It’s been a long time since I’ve lived there, but DC cabs and the zone system were one of the best things about the city – so long as you understood the system. Even the working poor like me could afford to practically commute by cab. The city had 10K or so licenced cabs and uncounted thousands more gypsy cabs, and you could step out almost anywhere and hail a cab within a couple minutes. It was less than five bucks to get to work down on the Mall from Adams Morgan – incredibly cheaper than any other place I’ve taken a cab. Here is a Washington Post editorial supporting the change from zones to meters. It suggests that this is a done deal with just a few details to be worked out, but I hope not.
The only reason mentioned in the article is that meters would be less subject to fraudulent fares charged by drivers, and I suppose that is true. In fact, a cabbie tried to overcharge me once and threatened to kill me when I wouldn’t pay. He called the cops on me, and he was arrested because he didn’t have a hack license – he was driving his cousin’s cab. It was kinda fun, really.
OTOH, the drivers could charge double fares to the uninformed, who would still think they were getting a bargain based on what they paid elsewhere for cabs. And during really bad weather emergencies, when cabs were legally allowed to double their fares, cabs were often the only public transit available. The city handled snow so badly that even the subway would shut down and you could wait at a bus stop for hours and never see a bus.
I’m not sure why this change is happening – besides fraud, maybe some kind of quality control? Pretty much anybody who could xerox a zone map could hang it in their car and get to work – and there were certainly plenty of shitty vehicles working out there. But if they broke down and couldn’t get you where you were going, which happened to me a couple of times over 12 years, you could get out without paying a cent and flag down another in a minute or two.
Does anybody who lives around DC now have some better reasons about why this change is happening. Was there some taxi-related catastrophe behind this push for new regulation?
Changes like this are usually about money. It’s D.C., so it wouldn’t surprise me if the city government figured out some way to take more off the top using meters versus using zones. Either that, or the cab companies make more.
According to the linked article, there’s a city taxicab commission, which did not support this. It was the new mayor – maybe this is more about putting his personal stamp on the city.
I also liked the zone system. If you understood it, you could get around town really cheaply. There were tricks such as knowing to cross the street and hailing a cab from the other side because that particular street was the zone border, etc. It did lend it self to abuse of outsiders though.
The zone system sucks, IMO. It’s a system to confuse and enrage tourists. I’ve had all sorts of different fares charged me for the same trip, and I’m tired of arguing with cabbies. Every other jurisdiction has meters. The only people pissed off at this are the cabbies.
The zone system sucks because it’s just so fucking impedimentary. In '98 I caught up with my girlfriend in DC (she was on her way to Europe) and while we were making out in the cab the dickhead drove through two extra zones. It’s a smug little system. One minute you’re paying some guy a Franklin for a trip you never shoulda took and the next you’re staring at The Washington like it’s a big stone cock. Then you go upstairs and have lots of sex.
I’m not sure, but I am sure that life begins when the meter starts – whenever that is. Or is it that the meter starts when the new life begins? Whichever…
I’ve never, ever been able to observe a correspondence between what the zone map seemed to say the fare should be, and what the cabbie charged me. Other than the latter always being higher, of course.
I personally don’t like dealing with situations where I can’t make sense of what I’m being asked to pay. I’d rather have meters, even if it means the legal fare is higher, because not only do I suspect that the actual fare - what the cabbie asks me to hand over - won’t change nearly as much as the legal fare, but it’ll stop being this mysterious, ambiguous transaction where the other person has you over a barrel.
That would be enough to get me to start using cabs in D.C. again.
The meter system will destroy the wonderful DC cab service. Now each cab will have a little computerized cash register. One guy can own hundreds of cabs. The independent operator will be squeezed out. Just like everywhere else.
First they got rid of People’s (drug store chain) now this. Bummer.
