Mayor Adrian Fenty held a news conference this morning announcing lower fares for the new time and distance taxi meters he has mandated to be operational in all D.C. taxicabs by April 6. The flag drop will be $3 instead of $4. There will also be no more rush hour surcharge, and no more additional passenger fee.

The announcement comes as a huge victory to grassroots campaigns like DC Residents for Reasonable Taxi Fares, which sponsored an online petition to get some of these very changes and encouraged residents to contact the mayor with their views on the new taxi meter pricing structure.

The City Paper’s Mike DeBonis gives Fenty credit for listening to community input on the taxi meter issue. The Mayor said that the 2,100 comments his office received during a 60-day public comment period, of which nearly 100 percent agreed that the original proposed fare structure was too high, were the main influence on his decision to lower meter prices.

Other changes to the mayor’s proposal for meter fares include reducing snow emergency surcharges to 25 percent instead of doubling them, and placing a fare cap of any ride within the District at $18.90, plus surcharges. Fuel surcharges will remain, however.

The Taxicab Industry Group has already announced plans for another taxicab strike similar to the one held on Oct. 31 to protest the lowered fares, likely in early February.

UPDATE 2:02 p.m.: Based on what we just heard on WTOP, cab drivers are apparently going to be encouraged to strike one day a week, from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., beginning Monday, Feb. 4. The strikes would rotate through the days of the week, so it would be Tuesday the following week, Wednesday the week after, etc., until April.