WORLDWIDE TAXI FOCUS


DALLAS ‘GREEN’ CAB POLICY EVOKES AIRPORT ‘SOUTHFORK STANDOFF’ DURING SUPER BOWL


We’re back on the taxi trail again... checking out the cab trade in other parts of the world. Most of the time our reports have been quite positive and breezy, mainly profil- ing the profession in anywhere from Shang- hai to San Diego, giving PHTM readers a flavour of the trade generally in various areas outside the UK. However, this time our WWTF report features an American style Protest Plight in Texas: namely, a taxi strike during one of the busiest times for Dal- las airport arrivals - the 2011 US football Super Bowl during the first week in February. When a crowd of inde- pendent cabbies kicked off their Super Bowl Super Sunday boycott last month, upset by the city’s preferential treatment for CNG-powered cabs and frustrated that their past strikes hadn’t accomplished much, some drivers talked about simply hanging up their keys for the week and see- ing how the city liked it.


But others were more pumped up, talking about fighting for their place in line at Love Field Airport, blocking any CNG cabs that tried to jump ahead, even getting arrested. So the cabbies set about making their presence known: first by protesting through downtown for the ben- efit of visiting media; then by crawling along highways in a slow procession; and finally by parking a few cabs in Love Field Airport’s passenger pick-up zone on Super Sun- day, choking off all traffic into the airport while Dallas police called in wreckers to tow the cars away.


PAGE 68 A Bit Of History


We’ll go back a bit to examine the source of the difficulties: name- ly, the pronouncement nearly a year ago that an ordinance was decreed which gave preferential treatment to natural gas-pow- ered taxis.


Dallas has two major airports, DFW (Dallas Fort Worth) and Love Field. Last spring, city officials passed the ordinance at Love Field allowing new CNG powered cabs to jump to the front of the rank (they say ‘line’ there) to pick up pas- sengers, a reward for being ‘green’.


Which is all very charming and political- ly polished, but as usual when they set out these measures, none of the politicians took into consideration the financial implica- tions of such a move – mainly because they don’t understand the trade one iota. Sound familiar - ?


Evidently in the previ- ous August, Mayor Tom Leppert and T Boone Pickens, an oil magnate with consid- erable natural gas interests, had met out- side City Hall to promote shifting the city’s cab fleet to cleaner fuels. Council member Linda Koop had said that taxis average 70,000 miles a year on Dallas streets and highways, and running them cleaner would help Dallas to clear up air that the federal government considers unaccept- ably polluted.


So of course this new ruling means that tradi- tional petrol-fuelled taxis are sometimes overlooked, and some say under-used. (“Some say”? Talk to some of these guys who wait half a day for


Cabbies at Dallas City Hall striking over pre- ferred treatment of CNG-powered cabs


a fare.) And consider- ing that the bigger cab companies can more easily buy the expen- sive ‘green’ cabs, the smaller companies and the independent drivers feel that the rul- ing is unfair – as they did on New Year’s Eve, where they made their feelings known again. And on the 27th Janu- ary the sign-toting cabbies were back out- side City Hall, marching around the reflecting pool to com- plain once more about the preferential treat- ment of CNG taxis at Love Field Airport. Offi- cials at DFW Inter- national Airport – which is not city-owned as is Love Field – tried to fol- low Dallas’ lead and allow CNG cabs to go front-of-rank, but a fed- eral judge has stopped it at DFW for the time being.


Green? Wrong Colour


The independent trade’s strike action took on a more sinister note by the time the Super Bowl day approached. This group of 200 owner/dri- vers, all of whom are black and most African immigrants, represent between ten and 20 per cent of the region’s estimated 3,000 driv- ers. They contend that the policy allowing the 87 taxis running on compressed natural gas to ‘take over’ the Love Field airport rank


is lining the pockets of the larger taxi fleets who own these vehi- cles, and who can afford to change more vehicles over to CNG. Significantly, the strik- ers are now accusing the city’s policy of being racist; the Dallas chapter of the NAACP is trying to help them. Chapter President Juanita Wallace is the lone woman in the sea of faces at the protests. (Surprising that the NAACP hasn’t updated its name in recent times, standing as it does for the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People.) Whilst the Mayor likes the market-driven ide- ology of the new policy, saying “it is an incentive that does not cost the taxpayer any- thing... it is not a subsidy... it makes a lot of economic sense...”, the independent driv- ers at Love Field who have petrol taxis say the new policy is not about air quality at all; they say it is really about driving inde- pendent black cab owners (referring in this instance to the colour of the driver rather than the taxi) out of business so white businessmen can step into a nice new CNG cab when they get off their plane. Ouch. The fact remains that it costs something in the region of $15,000 to convert a conventional


petrol vehicle over to natural gas, and the independents main- tain that they cannot afford that kind of expenditure – whilst the large circuits can go out and buy the CNG vehicles more easily as their busi- ness is being favoured at Love Field Airport. So this was the pre- vailing mood as the independents set out to disrupt Super Bowl week. Did they suc- ceed? Well, there were a few skirmishes... a couple of which ended in fisticuffs, and seven drivers were eventual- ly arrested for having abandoned their vehi- cles and blocking the roadway at the airport. Two more were noted for “pedestrian in the roadway” violations. Mayor Leppert was none too pleased with the protest, telling the Dallas Observer, “Too many people have worked so long and so hard to pull this week off, and it’s just disap- pointing when something like this happens.” He said also that the slow-roll on Central Expressway and LBJ Freeway had posed a genuine threat to public safety.


He said that the Super Bowl week was “an opportunity to show off the city to many differ- ent groups and individuals... the week promise(d) terrific busi- ness, and to represent the city will gets us more business –all the things cab drivers want to have. The other cab companies are dealing with it, adapting to it, and it’s disappointing that you have a small group doing things that are a slap in the face to the community.”


Mixed Feelings


As to any impact of the taxi strike on Super


Bowl week, there were mixed feelings from other members of the community. A sports pundit in the region stated that “Big D” might have stood for “big disappointment”, as the game, tradition- ally held in warmer climates, was marred with unusual snow- storms, icy pavements and uncomfortable wind chill factors. Sports patrons lucky enough to score a game ticket were annoyed by several other factors as well: some 750 seats in the Super Bowl stadium were deemed unsafe and were blocked off to the public... then Christina Aguilera fluffed the lyrics of the Star Spangled Banner at the opening of the Super Bowl ceremony. That created waves of disgust and dismay on no end of blog sites. As for the match itself, the Super Bowl XLV was televised this year by Fox TV and watched by approximately 111 million people world- wide. The National Football League cham- pions were the Green Bay Packers, (as pre- dicted by our resident tipster, Bernie the Book) who triumphed over the Pittsburgh Steelers by 31-25. Despite the carrot- dangler offered by City Hall that further talks would take place with the independent taxi drivers if they called off their Super Bowl strike action, it went ahead – on the basis that previous talks have amounted to nothing. Whether the strikes and blockades have had any impact in the long run remains to be seen; it is an interesting situa- tion, and one which we shall update for PHTM readers if fur- ther news develops.


PHTM MARCH 2011


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96