Philadelphia Weekly

Charge!: Philly's cabbies are far from thrilled about the PPA's new rules.

The cab business in Philadelphia has never been all that well-supervised from the consumer's perspective.

Wouldn't it be great, for starters, if those rooftop lights that are supposed to tell customers whether a cab is available actually did that? Or if your driver were as intent on listening to you, the customer, as he is on talking on his cell phone?

But last week the drivers and cab company owners were the ones complaining--this time about the new computer-dispatch system. (For more cab-related woes see "Give Them Credit," facing page.)

"At least 25 percent of the drivers aren't using it," says Ron Blount, president of the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania, which represents 1,200 of the city's roughly 3,000 taxi and limo drivers. "The system has too many glitches. It shuts down all the time. First it was telling some drivers their license had been suspended and it was shutting down. Now I'm being told by some drivers that it's telling them they already worked 12 hours, and it's shutting off--when they haven't worked 12 hours at all."

An employee at Taxitronic, the company providing the new computer dispatch system, declined comment, referring all questions to the Philadelphia Parking Authority (PPA).

Jim Ney, who oversees taxi and limo drivers for the PPA, says, "This is normal. We're putting a new system in place. There's an adjustment period."

For the PPA, whether the system works is a very big deal. As part of its series of reforms of the cab industry, it selected Taxitronic to bring all 1,600 city cabs under a central dispatch system.

The system was to be in full-time use by late January, but because of problems, that deadline has been pushed back until some time next month.

"We've set [the dispatch system] aside for now," says Dave Arbel, a manager with Victory Cab, which maintains a fleet of around 200 cars. "The system isn't working for us. It has two components--a global positioning system (GPS) and a dispatch system. The GPS works. The dispatch doesn't. It freezes a lot. It crashes ... a lot."

Arbel says he thinks the system was set up more as a device to help the PPA monitor drivers' activities than as a dispatch system. "The machine can automatically ticket drivers," he says. "It monitors the behavior of the drivers. If the driver takes an alternate route, other than the one suggested, it can issue a $250 fine."

That may sound good from a consumer's perspective, at least in theory. But what if the customer asks for a route other than the one suggested or the driver is trying to do a good job for the customer by avoiding heavy traffic?

Ney says Arbel is overstating the PPA's desire to ticket drivers. "There are some safeguards in place," he says, "so if a customer calls and complains and says they might've been taken advantage of, we can go back and review that specific fare. But it's something we're going to investigate, not automatically issue a complaint, and we're talking about issuing fines in situations where we've had multiple complaints. Let's face it: There are some drivers out there who are problems."

And problem drivers are a big part of the PPA's focus. For instance, the rooftop lights are being rigged so they automatically turn on when the meter's not engaged, a process that was previously in the driver's control. They've also been sending plainclothes inspectors to look for drivers talking on cell phones when they should be focused on customers--and the road.

Ney says he's heard the complaints--that the new Taxitronic system is merely an extension of those enforcement efforts, a means of establishing an electronic database of each individual driver's actions, from how long they worked to the routes they took. "I've had drivers tell me, 'Why do you think I got into this business? If I want to stand there for a while and talk to my friends and not take any fares, that's my decision.'"

Ney's response was succinct: "You're a public carrier. You're serving a public function, and there's got to be some accountability with that."

PW phoned seven cab companies last week, asking if they were using the new Taxitronic dispatch system yet--this period is considered a testing stage--and how it was going if they were. Two declined to talk. One would say only that they weren't using it. The others (though two dispatchers wouldn't speak for attribution) expressed some degree of frustration.

"With a radio, we dispatched six or seven cars in 90 seconds," says James Atalah, a consultant with All City Taxi. "With this system we can dispatch only three or four in that time."

Ney says he heard back from one of the trainers about the problems encountered by All City Taxi. "They're still manually logging fares before they put them in the system," says Ney. "The issue is just that everyone needs more training--and we're giving that to them. Once the system goes live, we're going to have a further six months to look for bugs and fix them."