Washington Post

September 21, 2000

Officials Envison Basing Licensing on Customer Service Standards

A woman on her way to the airport questions a taxi driver about the alarming acceleration of the cab's meter. The driver abruptly stops in the middle of the highway, flips up the sun visor where his cab license is displayed and menacingly tells her that "you don't want to upset me while I am driving."

A cancer victim who had just undergone radiation and her service dog, Isabel, dive out of a moving taxi after the out-of-control driver makes it clear that he does not like canines and begins screaming that "you people should be grateful that we take you anywhere." Four miles from home, they are thankful to be picked up by a passing good Samaritan.

These are just a few examples of an onslaught of complaints to the Montgomery County Taxicab Office over the last year. The number of written complaints to the county about the highly regulated taxi industry hovered for years at slightly more than 20 each year. But in the last year, written complaints quadrupled to 85. Dozens more complaints were phoned to county regulators about people picked up late or not at all.

"I'm a senior, and I know how often we older people need to get to doctors and hospitals," Ruth Wells, of Silver Spring, wrote in a complaint. "Well, one of us could get into big trouble because we lack transportation. This is serious."

County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D) agrees. His administration is circulating several draft changes to the taxi code aimed at making cab companies and drivers behave a little more nicely.

The proposals offer a carrot-and-stick approach. With the new economy making it more difficult to attract and keep good drivers and with fuel prices rising, Duncan is considering a fare increase. To help eliminate long waits, he is proposing that the County Council give him flexibility to put more cabs on the road. The number has been capped at 580 since 1988.

To encourage civility, the proposal envisions issuing new licenses based on whether companies and drivers meet new standards of customer service. Failure to do so could mean loss of a company's license. Meanwhile, the county hired its first taxi inspector less than five months ago to check meters and crack down on dangerous or dirty cabs.

"We have to do something," said Nancy Kutz, manager of the taxicab office. "It's heartbreaking to read these complaints."

Taking on the taxi industry is popular with politicians nationwide. Former District mayor Marion Barry did it. New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani faced down strikes when he went after the industry. Miami even trained taxi drivers in courtesy classes.

But will Montgomery County's proposal work?

Taxi drivers oppose a fare increase, saying that they will lose customers and that cab companies will simply raise the rent they charge drivers for using the cars. Companies have lobbied for years to increase the number of cabs on the road, but drivers struggling to make money oppose the effort, saying they already must compete with the far less regulated sedan and shuttle industries.

Also, legislating niceness is difficult. Some question whether the county should be involved in decisions such as when a cabbie should turn on the air conditioning or how fast a cab ought to respond to a call for service.

The best solution, some experts said, is for the county to increase competition among companies. Barwood Taxi has been allowed to create a near monopoly--74 percent of the county's 580 licensed taxis are owned by Barwood or affiliated with the company. Kutz said Barwood is the target of 90 percent of complaints she receives.

When a similar situation developed in Chicago, the city forced the company to divest some cabs and offered new licenses only to competitors, according to Bruce Schaller, a consultant who has helped cities across the country to regulate the taxi industry. San Diego and other cities cap the percentage of cabs that a company can own.

"If you have one company that dominates the market, the customers don't have enough choices to make the free market system work," Schaller said. "If they are going to be issuing new licenses, the first order of business ought to be getting some competition."

Like Air Traffic Control

Squinting intently at his computer screen, Regency Cab dispatcher Fred Weiss runs a hand through his graying hair and tries to remain calm.

The phone is ringing nonstop, and new reservations pile up on his screen. Part auctioneer, part bounty hunter, Weiss calls out each location on the radio and waits for drivers to respond. When none does, he tracks down one that experience tells him is in the right area.

For the most part, though, drivers bid for jobs by radioing their locations. Weiss has a split second to decide which taxi is closest to the pickup location.

"Okay, 1080, it's yours," he said. "No. 1 Church Street, that big building by the Metro."

"Where's he going?" 1080's driver asks. It's not an idle question. Many drivers hate short-distance trips because there's relatively little money in them.

"I think he's going to your house for dinner," Weiss cracks.

Calls keep coming. The number to be assigned to drivers grows. Some drivers may be taking a break. Others could be following an industry trend by picking up customers who call a driver's cell phone, bypassing the dispatch operation.

