Photo by Sarah Anne Hughes.
Downtown traffic will likely be snarled this afternoon by another taxi protest, if June’s edition is any indication.
Today’s protest caravan, which is scheduled to leave East Potomac Park at 10:30 a.m. and reach Freedom Plaza by 11:15 a.m., is being held in response to proposed Council legislation that would further regulate service likes Uber and Lyft.
“The taxi drivers are demanding fair legislation from the D.C. Council,” a release from the Teamsters-affiliated Taxi Operators Association states. “Taxi companies, UberX, Lyft, and others should follow the same regulations, rather than the proposed two-tiered system that gives a competitive advantage to private vehicles for-hire and keeps the public vehicles for-hire strictly controlled.”
Meanwhile, the D.C. Taxicab Commission has proposed mandating the use of an e-hailing app for the city’s more than 7,000 drivers.
The “One City One Taxi” app, which was donated, would be made available for free to all metered cabs. As with apps used by services like Uber, riders could summon a cab electronically and pay with a credit card on file. They would also be able to pay with cash or another credit card in the cab.
“Part of the statutory responsibility of the Commission is to ensure the economic feasibility of the public vehicle for hire industry,” DCTC Chairman Ron Linton said in a release. “Thus we believe it is imperative to allow the industry to be able to compete fairly. It is also up to the industry to take responsibility for their business to provide high quality customer service.”
Linton will present the proposal to the Cab Commission at a meeting today.
“I believe the app should be a program that is in the hands of the industry. So the rulemaking would be crafted to create a cooperative association owned by companies and individual vehicle owners that would manage and market the app service as well set rates,” Linton is schedule to tell the DCTC during his opening statement. “The coop would be a Transportation Network Company, as is being proposed by the City Council, to offer efficient and effective electronic hailing to metered taxis. This arrangement would not change the role of the Payment Service Providers which would continue to handle all financial transactions and transmit trip data to the Commission.”
A recent test of D.C. cabs by anonymous riders found that 91 percent have working credit card readers. Twenty-seven percent illegally refused to pick up a passenger.
