Photo by Tracy Clayton The Examiner’s Michael Neibauer picks up on just the latest power struggle between the executive and legislative branches of the D.C. government: Mayor Adrian Fenty has decided he doesn’t have to follow the D.C. Council’s budget directive to put an end to the existing $19 maximum fare on all taxicab rides originating and ending inside the District. Once again, the move comes down to a legal opinion justifying the mayor’s…

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,…

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…

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. But MWAA says it will begin enforcing this rule at National on June 1, one month…

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. They came back with some hardly surprising numbers, but hard numbers nonetheless: It took them seven cabs and 25 minutes to find a taxi with a meter.In…

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. Of course, it’s not over yet. The cab…

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…

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…

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…

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…