Weiss is like an air traffic controller with very little idea about the location of planes he's directing or even how many there are.

Just then, an irate customer calls about the cab she requested. Seconds later, Weiss tells the operator to quit answering the phone. He has to play catch-up: "My board is a mess."

The exchange illustrates one difficulty of establishing standard response times.

Customers of Regency, the county's second-largest cab company, seldom complain to the county, but with only 73 licensed cabs, Regency simply cannot handle all of its calls. Last year, the company handled an average of 736 a day, up from 494 a day in 1994.

While the number of cabs has been capped at 580 for 12 years, Census estimates show that the county grew by 11.8 percent in the last decade. Meanwhile, the county's five cab companies have been overwhelmed with requests from Metro Access, a regional program developed in the wake of the Americans with Disabilities Act to provide alternatives for people who can't take public transportation.

"I really hope they'll allow the companies to grow," said Mike Healy, Regency's operations manager. "But my concern is that we primarily operate out of Bethesda and Germantown. We are not going to be able to meet the same customer service standards in Wheaton and Silver Spring. Or if we have to, then our overall performance is going to suffer."

Glitches

Regency's inability to handle all of its calls generally is Barwood's gain. With 427 licensed and affiliated cabs, the company can cover more of the county and the other companies' overflow.

At Barwood's dispatch center, operators take reservations while sitting before a row of gleaming white computers. It's a high-tech operation. Drivers have small terminals in their cars and punch in their location using a zoning system.

The computer, which can track such minute details as the average length of time a caller is on hold, then sends reservations to drivers nearest to pickup locations. The company handles about 4,000 trips a day, according to Lee Barnes, Barwood president.

But for all the gadgetry, this also is the epicenter of most complaints filed with the county. People complain of being put on hold endlessly and of taxis arriving so late that in one case an elderly man almost missed his birthday party. In some cases, they say taxis never show up at all.

Barnes is a bespectacled, politically connected man whose conference room boasts a mounted pen used by Gov. Parris N. Glendening (D) to sign industry-related legislation. He sits on a county taxi advisory board and is a member of the county's Democratic central committee.

Barnes can reel off statistics about his business. He said, for instance, that his computer shows that 72 percent of its calls are answered within 10 seconds.

"I've been concerned about customer service for 35 years," said Barnes, whose father helped found the company in 1964. "There are more happy customers than unhappy customers."

Barnes acknowledged that the computer system he installed earlier this year had some "early glitches." But he maintained that other factors at work are not under his direct control.

Low unemployment rates mean that finding taxi drivers is more difficult these days. Also, cabbies have left the industry to join sedan services that have sprouted around the county and in which Barwood has a stake. Loosely regulated by the state, sedan services can charge what they wish. As a result of these trends, Barnes estimates that he currently has 60 vehicles on his lot without drivers.

Then there are the drivers themselves. Countywide, only 15 percent own cabs they drive. The rest are independent contractors who rent cabs from companies such as Barwood. They follow no set schedules and are driven by a fierce sense of economics, sometimes at odds with customers' needs.

Barwood relies on drivers to be accurate in telling the computer where they are. But drivers, hoping to snag a good fare, sometimes "rubberhood"--say they are closer to a busy location than they really are.

To demonstrate another dispatching difficulty, Barnes leans over an operator and directs her to show the reservations and dispatch operation in action by flipping through several computer screens.

A customer has called, asking to be picked up at a local Safeway. The computer sends the order. The first driver contacted "forfeits"--he does not want the trip. Minutes tick by. The second driver contacted also forfeits. Finally, a third accepts.

"That's the problem--the drivers don't want the Safeway trips because they know it's only going to be around a $3 job," Barnes said. "That taxi driver that forfeited the ride, all the legislation in the world isn't going to make him accept it."

Forfeiting a fare is against the county's code, according to the taxicab office, where officials said they have had difficulty persuading Barnes to turn in such drivers.

The Drivers React

Driver Jean Casseus starts each day almost $100 in the hole. That's what he owes Barwood for the taxi he drives six days a week, regardless of weather or demand. He also pays about $35 a day for gas.

Casseus doesn't want more competition but expresses hope that the county will break up what he sees as Barwood's "monopoly control."