I’m a former resident of DC, and agree with Boyo Jim, madmonk28, and Paul in Saudi on the superiority of the zone system. I’m generally in favor of predictability when it comes to transportation transactions, and the old DC zone system was at least deterministic. Sure it ran up fares for unwitting tourists, but it favored those who had done their homework. Nowadays, with the DC Taxicab Zone Map (warning: 1.3MB PDF) available on the Web, it’s trivial to realize what the system involves and how to use it to one’s advantage as a passenger.
I used to live on Capitol Hill, fairly close to the Zone 1 boundary. Needless to say, I usually walked those couple of blocks. I’d also usually walk the couple of blocks at the other end if it was worth it. On getting in the cab, I’d make it clear to the cabbie that I knew both the starting and ending zones of the ride, and therefore the expected fare. Doing this, I was never overcharged, even though I’ve probably taken more cabs in DC than in my total of all other places in the world.
I don’t understand what happened to you there. The zone fare depends on the starting and finishing zones. Unlike with a metered system, in which the total usually depends upon distance and time, in a zoned system the driver has no incentive to drive the passenger out of their way to run up the fare. Unless the cabbie is prepared to lie about where he/she picked you up and / or dropped you off, there can be no “route taken” fare penalty. The cabbie can’t say “well, I drove you from Zone 2A to Zone 1 through Zones 2B, 2C, 2D, and 2E so you owe me more”. No, Zone 2A to Zone 1 is a fixed fare (although there’s a surcharge for rush-hour, of course). This is why it’s important for the passenger to let the cabbie know that he/she is aware of the system. “Zone scams” are hard to pull on an informed population of cab passengers, especially given the likelihood of DC locals to have time-stamped restaurant/bar receipts on their persons.
Cabs in DC suck. When I worked there the cabbies used to always try to rip guys from Fort Myer off by taking them to Henderson Hall instead of Fort Myer. Even if you asked them 20 times “You know where Fort Myer is, right? The main gate. NOT, I repeat NOT Henderson Hall. Fort M-Y-E-R?”, they’d take you to Henderson hall so they could jack up the price or to the Arlington Cemetery gates. Even after you specifically said “DO NOT GO TO THE ARLINGTON CEMETERY GATES!Its Saturday night, they are closed!”.
I would refuse to pay them every time they did that to me, because theres no way those pirates didn’t understand me. Never got in trouble for it either.
People’s Drug was bought by CVS in 1990. In fact, there’s a complex history for People’s. It had already been bought out a couple of times before 1990. Complaining that a store has changed because it’s been bought is kind of a strange complaint when it had already changed owners several times.
I just did a little playing around with the DC taxi web site to cost a trip from Adam’s Morgan (and I picked Madam’s Organ Bar) to my office, which is at Metro Center.
By Red Top Cab, the VA company I usually use, the 2.35 mile trip would be a $2.75 flat fare, plus 30 cents per 1/6 of a mile. Works out at $7.25.
By Zone system it would be $8.80. And that is not including the $1 rush hour surcharge, which if one is using it to commute (which would strike me as odd given the availability of buses and metro) is likely to be in force, taking it to $9.80.
I am sure there are trips in DC, that, assuming the cabbie is going by the system alone, are cheaper on zones than meters. There are probably even trips from Adam’s Morgan to downtown that are cheaper. That is, of course, assuming you can get a cab in Adam’s Morgan, and they are willing to take you where you need to go, which are two rare occurrences any time I am there. But automatically assuming the zone system is cheaper is just not justified by the facts.
I’m also finding it interesting that even the defenders of the zone system talk about having to know it to play it to your advantage - walking a couple of blocks to get into another zone, telling the cabbie you know what the fair is, refusing to pay what you are asked, having to call the police in one situation.
Is it too much to ask that when I need to take a cab, I can get it to pick me up at my door, drive me to where I wish to go, charge me a price I can see is fair, and not require me to get into a potential brawl with the driver? Clearly in DC it is…
Nowadays they only close the above-ground tracks during snow emergencies. If one wants to catch a bus, one can check the Metro website to see which stops aren’t being served.
Speaking of buses, I remember when they used a zone system.