Photo by Samer Farha

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.

There’s absolutely nothing stopping an independent D.C. taxi operator from installing one of these devices, but for whatever reason – cabbies fear change, we suppose – they haven’t. But if Mayor Fenty can force all of them to adopt meters, he could just as easily force all of them install credit card machines, no? And if it was a citywide adoption, presumably one of the companies that makes the machines could work out a deal so it wouldn’t cost too much for the driver to have them put in.