Stylish Bostonians Have Nice Clothes, Lack Self-Awareness
Close to the Edge: Near Death on the Orange Line
This Week In Booze: If You Build It
Randazza Served and Pwnd Glen Beck in 2009
Driving a cab can't be easy. Everyone complains about you, you get weirdos in the back seat, it's dangerous, and sometimes people jump without paying. Add the high gas prices into the mix, and you wonder why anyone would be a cab driver. Now, cab drivers say that the gas prices are taking a huge chunk out of their take-home pay, and they want higher fares.
Today, the cab drivers are going to make their distress public with a rally at Roxbury Community College this morning. In the end, it's police commissioner Ed Davis who will make the decision.
The articles say that cab drivers haven't had a rise in fares since 2002. However, they did get a 50 percent surcharge in the wake of high fuel costs after Hurricane Katrina, and that hike was supposed to be temporary. It wasn't.
Not everyone will be on the side of the cab drivers. Some Boston cab drivers aren't that good at their jobs. These drivers like to meander a little to raise the fare, and others genuinely have no idea where they are going when you give them an address.
Your thoughts? Feel bad for the cab drivers, or should they take a test to prove they know where they are going before they get a raise?
add to stumble upon
add to reddit
tweet this
post to facebook
Learn your way around the city, and put down the damn cell phones, if you want any of my sympathy.
Also - weird choice of venue for the protest; aren't there a lot of cabbies who refuse to go to Roxbury?
Last time a friend picked up a Boston cab at Logan Airport, he told the driver to take 93 North to Medford. The cabbie took him out the Mass Pike to 95, scared the crap out of my friend who kept telling the driver that he was going the wrong way, and it turned a $35 cab ride into an $80+ ride. The cabbie wouldn't pull over, and later claimed he hadn't seen the sign for 93 North. When I tried to file a complaint, even though I had the medallion number, nobody was willing to do anything.
Drivers like that should lose their licenses, but instead they make out like bandits. The good drivers work in the suburbs, and of course aren't allowed to pick up at Logan. Instead, visitors to our fair city get drivers like that as their welcome to Boston. It's horrifying.
I drove a cab in Somerville for 3 years, and had just received my Boston hack license when I got back into web dev. I've heard *all* the complaints, believe me. Most of them are probably accurate. Bostonmike, your friend should have refused to pay the fare and had the cabbie call the police. Cops can and will intervene if someone's been taken for a ride, and will either tell the thieving cabbie to get lost, or make sure the charge is reasonable. (When I'm in Boston, I always call one of my former co-workers from Somerville to come get me. It's not just because I like giving them the business - after several screaming fights with Boston cabbies who flat-out ignored my directions, my wife no longer lets me get in Boston cabs.)
Re: the choice of Roxbury Community College - that's where the "training" takes place (three evening nights), and of course the Hackney Division is located at BPD HQ right around the corner (that's where you take the test).
When Boston cabbie's pass the same riggerous testing required by London's Cab Drivers (http://www.taxiknowledge.co.uk/how.html) they deserve a big fat raise and a pat on the back. I am not a fan of Boston Cap drivers. I have never been in a cab in Boston where the driver has had any idea where to go, what the traffic conditions were, let alone obey traffic laws... where do these guys come from? I would be willing to pay the high prices of the UK if I wasn't taking my life into my hands every time I entered a cab, or could at least trust that I wasn't being taken for a ride...
Use your turn signals! And your flashers when pulled over.