Results tagged “taxis>”

So says the AP, adding that currently, those in wheelchairs are out of luck when it comes to finding a cab within the confines of the District, taking their chances (and what I'm sure is a sizable hit to their wallets) by calling suburban cab companies who have appropriately-outfitted taxis to come pick them up. By January, a full fleet of 20 Toyota minivans will be deployed by D.C. taxi cab concerns as part of a $1.2 million pilot program. This is great and all; but while it may be a bit naive on the part of yours truly, this news should probably be filed under "just what the hell took so long to implement this?" Of course, this being D.C., we're really going to have to work hard to find some free space in that particular file drawer.

D.C. police today released a pair of photos and a composite sketch of a man they believe to be responsible for a bevy of crimes across the city in the last month. Among the crimes police are attributing to this one guy are the robberies and/or car jackings of six different taxi cab drivers in the month of September alone, plus the Sept. 22 armed robbery of the Lowest Price Gas Station in the 2800 block of 12th Street NE.

A creepy new development today in the ongoing federal investigation into allegations of widespread bribery attempts inside the D.C. taxicab industry, courtesy the Post's Del Quentin Wilber: court documents released today detail how one of the 39 men charged in the bribery ring, Yitbarek Syume, allegedly threatened to murder FBI informant Abdulaziz Kamus when his name surfaced in media reports shortly after the investigation became public.

The papers reveal that Yitbarek Syume met with an undercover FBI agent and an informant on the day after the top staffer of a prominent D.C. Council member was arrested on bribery charges. The three men discussed the high-profile arrest and how to avoid detection of their scheme, which funneled more than $300,000 to a D.C. government official, prosecutors wrote in court papers, citing a surreptitious recording of the meeting.

D.C. taxicab drivers made good on their promise to boycott the busy Adams Morgan nightlife district between the hours of 1 a.m and 4 a.m. on Saturday night. WJLA covers the reaction, and at least one friend of DCist told us he nearly managed to flag down a taxi on Columbia Rd. during that time, but then the driver, apparently suddenly remembering the strike, abruptly pulled away before he could enter the cab.

Federal authorities have arrested 27 people so far in a massive bribery case tied to the D.C. taxicab industry. Two indictments released today accuse a total of 39 individuals of conspiring to bribe city officials in order to obtain fraudulent taxi licenses between 2007 and 2009.

Freshly delivered to our inbox is a press release from the office of D.C. Council member Jim Graham (D-Ward 1). The title? "Councilmember Graham Postpones Hearing on Taxicabs." Yeah, good call.

The Post has a story today reporting the installation of touch-screen video credit card machines inside 200 area taxi cabs, the first we've heard of such devices being adopted by a local cab company. Granted, it's a Maryland cab company, Barwood Taxi, but we've gotta be willing to start somewhere, we suppose. By all accounts based on the experiences of other cities, like New York and Philadelphia, that have mandated credit card machines in taxis, the devices are a win-win for drivers and passengers alike. The self-use machines have a tendency to increase tipping, and drivers no longer have to carry around so much cash to make change, something any semi-regular D.C. taxi customer can tell you is often an issue inside this city.

In what will surely come as a relief to DCist readers, the Examiner's Michael Neibauer reports this morning that the Adams Morgan Taxi Stand pilot program has been torpedoed after less than three months. What's especially interesting is that the program was apparently discontinued by DDOT all the way back in December, though as far as we know, the agency never announced that change. DDOT issued formal notice on Friday that the 90-day pilot program has been postponed.

A little more than three weeks ago, DCist checked in with how the new taxi stands on 18th Street in Adams Morgan were faring -- the findings were fairly disappointing. Have things gotten any better? In no uncertain terms: not really. A tipster let us know that trying to get a cab at a stand around 1:30 a.m. "was like trying to get a cab from Union Station after Thanksgiving" and that more than one cab driver wouldn't take a party of four into the busy corridor in order to avoid the fray. With temperatures bordering on the teens last night, getting people in and out of cabs efficiently is of paramount importance -- in hindsight, the brink of winter was probably not the best season to work out the predictable logistical kinks with this idea.

Perhaps it was WTOP's reporting that did it — they seem to think so. Or maybe the D.C. Taxicab Commission spent some time reading your comments and noticed that they haven't got a lot of fans these days. Either way, the $1 fuel surcharge will disappear starting at 12:01 a.m. on Thursday.

WTOP's Adam Tuss managed to get D.C. Taxicab Commission Chairman Leon Swain on the record that he's now officially "trying to get rid of the [gas] surcharge." Trying? He's also apparently "trying" to contact members of the taxicab commission so that he can talk to them about repealing the surcharge. "I expect to take action this week," Swain told Tuss. Hmm. You may recall that FOX 5's Matt Ackland asked Swain the same question on Oct. 29, noting that gas prices had fallen and were expected to keep falling. Since then, there was a regular, full meeting of the D.C. Taxicab Commission on Nov. 12. What prevented this discussion from happening at that meeting? Average gas prices in the metro area now stand at $1.91. When the $1 gas surcharge we're paying right now was reinstated in late 2007, average gas prices were around $3.13 per gallon. The Commission approved the most recent surcharge renewal on Sept. 29, extending it through January 31, 2009.

As the Going Out Gurus reported last Friday, this past weekend marked the beginning of the long-awaited Adams Morgan Taxi Stand pilot program. As Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham published on his web site, the program is designed to reduce the killer traffic congestion on the 18th Street nightlife corridor on weekend nights.

FOX 5's Matt Ackland had the smart idea to ask D.C. Taxicab Commission Chairman Leon Swain whether falling gas prices will mean an end to the $1 gas surcharge we've all been paying for such a long time now.

