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Fare Play

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One of the nice things about living in Washington DC prior to 2008 was our zone system for cabs.

For those who never used the DC taxi system, this was the way it used to work:

Each part of the city was in a “zone”, and the amount of cab fare you paid depended on how many zones you travelled through.  A cab ride that crossed X amount of zones was $X, and a ride within a zone cost $X … each and every trip.  There were surcharges for rush hour trips, radio dispatches, etc … but for the most part, if you knew where you were going, you also knew exactly what the fare would be.

While the fare system worked for everyone who lived and worked within Zone 1, it could be unfair for those who lived on the edge of a zone.  For instance, at one point taking a cab from Adams Morgan to the Washington Hilton (1/4 mile) cost $7.60, while a ride from the Washington Hilton to the Capitol Building (3.5 miles) only cost $5.50.  It probably comes as little surprise that Congress gerrymandered the cab districts so that elected officials enjoyed the lowest rates.

In any event, even though the system had warts, I actually liked it.  I always lived in Zone 1 or Zone 2x, which meant that I rarely had to pay more than $10 for a cab ride.  This meant that using cabs as public transit was quite plausible even among the working class.  There is a reason that DC has the second lowest level of car ownership in the nation (after New York City) and the cab system certainly contributed to the ease of living in the city sans-car.  It was one of the reasons why I did not get a permanent license (I got a permit when I was a teen and let it expire) until I was 32 years old.  Cars were superfluous and had no practical use to me personally.  For less than the price of gas and parking fees, most core residents could be driven door-to-door.

Of course, the system was very far from perfect.  DC cabbies ran scams by intentionally driving through multiple zones, the cabs had questionable safety profiles, they tried to jam too many fares into a single cab, the drivers smelled like festering roadkill in the summer, they couldn’t speak English, and there were a myriad of other issues.  People complained about the system, and there were valid reasons to do so.

That being said, compared to Vegas where you are not allowed to hail a cab, where strip club and tunnel scams are the rule, and where perhaps 20% of drivers even know where they are going … my former hometown cab system was a wet dream.

In 2008, DC put meters in cabs, and I figured that was the last I would see of a non-metered system, but the Las Vegas Sun brings up an interesting idea:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2010/jun/25/zoned-pricing-strip-could-help-taxicab-authority-e/

What the article basically says is that Las Vegas is considering taxicab reforms at the end of this month, and the article’s author is advocating a zone fare system for our own taxicab service.

Frankly, I think it is an idea that has merit.

I’ve taken a lot of cabs in a lot of cities, and in my opinion, nobody runs more scams than do the drivers here in Las Vegas.  It got so bad that about a year ago, I more or less stopped taking cabs altogether.

Why?

Because I just got tired of confrontation.

I got sick and tired of getting in a cab at the Flamingo, and having the driver take a right on Paradise with the explanation “there is construction in front of the Convention Center.”  I got tired of helplessly sitting in the back as the driver drove to Tropicana, hung a left, hung another left on Swenson, and then looped back to Rexville before saying “that will be $21″.  I got tired of arguing with him at the end of the ride.

Driver: “You’ll pay the meter or I will call the police.”
Me: “Would you like to use my phone to call them?”
Driver: “What?”
Me: “You and I both know that you aren’t calling the police, you can take this ten dollars or I can call the Taxicab Authority.  They’re number 7 on my speed dial.  Hurry up and decide before I change my mind and give you nothing.”

Of course, they always took the ten bucks.

I did get paranoid that they would come back and shoot me when I was least expecting it, though.  It’s not good to piss people off directly in front of your home.

When something like the above didn’t happen, the driver would often pull the “ooops, I forgot to turn on my meter” trick.  In these cases, I legally owed the driver nothing, and I gave them a similar “take it or leave it” proposition at the end of the ride.  Even though I knew I was being scammed, I was always fair with what I offered.  I was aware that they were under the gun from their slave owners back at the cab barn, and I tried to be a good guy by giving them a legitimate fare for a legitimate ride, but some of their behavior was getting downright bizarre.  In my opinion, stimulant use was becoming more rampant to allow the drivers to work longer hours without fatigue.  I say this because I was threatened more than once by drivers with pupils the size of basketballs who had difficulty stringing two coherent sentences together.

Las Vegas Taxicab on The Strip

Las Vegas Taxicab on The Strip

Las Vegas Taxicab on The Strip

Las Vegas Taxicab on The Strip

Las Vegas Taxicab on The Strip

Las Vegas Taxicab on The Strip

Therefore, in early 2009, I more or less declared the Vegas cab system unusable as urban transit.  I’ve taken only a few rides since then, and as best as I can remember, none of those have been in 2010.

When I first moved here, only about 20-30% of my rides were scams.  By the time 2009 rolled around, that number jumped to a solid 80%.

The odd thing about it all was that even when I informed them that I was a local, it really did not dissuade them at all from pulling the scam.  Methamphetamine is one hell of a drug.

“Hey Rex, I come to Vegas all the time and I never get scammed by cabbies.”

If you come to Vegas all the time, and you take cabs, then you absolutely do get scammed.  You probably just don’t realize it.  If I didn’t live here, and didn’t learn these streets like the back of my hand, I would not know that I was getting scammed most of the time.  The drivers are pretty good at selling the lie.  “There’s construction up there”, “a convention is letting out” over here … they are pretty goddamn convincing, and who is the average person not to trust a professional driver’s advice?

It’s kind of like playing 6:5 Blackjack.  Most people go home after three days none the wiser that they have been ripped off.  They assume that the house is giving them a good game.  After all, this is Las Vegas, not some Indian casino on the outskirts of Bumbletwat, Iowa.  They aren’t looking for scams.  If I only made one trip a year to Vegas, perhaps I would not notice the skim either.

I do generally know the fastest way to get from point A to point B in this town, however, and I’m also aware that … despite what the cabbies tell me … the fastest route is not always under construction.

Anyway, on June 29th, the Taxicab Authority will meet to try to find solutions to the widespread practice of long-hauling, and in my opinion, it’s long overdue.

I’m not sure if a zone system would work here, but I know one thing for sure.

The status-quo is no longer feasible.


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