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Toonie29 said:
+1
It's inexplicable that they don't. Screams laziness.
Uniform color cabs
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+1
It's inexplicable that they don't. Screams laziness.
BosDevelop
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I suspect part of the reason they don't is because so often the cab is only for hire depending on where you are going and who you are. I know it is illegal but countless times I have been witness to Boston cabs stopping for a customer, rolling down their window and asking the customer where they are headed. If they like the answer, they tell the customer to get in and if not, they drive off.
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Oh definitely. I see that happening all the time. Which goes back to the point of the broken, municipally-based medallion system...
DominusNovus
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For the people discussing the idea of the market driving the industry towards a sensible structure (an argument I'm generally sympathetic to), we have to consider how perversely the regulations warp the situation on the ground.
It would seem that, for so many different issues in daily life beyond just taxis, the idea of some county equivalent for the Boston metro area, with some organizational power could be a great boon. When the various municipalities produce competing and conflicting policies, nobody really wins (aside from those who are connected enough to steer the policies in their little empires).
Meanwhile, evolving more authority to handle such matters upwards to the state government would just lead to the opposite problem of trying to fit a single standard onto a comparatively diverse area (for all our small size), while likely diminishing the outlying areas in favor of the metro area.
It is somewhat tangental, but I do have to wonder if it we should just bring back county governments with worthwhile authority, and possibly some altered borders. Oh, and those black/yellow taxis do look quite nice.
It would seem that, for so many different issues in daily life beyond just taxis, the idea of some county equivalent for the Boston metro area, with some organizational power could be a great boon. When the various municipalities produce competing and conflicting policies, nobody really wins (aside from those who are connected enough to steer the policies in their little empires).
Meanwhile, evolving more authority to handle such matters upwards to the state government would just lead to the opposite problem of trying to fit a single standard onto a comparatively diverse area (for all our small size), while likely diminishing the outlying areas in favor of the metro area.
It is somewhat tangental, but I do have to wonder if it we should just bring back county governments with worthwhile authority, and possibly some altered borders. Oh, and those black/yellow taxis do look quite nice.
It screams laziness on the part of drivers AND on the part of BPD Hackney Unit. Why don't they actually get out there and enforce their own rules? See a cab with no light and no passenger? Pull them over and check it out. First offense: written warning; Second offence: 1 day suspension. (Same as credit card refusals, I believe).
It would take about a week of enforcement before word spread and lights suddenly would start to get used.
gooseberry
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That would be fun for the drivers. Every time you're trying to drive back to the garage to go home, a cop pulls you over and questions you.
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Or when they're going to pick up a call...
Still, there must be a way to get drivers into the habit of using those lights. They're there on the cab, why not use them except for selfish reasons?
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Or when they're going to pick up a call...
Still, there must be a way to get drivers into the habit of using those lights. They're there on the cab, why not use them except for selfish reasons?
Digital_Islandboy
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Oh that's cute, you thought the state/MBTA made decisions without the municipalities having any input? ,-) Not based on how Massachusetts government is structured. The MBTA voting areas are red, MBCR's voting area is the darker shade of blue/gray.
MBTA Advisory Board
http://www.mbtaadvisoryboard.org/
ADVISORY BOARD COMPOSITION
The chief elected official of each of the 175 cities and towns in the district, or his or her designee, is a voting member. Each municipality has one vote plus fractions of votes equivalent to its weighted proportion of the deficit (Chapter 161A, Section 7A). As assessments change, so does the precise weight of each municipal vote.
ADVISORY BOARD MANDATE
Provide public oversight of MBTA expenditure through a rigorous, MassDOT Board policy-mandated review of MBTA annual operating budget
Review, advise, and confer with local leaders on the MBTA multi-year capital budget, The Program for Mass Transportation.
Evaluate the Authority’s annual Capital Investment Program
Receive notice of (1) substantial changes in mass transportation services, (2) fare changes (Chapter 161A, Section 5D)
Consult with the Authority to create mechanisms for ensuring reliable, high-quality and cost-effective operations by establishing and implementing service quality standards (Chapter 161A, Section 5p)
Consult with the Authority to maximize revenues, ridership growth and transit oriented development
The Advisory Board has additional responsibilities in transportation capital planning. In accordance with other state and federal requirements, a Memorandum of Understanding between the Advisory Board and five other transportation agencies (MBTA, MASSPORT, MassDOT, and MAPC) was drawn up delineating a process for sharing both input and responsibilities of capital planning for the region’s transportation needs.
