District Mayor Adrian Fenty has gone out of his way to try to appease the cab drivers in this city and their associations. He has raised the drop fee or the fee that would first show up on the new time and distance meters when the drivers lowers the flag at the beginning of a fare. He has extended by a month the mandatory start date whereby all District cabbies must have the meters installed in their vehicles. What is the response? More foot dragging and the filing of legal papers to get the courts involved in the process. Enough already.
For too long cab drivers in the District have enjoined their own system. A zone fare system that was confusing and open to abuse. Out of towners frequently complained about paying wildly different fares to go from the same Point A to the same Point B. A lot of locals, who knew better, had the same issues. Many District cabbies were making a lot of money under and around the table because of the zone system. Enough already.
Good for the mayor for making the right decision to force these cabbies to use a system that is in place in the majority of big cities around the country. The more the cab drivers complain, the more you know that they are losing the ability to rip us off by perpetuating the zone system.
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I find it interesting that Metro is pushing the idea of pedestrian tunnels once again as a way to connect some of its rail stations. I also think it's a very good idea that can make the system even more useful at a somewhat reasonable cost. The one tunnel that I think makes the most sense in the near is the one that would connect the two Farragut stations. To be able to transfer from the red line at the Farragut North station to the blue/orange lines at the Farragut West station will take some of the traffic away from Metro Center. This idea was proposed several years ago and, although it seemed to be very well-received, the cost of roughly $50-million was too much to consider.
According to the Examiner newspaper, Metro officials are also considering inter-line connectors or train runs from one point to another within the system. The big problem with these is that the estimated cost is in the area of $200-million per mile, a bit more than Metro has left in its rainy day fund.
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Hey, here's an idea for Metro to spend a bunch of money: hire a company to provide "mystery riders" that will evaluate the service. Let's spend...oh how about a million dollars? In this way we can get roughly the same information that we get from the passengers that have been riding the system every day for years and know what works and what doesn't work. Maybe we can give this company a three-year contract so that it can spend the first year or so just getting up to speed on what the riding experience is and what it should be. If we're lucky we can even make sure that the contract goes to a "friend of a friend" and then everyone can be happy.
Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.
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