By Sue Anne Pressley Montes
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, September 8, 2007
For the first time in decades, the District is poised to change the way taxi fares are calculated.
Armed with a survey showing widespread discontent with the system, the eight-member D.C. Taxicab Commission will vote Tuesday whether to recommend that Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) stick with zones or switch to meters, which every other major U.S. city uses. But in interviews with commission members last week, it appears a third option is gaining momentum.
It's the "zone meter" or zone-fare calculator. With signals from a Global Positioning System, the device calculates fares based on existing zones. At the end of the journey, the device prints a detailed receipt, giving riders the reassurance they are not being cheated. Zone meters were installed in about 300 Yellow Cabs in the District over the past year.
Some see the zone meter as a first step toward improving a taxi system that has operated with little regulation for many years. Others see it as a middle ground in an issue so touchy that many public officials avoid commenting on the subject.
"I'm definitely for zones, but I see zone meters as a compromise. . . . We're going to put it out there. We'll see what happens next Tuesday," commission member Theresa Travis said.
Commission Chairman Leon J. Swain Jr. said he will make a statement only after the vote. He declined to release the results of recent Zogby surveys of D.C. residents and cabdrivers until the meeting. The polls were taken in lieu of holding a public meeting, scheduled for Aug. 1, that Swain canceled because of fears that crowds would overflow the room. After a closed-door work session last week, Swain collected copies of the report from commission members and whisked them away.
According to a source who has read the report, the results lean toward change: Of more than 600 cabdrivers surveyed, 183 said they liked the common time-and-distance meters and 177 did not want meters at all. But more than 300 favored the zone meter. Almost two-thirds of the D.C. residents polled expressed dissatisfaction with the existing system. Forty-eight percent agreed there should be meters; 49 percent disagreed.
The subject has been controversial for years, creating a long line of stymied public officials, numerous surveys, heated public meetings -- but no change. Most recently, in 2002, the commission voted 4 to 2 against switching to meters.
This time, a longtime critic of the zones, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D.-Mich.), has forced the issue, adding a provision to legislation last year that gave the District until next month to require meters in city cabs. But the mayor can opt out by executive order.
Fenty said he understands the taxi fare system "is a very serious issue" and hedged his bets.
"People's livelihoods are at stake in the taxicab industry," he said yesterday. "But also the whole hospitality industry is a huge part of any big city, especially the nation's capital, where people come here by the millions each year and use the taxicabs."
He said he has heard about the zone meter but has not been briefed on it.
"What I should do is look at that option, but it's also my responsibility to look at the other two main options, the current system and a system that is more like the traditional metered system," he said.
"If more people are unhappy with the current system, then that means people want change," he said. "What they want, we still have to determine. What we want is a decision that goes forward and we won't have to revisit in the near future if we can avoid it."
No other U.S. city has a taxi system quite like the District's. Its zone system dates to the 1930s, and about 90 percent of its 7,500 licensed cabdrivers are independent owners. It is an industry without much supporting data -- no information on how much drivers make, how many passengers are moved annually, peak ridership times or seasonal changes.
"The only data we have is collected by individual drivers on their manually scribed manifests," said Causton A. Toney, who stepped down as commission chairman in January after a year and a half on the job. "Nobody knows how big the industry is."
Because of the setup, local cabdrivers historically have had a lot of power, Toney said. He thinks the commission, established in 1986 after Congress relinquished control, has failed to act in the past because of fears that drivers "would create a crisis."
"Every time the issue comes up, drivers say, 'We're going to strike,' " he said, describing the response as "scare tactics." "From 1986 until today, the commission has been fiddling with this issue and has been unable to resolve what is at its base a common-sense issue."
He does not have much faith that zone meters will solve the problem.
"It does nothing to address one of the largest failings of the zone system -- the fundamental unfairness of the system itself," he said of the zones, which were originally drawn to benefit Congress members and others on Capitol Hill.
"You can go from Constitution and Second to Foggy Bottom and consume a driver for 25 minutes and pay only $6.50 for a trip three miles or more -- and somebody else goes less than a third of a mile and has to pay twice that. The zone calculator does nothing to address that."
On at least two current taxicab commission members have been open in their support of meters. "The current system is arcane and unfriendly and needs to go," member Cornelius Baker said. "We have a system that is not rational in its pricing structure and has arbitrary boundaries drawn that no one can understand. . . . Our system is not befitting our stature."
He said he has heard a lot about the zone meter. "Clearly, they're better than what we have now," he said. "They give greater confidence that fares are not being arbitrarily set. But they're still not fair."
Travis, a longtime supporter of zones, has the usual worries about meters -- that fares would fluctuate wildly, depending on traffic congestion, bridge openings and other factors. But she thinks the zone meters could work.
"It would satisfy everybody who might not feel like they get accurate fares," she said.
Roy D. Spooner, general manager of Yellow Cab, has demonstrated his company's zone meters to the taxicab commission and representatives of the mayor's office.
"We're not trying to influence a decision," he said. "We're just saying this is an opportunity to go to the next level. The customer just wants accurate and fair calculations -- you cannot be taken for a ride with this."
Longtime passengers say they will have to wait and see.
Stephanie Maltz, a lawyer who lives in Logan Circle and does not own a car, said the zone system has sometimes been good, sometimes bad, "depending on where you're going."
Zone meters might work, she said. A printed receipt would be helpful, she said, "especially, for people not from D.C."
Staff writer David Nakamura contributed to this report.
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