I stumbled on this thread over a year ago and have been meaning to come back and address all of your questions and assumptions I just kept forgetting.
A bit about me: My name is Mike I have been working in the local cab business since 2/2/00 at one time or another I have driven cabs in Malden, Revere,Chelsea, Boston and one night I drove a taxi in Montreal (bit of a long story). I currently own my own small cab company in one of the suburbs I mentioned above. In the past I have worked closely with regulators in Boston and elsewhere and it is fair to say I had input in crafting some existing rules. I am intimately familiar with most taxi and livery regulations in the Commonwealth. For want of a better word, I am an expert.
Around 1999 the city of Boston mandated that all licensed hackney carriages in Boston become a member of a radio association and that the radio associations adopt a new "clean" color scheme consisting of a white car with a choice of association colors. The official color of Boston Cabs is white.
At the time there were around 50 or so cab owners who immediately filed suit against the city claiming forced membership of the associations was an undue and unnecessary hardship. Just prior to the case being heard a deal was struck in the hallway of the courthouse. Those owners would be grandfathered into the white/association requirement with the stipulation that if they ever joined a radio association they lost their exemption and they couldn't ever rent the cabs out to anyone else. Over time there have been less and less of these grandfathered non association cabs and they now often deploy white cars to fit in.
There are approximately 4500 taxi in the entire Commonwealth. Boston has 1825 cabs and the majority are white. Over time since the white mandate several other suburban companies have switched to white so as to fit in better. I myself deployed a white + color scheme when I opened my business in 2010. You don't want to stick out in this business.
This is something I have often thought about but, how would you do it exactly? Every city and town has its own kingdom, there own cabs, police, fire , city government. None of it makes sense. Would you base it on the county? Would you set up a new taxi license at the Commonwealth level? Certainly doing something would be better than what we have now but, it would definitely have to be done by the legislature.
The problem with white is that it is one of the most popular colors for cars. Having our taxis be white is not much different from from having them all different color.
London's black is largely mitigated by the unique shape of the cab. While New York's yellow is garish, it is very functional. I like DC's choice of red as well.
Give us a nice bright stripe or something to jazz up our bland taxis a little.
I think the Hybrid green stripe is a nice touch. I enjoy the white and as a cab owner it does force cabbies to take better care of cleaning the car as dirt shows immediately on a white car.
Don't MetroCabs dispatch to other places than Boston? I've called a cab and had Metro pick me up in Somerville before...
If you want to call a taxi licensed by Anchorage Alaska to come pick you up in Somerville and drive you to Dayton Ohio that is between you and the Anchorage Alaska taxi. Free trade is guaranteed I just can't take a Revere taxi and drive around the streets of Boston picking up random people. The new apps have gone a long way to mitigate all of this but every city and town has an ordinance that says something like "only our cabs can pick up off of our streets and the penalty for out of town cabs is _____"
Since our county level government is a) non-existant, and b) still parochially divided around the metro-area, the State would have to create a regional taxi authority, the results of which would definitely be questionable.
I agree with what you are saying and even if we worked out a regional taxi authority I would predict that the bulk of those taxis would service the safer richer areas like downtown and South Boston and you would still wind up with areas under serviced by the legal cabs and before long alternative "illegal" services would pop up there.
Well, what is stopping taxis from picking a color that stands out? Don't they WANT to be seen? Shouldn't they be picking the best color themselves? Who are we to determine what color they should be?
Serious question. I don't see why some guy who slaved his ass off to maybe earn his own medallion should now have to repaint his cab to the will of the city.
Sounds like something the owner of Boston Cab Co. cooked up to squeeze out some more competitors.
You don't want to look different from the pack at all actually. If everyone knows cabs are white and you show up in something lime green or orange you will stick out and people don't really want to show up in an odd color. I tried pink and white at one point it was a huge flop.
As I recall Mr. Tutunjian was against the forced color scheme of white. I don't know his exact reasoning but, I imagine it made leaving one association to go to another easier and therefor against his business model.
This is a collective action problem. You can claim the market will solve for this and that cabbies will pick the color that stands out, but if they all pick different colors, that doesn't send a strong signal to consumers. If the benefit to the consumer (and to the cabbies who might get more business if it's easier to spot cabs) flows from all cabs being a uniform color, there needs to be some level of coordination.
I've been to Madrid. The cabs there work with a white scheme, yes, but that red sash makes a difference. Your average white car won't have that.
As for consolidating the different cab companies - does this really require a metropolitan government? Somehow the MBTA functions as a district under the aegis of the state without there needing to be a special municipality to control it. Couldn't a cab commission?
