The District’s open, all-are-invited taxicab industry is so saturated with drivers that the entire enterprise is threatened, according to a D.C. Council member who has filed a bill to cap the number of cabs allowed on city streets.
Ward 1 Councilman Jim Graham introduced legislation Tuesday to limit the number of taxicabs in D.C. through either a medallion system, like ones used in New York City and Chicago, or a certification system.
The soaring number of taxicab operators in D.C. — roughly 8,000, most of whom own their own cars — is a “pressing and urgent problem,” Graham said. There are more licensed drivers in D.C. per capita than any place in the world, he said, and new applicants continue to take the required class, giving them access to the driver exam administered by the D.C. Taxicab Commission. A glut of drivers could jeopardize the chances of any cabbies making an adequate living, Graham has said.
“Whatever system we use, we need to limit the number of operators or this boat is going to sink by its own weight in terms of the number of taxicab operators that we have,” Graham said. “We’re going to determine which of these two approaches we should take, but we’re going to have one or the other.”
Taxicab Commission Chairman Leon Swain declined comment Wednesday. But during an April commission meeting, Swain said the key to any industry reform is balancing the need for regulation with the main tenet of the District’s cab industry — an open system that anyone can join as an owner-operator.
“We’ve now got to the place where an open system is an overbloated system, and we have more people coming,” Swain said.
New York City’s medallion system, established in 1937 during the Great Depression in response to a ballooning number of unregulated taxis, artificially capped the number of cabs on the road, to what is now about 13,000.
The medallion program, however, made it very difficult for the average New Yorker to join the industry as an owner: The May 2009 price for an individual medallion, those held by owner-operators, was $568,000. The cost of a corporate medallion was $744,000.
D.C. Taxicab Commissioner A. Cornelius Baker said during a recent meeting that the city must move “toward a regulated taxi force” and create a system “that sustains our drivers and also creates wealth for them in the long term.”