A few years ago, the answers to the D.C. taxicab licensing test were compromised and passed around all over town. As a result, the city put a freeze on new testing and licensing for cab drivers in 2005, even for individuals who had already paid for and passed the required 60-hour training course offered at UDC (it costs $375). Well today the Examiner is reporting that starting in January, the city will once again start offering the licensing exam. The rewritten exam will only be open to people who have passed the UDC training program, but even under that condition, there are apparently already at least 2,000 people eligible for the exam right now.

It's been exactly one month since the city switched all of its taxi cabs over to time and distance meters, and we've spent that month asking every driver and frequent taxi passenger we've run across what their experiences have been. The vast majority of drivers we've spoken to agree that within the city, fares by and large even out to be about the same -- some are a little more, some are a little less, but none are so different that it might put them out of business. Compliance with installing meters ended up going fairly smoothly, amazingly enough, and overall the new system is working pretty well.

This is one of those items that's newsworthy because we can't believe it's news: Last night the mayor's office sent around a release announcing that wheelchair accessible taxicabs are coming to D.C. for the first time.

Given the record high gasoline prices consumers are paying at the pump right now, it's not terribly surprising that the D.C. Taxicab Commission took "emergency action" this week to extend the expiration date of the current $1 per trip gas surcharge by another 120 days. The previous gas surcharge, which was also an "emergency" extension, went into effect at the end of January and expired on May 28.

We're now two-thirds of the way through the month of May, with only 11 days left until the date by which Mayor Adrian Fenty has promised to begin fining D.C. taxicab drivers $1000 every time they are caught picking up a fare without a time and distance meter installed in their vehicles. We've definitely noticed more and more taxis with meters installed over the last week, many with those helpful "D.C. Certified Meter Taxicab" stickers in their windows (although, often while still displaying zone fare maps inside the cab).

WTOP is reporting that the the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority plans to ban taxicabs without meters from taxi stands at Reagan National Airport. That's good. Regular roundtrips to DCA are the D.C. taxi driver's bread and butter, and the airport taxi stands have dispatch employees there to assist passengers who are ready and able to enforce the meter rule.

WTOP's Adam Tuss and Kristi King did what I wish I had been able to do today: they went out and rode in a bunch of cabs, both to see how many they found that had meters installed, and to get a few real-life comparisons on price differences.

Via the Post, one more blow was dealt to District taxicab drivers who are still hoping to delay the implementation of time and distance meters in all city cabs. D.C. Superior Court Judge Brook Hedge has denied their request for an injunction to block the meter system from being put in place while they wait for their case to be heard by the D.C. Court of Appeals.

Over at City Desk, Mike DeBonis is reporting early from the mayor's taxi meter presser that Fenty will not be extending the May 1 deadline for taxi drivers to have time and distance meters installed in their cabs. Barring further action by a judge to delay the deadline once again, the District's cab drivers will now have to scramble to get their meters installed by next Thursday, or face $1,000 fines each time they pick up a fare without a meter.

The final road block to Mayor Adrian Fenty's mandate to switch the District's taxicabs to time and distance meters has at last been removed, reports WTOP. A judge has ruled in the city's favor in a case brought by a group of taxi drivers who tried to argue that Fenty did not have the authority to make his decision on meters. Now that the ruling confirming the mayor has power over taxi regulation is in place, taxi cab drivers only have until May 1 to have meters installed in their cabs, or else face $1,000 penalties each time they drive without one.

Where have you gone, Louie Gohmert? Way back, you said that "Washington, D.C. is also the only city in the entire country that every senator and every member of Congress has a vested interest in seeing that it works properly, that water works, sewer works, and no other city in America has that."

The group that calls itself the Coalition of Taxicab Drivers, Associations and Companies has created an online petition to gather support from those in favor of switching all D.C. taxicabs to the so-called "zone meters", as opposed to the time and distance meters Mayor Adrian Fenty has ordered will soon be mandatory. A judge recently pushed back the date by which the time and distance meters need to be in place to May 1, as opposed to the original date of April 6.

D.C. taxicab drivers may have won a small victory in their attempts to derail Mayor Fenty's time and distance meter mandate this week, when a judge awarded them an extra month of the zone system thanks to a silly typographical on the part of the District government. But a hilarious story in today's Post by Sue Anne Pressley Montes outlines their new strategy in getting what they want (namely, zone meters), which includes tactics such as attempting to gather enough signatures to recall Mayor Adrian Fenty (ha!) and something called a "paparazzi campaign" that could find taxi drivers photographing elected officials they encounter (huh?).

Those of you who've had April 6 circled on your calendars as the first day you can expect all D.C. cabs will be outfitted with time and distance meters, time to make a little adjustment: the deadline has been pushed back to May 1.

In the department of hey, that's a really friggin' good idea, Ward 1 Council member Jim Graham put up an announcement late yesterday that the D.C. Council unanimously passed an emergency bill Tuesday to create a pilot taxi zone in Adams Morgan.

The pilot taxi zone will require taxis to report to a central location to pick up riders rather than drive through the streets to find their fares. Hack inspectors will be involved in enforcing this program.

You're not going to like the sound of this: the final set of rules governing the switch from the zone system to time and distance taxi meters were published in the in the D.C. Register on Friday, and the additional passenger fee was added back in.

This morning a large group of taxicab drivers caravaned slowly down 16th St. NW and circled around Freedom Plaza, honking their horns and creating a large traffic jam all around the downtown area. NBC4 reports that police closed Pennsylvania Avenue for a brief time, but that the closure may not have been related to the taxi protest - a motorcade was spotted in the area.