It might not even be necessary. Cabs in Jersey default to yellow, like NYC cabs, because of the strong local understanding that yellow cars are likely to be cabs. If Boston adopted one color for its taxis, the rest of the metro might follow.
You lost me at the "MBTA functions". They burn money daily and cry for more. This is a topic for a different day but please don't compare my private profitable enterprise to that bag of turds.
Frankly, all the multimedia ads assaulting the senses from the screens on top is as dead a giveaway that there is that it's a Boston cab and not some random car. I'm not sure a cosmetic simplification is really going to change that. When it's late at night and I need a cab, I can see those screens or see them reflecting off things from several blocks away.
I realize I am responding to a year old thread here but these electronic roof signs never have and never will catch on. I had one they were paying $100 a month for me to carry it and it required a larger alternator and some other upgrades to power it. The ad companies have gone through some consolidation and buyouts and they just couldn't keep these things running and sell the ad space. Outdoor ads are nowhere near as popular or profitable as they once were I am told (something about people being immune to them and the advent of search marketing?). I currently know of no cab company in the entire metro area who has video toplights deployed. I actually looked into purchasing one recently and even from China they were some $3500. I sell my own ad space but, given I charge $60 a month for an add it would take a hell of a long time to make my money back.
Personally I think the mandate for white cabs is both boring and frustrating. I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds myself trying to hail every single white car I see coming down the block at night...just in case it turns out to be a cab.
Of course that task would be exponentially easier if cabs in Boston actually used their "for hire" lights with any type of consistency.
This is as frustrating for most of us as it is for the consumer. A few years back I was a member of a commission who met to decide on a system of signaling availability in Boston licensed cabs. We decided on a simple green led bulb to go on the roof and the new lights were to be deployed the following fall on all licensed Boston taxis. The guy who was the head of the hackney department got promoted to head a district command and the new guy who took over rescinded the rule. There has been no movement on the issue since then. If this is something you wish to see happen the Boston police commissioner can make it happen with the flick of a pen. I suggest lobbying him directly or his boss mayor Walsh.
http://bpdnews.com/taxi-complaint-and-lost-property-form
http://www.cityofboston.gov/mayor/
From what I recall they don't all have these, especially in the outer jurisdictions like Cambridge and Brookline. It gets easy to confuse those with things like pizza delivery cars and MBTA The Ride cars, especially from a distance or at night.
As for that "paint it white" regulation - seems almost every cab company violates this with giant colored stripes and such? I wonder if it was implemented recently - I definitely recall yellow cabs in Boston, too, or maybe those were from Cambridge or Brookline, which would just underscore the need for regional cooperation.
No more signs, no toplight regulations. No Yellow Boston cabs since 1999. Any you see licensed by separate municipality. Revere,Cambridge,Belmont...all have taxi companies that deploy yellow color schemes.
I tend to agree with the regional authority I just think you have a better chance of meeting Jesus on Commonwealth ave than ever seeing that happen.
I suspect part of the reason they don't is because so often the cab is only for hire depending on where you are going and who you are. I know it is illegal but countless times I have been witness to Boston cabs stopping for a customer, rolling down their window and asking the customer where they are headed. If they like the answer, they tell the customer to get in and if not, they drive off.
Please.. most of the toplights are wired to the ignition car on=light on. Since the lights are installed free of charge by the advertising companies they want what is best for them. Which is an always illuminated top light for their advertisers. See above where there was a plan in the works to solve all this and how it was abandoned.
It screams laziness on the part of drivers AND on the part of BPD Hackney Unit. Why don't they actually get out there and enforce their own rules? See a cab with no light and no passenger? Pull them over and check it out. First offense: written warning; Second offence: 1 day suspension. (Same as credit card refusals, I believe).
It would take about a week of enforcement before word spread and lights suddenly would start to get used.
Never mistake stupidity for malicious intent?There is no rule. There should be but, there is not.
London's black is largely mitigated by the unique shape of the cab. While New York's yellow is garish, it is very functional. I like DC's choice of red as well.
Give us a nice bright stripe or something to jazz up our bland taxis a little.
I think the Hybrid green stripe is a nice touch. I enjoy the white and as a cab owner it does force cabbies to take better care of cleaning the car as dirt shows immediately on a white car.
Don't MetroCabs dispatch to other places than Boston? I've called a cab and had Metro pick me up in Somerville before...
