Driven to Insanity

Let me pause here to say that I’m part of the problem. I once yelled at a cabbie because I suspected he was trying to give me the runaround (he wasn’t). Another time, after my bachelor party, I had to rudely order one to pull over so I could attempt to crawl out and puke in the street like an animal, an effort at which I was only partly successful. And though I’ve had some great cabbies—like the guy who used his dome light to perform a hilarious sci-fi skit at 3 a.m. one Saturday, or “The Englishman,” who I’ll get to later—I still thought to rattle off all the bad ones first. That’s the thing about being deeply prejudiced.

So, difficult as it may be to accept, let’s start by assuming not all cabbies are crazy and trying to rob you, and that many are, in fact, consummate professionals. Now, with that out of the way, let’s look at the factors that create the bad ones. The “union”—cabbies are independent business operators, so it’s actually just an association backed by big labor—has been successful in drawing attention to the rotten conditions that drivers work under. But the real problem isn’t that the cops, who oversee the local taxi industry, are mistreating cabbies. Nor is it the absence of myriad bills of rights, or that fares are too low (actually, they’re among the highest in the country). The problem is that the way the taxi industry works in Boston is so thoroughly broken that it ends up screwing over cabbies and passengers alike.

Years ago, cab drivers owned both their vehicles and their medallions, the city-issued licenses that allow drivers to put a taxi on the road. The same went for those who had whole fleets of cabs, which they’d maintain themselves and rent out to drivers on a daily basis. Over time, the value of the medallions would go up, and, as it did, the owners could tap that equity to invest in repairing or replacing their vehicles.

Things soured over the past decade, as the forces of raw capitalism ran amok, driving the price of a medallion up to $377,000—putting it out of reach of smaller operators, and consolidating many in the hands of a few. (At present, one guy, Edward Tutunjian, owns 346 of Boston’s 1,825 medallions.) Medallion owners also began leasing out their licenses, rather than their vehicles, and stopped buying cars or paying for upkeep, which made it possible for them to run their operation with just a desk and a phone. Meanwhile, drivers had to start buying and maintaining their own cars, and no one but the medallion owners could save up any money, because all the equity was in the licenses. A completely untenable sharecropper situation was born.

Thanks to this setup, drivers have to work brutal hours just to cover costs, often doing so at considerable risk to their health and safety. The experiences of Bernie Allen, a.k.a. “The Englishman,” provide a vivid example. A garrulous former chemist and sneaker engineer, he started driving a cab in the mid-’80s to help fund a startup business. Since then, he’s been robbed three times, dragged from his car and beaten nearly unconscious, and had a gun put to his head (the last in a month during which he also had seven passengers run off without paying). Massport suspended him from Logan for several months after he broke the decidedly fascist rule that forbids cabbies in a particular lane to step out of their cars while waiting for a fare. Allen’s offense: leaning on his hood eating a sandwich in 90-degree heat—because a state law prohibits cabbies from running their cars, and by extension air conditioning, for more than five minutes while waiting for a fare.

“This job here is one of the most stressful you could ever imagine,” Allen said as we drove around town for a few hours one Sunday, in the middle of a 22-hour shift. He cited a week last July in which he drove the cab for 90 hours and made $900, and that was before he paid for gas, rent on the car, and the weekly $500 fee that goes to the medallion owner. “I was left with $316,” he said. “I made about $3 an hour. Goddamn that was hard work. And, you know, you don’t want to get in the cab the next week. You’re destroyed.” If I had to pull hours like that, I, too, would be slamming on the brakes intermittently, in the hopes of bouncing a customer’s head off the plexiglass divider.

All the aggravations might be a little easier to cope with, for passengers and drivers alike, if our cabbies went into the job well trained, which, of course, they do not. In London, taxi drivers study for an average of four years before they get their licenses. Here, they attend a 12-hour course, take a quick test, and they’re good to go. The BPD’s Hackney Unit recently added a rudimentary reading-comprehension component to the screening process, and now requires applicants to have had a valid U.S. driver’s license for two years, but the regimen still hasn’t been fully adapted to the changing demographic of Boston cabbies, many of whom are immigrants with poor English skills. Hackney says it licenses a total of 15 to 20 drivers a week like this. And you wonder why your driver doesn’t know how to get to the Common from the State House.

To find out why the proposed riders’ bill of rights and drivers’ bill of rights just don't cut it, go on to the next page...