XPost: nyc.politics, nyc.general, nyc.announce
From: Someone@somewhere.com
On Fri, 7 Sep 2007 15:52:29 -0400, Slim wrote:
>On 2007-09-07 13:04:30 -0400, Obwon said:
>
>> On Thu, 06 Sep 2007 22:12:56 GMT, "Freedom Fighter"
>> wrote:
>>> I wish these surly road-rage makers would go on a PERMANENT STRIKE.
>>> These Crabby Cabbies are the most INCONSIDERATE and RECKLESS drivers on
>>> the road!
>>>
>>> I'd like to see their accident statistics as compared with the typical
>>> motorists that they constantly endanger and inconvenience - to say
>>> nothing of all the pedestrians whose legs they've broken, if not killed.
>>>
>>> I'll gladly take the subway, or walk, thank you!
>>
>> Treat people miserably and you get miserable
>> treatment in return. There was once a time when
>> cab driving attracted a better class of people, the
>> amount available to be earned by driving a cab fell,
>> and the quality of the drivers went down with it.
>>
>> They should extend the strike, good money was
>> earned by cabbies during the contingency pricing
>> plan. If that plan is extended for any appreciable
>> length of time, I think college students will be once
>> again attracted to the job.
>> Remember when college students started the
>> gypsy cab genre way back when? Most people
>> either never knew it (born to late) or simply paid
>> no attention. But the gypsy cab industry was, in fact,
>> started by college students looking to make extra money.
>
>The job was ruined by the large garages led by Ron Stoppleman.
>
>It used to be that the current practice of paying the garage up front
>for the right to drive a car for a shift was ILLEGAL.
> It was called "horse-hiring" a common practice for independent owners
>who could make a few bucks from thier cars while they slept. The usual
>practice was that the drivers earned a percentage of the meter, and a
>bonus if they made above a certain ratio of miles driven to money made.
>Stoppelman and his cronies had the laws changed, and now he the the
>other fleet owers are guaranteed $120-160 from every car, every shift
>its out on the street, while drivers have to scrape by and avoid
>harassment from the TLC and the NYPD.
>
>
>An Unwanted Passenger
>By Melissa Plaut
>
>DRIVING a taxi in New York City can be a grueling, thankless job. It is
>also a unionless job. But on Wednesday, many of the city€s 44,000
>licensed cabdrivers are planning to go on strike for 48 hours to
>protest the new global positioning systems being installed in the
>city€s 13,000 yellow cabs.
>
>While the Taxi and Limousine Commission supports these devices and has
>mandated that they be up and running in the city€s entire fleet by
>January, many cabdrivers € myself included € see this new technology as
>one big expensive headache. Perhaps the commission should listen to
>cabdrivers before pushing a device that we€d be better off without.
>
>The device has no navigational abilities. The monitor, which is set
>into the partition separating the driver from the passenger, cannot be
>seen or accessed from the front of the cab. It does not give directions
>or plot routes. All it does is keep track of where you are € both on-
>and off-duty € and this information is then stored in the commission€s
>databases.
>
>Officials at the commission say the primary purpose of the devices is
>to track lost property and make sure cabbies aren€t taking passengers
>from point A to point B by way of point Z. Sadly, there are some bad
>cabdrivers out there who take visitors for a €ride,€ but in reality, we
>have much more to fear from our passengers than they have to fear from
>us.
>
>However, for me and many of my fellow drivers, privacy issues aside,
>it€s all about money. With prices ranging from around $3,250 to $4,000
>to lease and install each unit, the initial costs alone are enough to
>drive some cabbies out of business. For private owner/operators, this
>could kill their year.
>
>The costs continue to pile up after the devices are installed. The test
>drivers who already have the touch-screens have reported finding the
>monitors covered in spray paint, stickers, soda and scratches.
>
>Even without vandalism, the technology is likely to break down. New
>computers are often plagued with bugs, and sometimes, as every
>cellphone user knows, satellites can lose their signals. Because these
>G.P.S. devices will be linked to the taximeters, when the screen is
>vandalized, the computer breaks down or the satellite connection is
>unavailable, the meter won€t work. The driver will be forced to go
>off-duty and bring the car in for repairs. In a business where lost
>time equals lost pay, this is unacceptable.
>
>One fleet already using the system recently lost its satellite signal,
>putting about 250 cabs out of commission for nearly three hours until
>the problem was resolved. This translated not only into fewer available
>cabs on the streets, but also lower incomes for those already
>beleaguered cabbies.
>
>For drivers like me who lease our cabs from privately owned fleets,
>there isn€t the burden of paying for installation or repairs upfront,
>but the costs may still be passed on to us in the form of €surcharges€
>or €tax fees.€ However the extra costs will be labeled, it boils down
>to the same thing: our expenses go up; our income goes down.
>
>The only potential benefit for passengers I can see in these machines
>is the credit card slide. Matthew Daus, chairman of the Taxi and
>Limousine Commission, is happy to tell anyone who will listen that our
>tips are better as a result of this, but I beg to differ. Drivers have
>to pay a hefty 5 percent transaction fee while most stores and
>restaurants are charged an average base rate of about 2 percent. So
>those €bigger tips,€ if they exist at all, simply don€t cover the
>costs. And since most cabs already have the ability to take credit
>cards, what€s the point of installing a whole new system?
>
>The bottom line is, once we€ve installed the G.P.S. device, paid for
>its maintenance, ponied up for repairs and shelled out the transaction
>fees, what most cabbies will be left with is, in effect, a pay cut. The
>fare increase in 2004 just barely caught our incomes up with inflation,
>bringing us to just this side of a livable wage. We should not have to
>pay that back now.
>
>By turning a deaf ear to the opinions and expertise of taxi drivers,
>the commission has approved a design for an impractical and costly
>device that ultimately does not provide any useful €service
>enhancements€ to the public. So when cabdrivers go on strike this week,
[continued in next message]
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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