If you want to call a taxi licensed by Anchorage Alaska to come pick you up in Somerville and drive you to Dayton Ohio that is between you and the Anchorage Alaska taxi. Free trade is guaranteed I just can't take a Revere taxi and drive around the streets of Boston picking up random people. The new apps have gone a long way to mitigate all of this but every city and town has an ordinance that says something like "only our cabs can pick up off of our streets and the penalty for out of town cabs is _____"
Since our county level government is a) non-existant, and b) still parochially divided around the metro-area, the State would have to create a regional taxi authority, the results of which would definitely be questionable.
I agree with what you are saying and even if we worked out a regional taxi authority I would predict that the bulk of those taxis would service the safer richer areas like downtown and South Boston and you would still wind up with areas under serviced by the legal cabs and before long alternative "illegal" services would pop up there.
Well, what is stopping taxis from picking a color that stands out? Don't they WANT to be seen? Shouldn't they be picking the best color themselves? Who are we to determine what color they should be?
Serious question. I don't see why some guy who slaved his ass off to maybe earn his own medallion should now have to repaint his cab to the will of the city.
Sounds like something the owner of Boston Cab Co. cooked up to squeeze out some more competitors.
You don't want to look different from the pack at all actually. If everyone knows cabs are white and you show up in something lime green or orange you will stick out and people don't really want to show up in an odd color. I tried pink and white at one point it was a huge flop.
As I recall Mr. Tutunjian was against the forced color scheme of white. I don't know his exact reasoning but, I imagine it made leaving one association to go to another easier and therefor against his business model.
This is a collective action problem. You can claim the market will solve for this and that cabbies will pick the color that stands out, but if they all pick different colors, that doesn't send a strong signal to consumers. If the benefit to the consumer (and to the cabbies who might get more business if it's easier to spot cabs) flows from all cabs being a uniform color, there needs to be some level of coordination.
I've been to Madrid. The cabs there work with a white scheme, yes, but that red sash makes a difference. Your average white car won't have that.
As for consolidating the different cab companies - does this really require a metropolitan government? Somehow the MBTA functions as a district under the aegis of the state without there needing to be a special municipality to control it. Couldn't a cab commission?
It might not even be necessary. Cabs in Jersey default to yellow, like NYC cabs, because of the strong local understanding that yellow cars are likely to be cabs. If Boston adopted one color for its taxis, the rest of the metro might follow.
You lost me at the "MBTA functions". They burn money daily and cry for more. This is a topic for a different day but please don't compare my private profitable enterprise to that bag of turds.
Frankly, all the multimedia ads assaulting the senses from the screens on top is as dead a giveaway that there is that it's a Boston cab and not some random car. I'm not sure a cosmetic simplification is really going to change that. When it's late at night and I need a cab, I can see those screens or see them reflecting off things from several blocks away.
I realize I am responding to a year old thread here but these electronic roof signs never have and never will catch on. I had one they were paying $100 a month for me to carry it and it required a larger alternator and some other upgrades to power it. The ad companies have gone through some consolidation and buyouts and they just couldn't keep these things running and sell the ad space. Outdoor ads are nowhere near as popular or profitable as they once were I am told (something about people being immune to them and the advent of search marketing?). I currently know of no cab company in the entire metro area who has video toplights deployed. I actually looked into purchasing one recently and even from China they were some $3500. I sell my own ad space but, given I charge $60 a month for an add it would take a hell of a long time to make my money back.
Personally I think the mandate for white cabs is both boring and frustrating. I'm sure I'm not the only one who finds myself trying to hail every single white car I see coming down the block at night...just in case it turns out to be a cab.
Of course that task would be exponentially easier if cabs in Boston actually used their "for hire" lights with any type of consistency.
This is as frustrating for most of us as it is for the consumer. A few years back I was a member of a commission who met to decide on a system of signaling availability in Boston licensed cabs. We decided on a simple green led bulb to go on the roof and the new lights were to be deployed the following fall on all licensed Boston taxis. The guy who was the head of the hackney department got promoted to head a district command and the new guy who took over rescinded the rule. There has been no movement on the issue since then. If this is something you wish to see happen the Boston police commissioner can make it happen with the flick of a pen. I suggest lobbying him directly or his boss mayor Walsh.
http://bpdnews.com/taxi-complaint-and-lost-property-form
http://www.cityofboston.gov/mayor/
From what I recall they don't all have these, especially in the outer jurisdictions like Cambridge and Brookline. It gets easy to confuse those with things like pizza delivery cars and MBTA The Ride cars, especially from a distance or at night.
