Hacks

Although the New York City taxicab GPS debate may not be making national headlines, it has certainly made transit interesting around here. I have read many periodicals trying to explain both sides of the argument, but had not heard anything from the cabbies’ mouths until a lengthy discussion last night. Here’s the situation as I understand it: cab drivers were demanding a raise two years ago. The city was eager to install GPS monitors in the cabs, because this would be a new source of advertising revenue and enable greater control on the industry. As a settlement, the city gave drivers a significant raise (I believe 10-15%) with the understanding GPS would be installed at their cost in two years. It is now two years later, and the drivers are unwilling to make good on the agreement. Clearly, my bias lies with the city, but let me lay out some good and bad points this driver made last night. On the reasonable side, he explained that if the machines are damaged in anyway (say, a drunk frat guy hits the monitor on Saturday night), the meter shuts off and the cab is essentially inoperable. In this situation, the cabbie would have to end his night, not drive Sunday, and wait for the shop to reopen Monday morning. Allegedly, the system would also shut off if anything were wrong with the vehicle (his example, the check engine light that currently illuminates sporadically due to a manufacture defect). With these arguments, I sympathize, but also feel an easy solution would be to have the shops open 24 hours. It’s pure economics that if many drivers need immediate repairs on Saturday nights, the shops will accommodate. Now on the not-so-reasonable side, he stated things like “they will always know where we are,” “we will not be able to drive more than 12 hour shifts because they think it is unsafe,” “we will have to declare 100% of our income for taxes,” and “the monitors’ ability to take credit cards is essentially a 5% pay cut due to fees.” Sorry gentlemen, but for these I cannot empathize. You should not be driving unregistered routes after 12 hours and evading taxes. Those are all current laws, which the monitors only help enforce. Also, the 5% credit card fees and installation and maintenance costs were part of the original agreement with your raise in 2005. So my conclusion is you can strike, tape the credit card slots, and refuse to accept credit cards in the short term, but the GPS monitors are here to stay. In my opinion, for the better.