"The way we're working as taxi drivers in Montgomery County is like slavery," Casseus said. "All Barwood cares about is making money. The drivers have no choice. The customers have no choice."

Like many drivers, Casseus dreams of the airport trip, the one that will make him a quick $50. But these days, they are few and far between because the largely unregulated sedan and shuttle companies, one of which Barwood runs, now compete for that business.

So Casseus said he must work about 16 to 18 hours a day, in violation of the county's 12-hour rule, just to pay Barwood and have enough to take home to his wife and children.

During rush hours, many drivers queue at the Rockville Metro station. At times, as many as 10 await a fare. The problem, they said, is not a dearth of cabs. Business is already tough, they said, expressing concern that a fare increase will aggravate the situation.

The real source of most complaints, Casseus and others said, is Barwood's dispatching system.

"People call, and they are put on hold for 15 minutes," he said. "They don't put it out on the computer system right away. By the time we get the trip, it's already been 45 minutes."

Bill Jahn, a veteran Barwood driver, said, "The whole system will go down, or part of it will go down, and it slows down everything. Electrical storms can cause problems. The weather really affects these things."

But Jahn and other longtime drivers also placed part of the blame on their brethren for passing up fares.

"All they can think about is the airport, like fishermen throwing the bait for big fish," said Nader Afsahr, who has driven a cab for 18 years. "Every job is a good job as long as the meter runs, but a lot of drivers don't realize that."

Resisting the Inspector

At a commuter parking lot at Norbeck Road and Georgia Avenue, drivers cluster under a tree. A few smoke. All look a bit nervous.

John Hoffmann, the county's new taxi inspector whom they have come to see, slaps a large, red "out of service" sticker on one cab's window. Its driver, Kebede Gizaw, looks crestfallen. He's been awaiting inspection for more than two hours, a lifetime when the meter's not running and the rent's due.

Now he'll have to take more time off to return to Barwood for service on the rip that Hoffmann noted in the carpet.

Danny Silverman, who owns his cab but uses Barwood's dispatch system, wanders over.

"What did you fail for?" he asks.

When Gizaw tells him, Silverman quickly looks back at his own cab.

"If I've got to replace my carpet--I mean, this is a bad time for me," Silverman says. "I've got a mortgage to pay."

Until Hoffmann was hired, the county did little more than inspect meters, and during the last year or so, even that fell behind. But for the last five months, Hoffmann has taken at least 233 cabs, nearly half of the county fleet, out of service. Violations range from the cosmetic, such as torn seats or dirty cabs, to the more serious, such as exposed wiring, expired state inspections, fast meters and headlights or brake lights that don't work.

Recently, Hoffmann appeared at Barwood for a surprise inspection. He wanted to be sure that cabs he had ordered out of service remained that way. Barnes told him to come back another day.

Hoffman said the code entitles the county to make such visits. "Mr. Barnes is not happy," he said. "He's racked up quite a few citations. They've got cabs that haven't passed mechanical safety inspections in a year."

Barnes said he thinks that the county's new enforcement effort makes little sense. The sedan industry, he noted, is exempt from inspections because it is regulated by state law. Taking cabs out of service simply means that customers must wait longer, he said.

"If all they are doing is dealing with the existing taxi fleet and focusing on things that people aren't complaining about, that's not in the customers' interest," Barnes said.

But Hoffmann said the county is obligated to protect passengers and drivers.

"Many cabdrivers have thanked me for taking cabs out of service, saying they had pointed out the vehicle defects to their company and had their requests for repairs denied," Hoffmann said. "The taxi customers in Montgomery County have a right to be driven in a clean and safe automobile."

Proposed Taxi Fare Increase

The Taxi Service Advisory Committee, appointed by Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan (D), initially proposed the taxi fare hike. The idea is to help companies attract more qualified drivers, but drivers are opposed and some consumers complain that a fare hike is undeserved because of poor customer service. As county executive, Duncan has the ability to sign off on the rate increase without the approval of the County Council. The proposal would:

* Increase the initial charge for getting into a taxi from $1.80 to $2.30.

* Increase the amount drivers charge for "waiting time," which is any time a taxi is slowed to less than 13 mph, from $18 per hour to $21 per hour.