Driven to Insanity

Anyone who’s lived in Boston for even a short while can offer up at least a half-dozen horror stories about the city’s taxi drivers. They’re rude. They never have change. They don’t have a clue where they’re going, but they still barrel down the road like maniacs to get there. Their cars reek of fast food. Then there are all those stickers blaring “BOSTON LICENSED TAXICAB’S ARE SMOKEFREE,” as if the hyphen that should go between “SMOKE” and “FREE” had become disoriented by the stench of fried chicken hearts, doubled over into an apostrophe, and gotten itself wedged in the wrong word. In just the week before I sat down to write this, a cabbie confessed to me that he didn’t know how to get to Kendall Square from the corner of Newbury and Mass. Ave. Another spent the entire trip talking dirty on his cell phone. “Aw, baby,” he cooed, “you’re missing out. You know you’re gonna get it.” It was the first and only time I ever wished my driver couldn’t speak English.

Cabbies are a hot topic these days. The hullabaloo started in October, when the steelworkers union, citing poor treatment of cabbies by passengers and regulators alike, began signing up drivers to push for a fare increase, less harassment from Massport and the cops, and the ongoing “right to refuse” passengers as they see fit. By the end of the first day it had enlisted more than 500 of the city’s 5,400 licensed drivers. The following month, City Councilor Mike Ross, taking up the cause of beleaguered riders, held a hearing on an NYC-style taxi passengers’ bill of rights, which would clearly notify passengers that they do not have to put up with the aforementioned annoyances. This, in turn, prompted union organizer Donna Blythe-Shaw to urge city council President Maureen Feeney to hold a hearing on a possible taxi drivers’ bill of rights, which would protect cabbies from the predations of drunken, savage customers.

The fight roils on, and it has the makings of a classic Massachusetts stalemate: a firebrand union, howls of victimization emanating from both sides, rising costs for the citizenry. But maybe a stalemate is the best anyone can hope for. Because, rather than fix the problem, the solutions being bandied about would only make things worse for us all.

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