Cab Companies Face Closure for Not Meeting Regulation

Alexandria Wants More City Pickups

Barring court action or a reversal by the City Council, three Alexandria cab companies will be shut down early next year for failing to meet city service requirements.

VIP, King and Columbus cab companies face shutdown because they failed to average two dispatch calls per driver, per day. The city instituted the requirement in 2005, to encourage cabdrivers to pick up more fares in the city instead of focusing on airport customers. One cab company has filed a lawsuit to stop the action, and others may consider similar moves.

Data from Reagan National Airport shows that Alexandria-regulated cab services provide about 75 percent of the taxis dispatched from the airport into Virginia, said Tom Culpepper, deputy director of the city's Department of Transportation and Environmental Services.

"One of the things the city wanted to do as part of the new ordinance was to encourage more and better city-based taxi service," Culpepper said. "We have an odd market here, where our drivers are kind of split between the city and Reagan Airport."

Cabdrivers tend to focus on airport business because the fares generally are higher.

"It's a bigger ticket, because one customer's average ride is about $40," said Charles Shin, owner of Columbus Cab. He also noted that most of the Washington area cab industry is dependent on airport business. "If the National Airport shuts down tomorrow, you won't need half the cabs that exist in the jurisdiction right now," he said.

City officials said that dependency is part of the problem. For example, if taxi operations at National Airport become franchised, such as they are at Dulles International Airport, the overflow of drivers would flood the city. Officials got a glimpse of that possibility when National shut down after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

"All those drivers reappeared here in the city looking for trips to serve," Culpepper said. "Suddenly, we had far too many cabs in the city. The drivers were competing rather aggressively for fares; there wasn't enough business to support them here in the city with that airport market closed. We had a real problem here."

Four cab companies have been on probation since the beginning of the year for failing to meet the target, Culpepper said. Diamond Cab was able to reach the required volume; the other three failed, and their licenses are set to be revoked Feb. 1. There are seven taxi companies with 710 authorized taxicabs in the city; the license revocations would leave 534 cabs in operation.

Zari Karimian, owner of VIP, said airport pickups are the backbone of her company, which has 88 authorized cabs. Shin, whose company has 35 cabs, said that about 85 to 90 percent of his business is airport-related.

"There are not enough calls in the city to go around to every one of these drivers," Karimian said. "We have to work at the airport."

Karimian said she has tried to keep up with the requirements. In November 2006 she spent $200,000 on a computerized dispatch system that uses Global Positioning System tracking to allocate calls to the closest available cabs. Employees were trained to use the system, and she started advertising to gain more customers. She said the changes have increased call volume from 10 calls a day to 100 calls a day. With more time, she said, she could reach 200 calls a day, which would fulfill the city requirement.