's Spooner will not say how much it is costing his company to revamp operations, but he calls the investment "sizable."

The improvements in radio dispatching, he said, are necessary in a changing District, where affluent residents are moving into pricey condos downtown and leaving their cars behind, relying in greater numbers on taxi service. But only about 800 of the District's nearly 7,000 cabs are radio-dispatched, Spooner said.

Yellow Cab has about 350 of those radio cars, and the company's change to a computer-and-GPS aided system in the next few months "will tell drivers where the work is and tell me where they are," Spooner said. The change also will improve driver safety by making cabs trackable, he said.

The changes that are coming to the D.C. cab industry seem "very good" to Yellow Cab driver Guy Agnant, who has spent 35 years doing things the old way.

On a recent morning, he demonstrated how the fare calculator in his cab works, delighting in the fact that the system "remembers where I picked you up." On a test run, he showed that it is impossible for a driver to cheat a customer with an out-of-the-way "joy ride."

Starting in Zone 2C, he took a leisurely drive through a couple of zones, then returned to 2C. The receipt showed a one-zone base charge, $6.50.

Recently, he said, on Park Road NW, he picked up a woman who immediately dismissed the calculator by saying, "I know how much I pay." By the end of the ride, when he presented the detailed receipt, "she loved it," he said. "She knew it was right."