As for that "paint it white" regulation - seems almost every cab company violates this with giant colored stripes and such? I wonder if it was implemented recently - I definitely recall yellow cabs in Boston, too, or maybe those were from Cambridge or Brookline, which would just underscore the need for regional cooperation.
No more signs, no toplight regulations. No Yellow Boston cabs since 1999. Any you see licensed by separate municipality. Revere,Cambridge,Belmont...all have taxi companies that deploy yellow color schemes.
I tend to agree with the regional authority I just think you have a better chance of meeting Jesus on Commonwealth ave than ever seeing that happen.
I suspect part of the reason they don't is because so often the cab is only for hire depending on where you are going and who you are. I know it is illegal but countless times I have been witness to Boston cabs stopping for a customer, rolling down their window and asking the customer where they are headed. If they like the answer, they tell the customer to get in and if not, they drive off.
Please.. most of the toplights are wired to the ignition car on=light on. Since the lights are installed free of charge by the advertising companies they want what is best for them. Which is an always illuminated top light for their advertisers. See above where there was a plan in the works to solve all this and how it was abandoned.
It screams laziness on the part of drivers AND on the part of BPD Hackney Unit. Why don't they actually get out there and enforce their own rules? See a cab with no light and no passenger? Pull them over and check it out. First offense: written warning; Second offence: 1 day suspension. (Same as credit card refusals, I believe).
It would take about a week of enforcement before word spread and lights suddenly would start to get used.
Never mistake stupidity for malicious intent?There is no rule. There should be but, there is not.
bobthebuilder
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thanks for chiming in and sharing this great information.
I know you mentioned you had a boston cab come pick you up in somerville, but I thought it wasn't legal for a cab to pick up in a location that they weren't licensed to operate? I took a cab from boston to the Marriott in cambridge, and when I got out, another couple guys tried to get in but the driver was asking if they were cops. If they can't pick up in another town, I would understand why they wouldn't want to drive there in the first place.
Now, I know it's a pipe dream, but ideally would like to see the towns that everyone considers "Boston" to be the same commission. That, at least to me, would be Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea, then maybe Everett/Watertown. It's tough to chose where too draw the line.
Once that fictional commission was formed, getting everyone on the same S.O.P.'s would be next. Same color scheme. I personally like the yellow, I think the majority of the company associates the yellow with a cab, and I don't think it looks bad. Doesn't all need to be done at once, but pick something and stick to it. Let the owners phase the new color in as they replace vehicles, as the majority starts to tip towards the new color scheme, owners will feel the need to repaint existing to keep up, whether it be done as it's own project, or damage repair. The lights on the tops of the cars need to be utilized with constancy. I don;t think a separate light is needed, the standard "Taxi" lights, or the illuminated numbers do fine for me. I know these can be kinda dull on older cabs, but the LED's are nice and bright and easy to pick out.
Overall, it'd be nice to see some better uniformity, I think that cabs are largely underutilized in this city, and if they are easier/more predictable for riders, I think they'll see more use.
I apologize if I doubled up on what you had said, just wanted to get my thoughts out there an keep he conversation going.
I know you mentioned you had a boston cab come pick you up in somerville, but I thought it wasn't legal for a cab to pick up in a location that they weren't licensed to operate? I took a cab from boston to the Marriott in cambridge, and when I got out, another couple guys tried to get in but the driver was asking if they were cops. If they can't pick up in another town, I would understand why they wouldn't want to drive there in the first place.
Now, I know it's a pipe dream, but ideally would like to see the towns that everyone considers "Boston" to be the same commission. That, at least to me, would be Boston, Brookline, Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea, then maybe Everett/Watertown. It's tough to chose where too draw the line.
Once that fictional commission was formed, getting everyone on the same S.O.P.'s would be next. Same color scheme. I personally like the yellow, I think the majority of the company associates the yellow with a cab, and I don't think it looks bad. Doesn't all need to be done at once, but pick something and stick to it. Let the owners phase the new color in as they replace vehicles, as the majority starts to tip towards the new color scheme, owners will feel the need to repaint existing to keep up, whether it be done as it's own project, or damage repair. The lights on the tops of the cars need to be utilized with constancy. I don;t think a separate light is needed, the standard "Taxi" lights, or the illuminated numbers do fine for me. I know these can be kinda dull on older cabs, but the LED's are nice and bright and easy to pick out.
Overall, it'd be nice to see some better uniformity, I think that cabs are largely underutilized in this city, and if they are easier/more predictable for riders, I think they'll see more use.
I apologize if I doubled up on what you had said, just wanted to get my thoughts out there an keep he conversation going.
gooseberry
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You can call the dispatcher and request a pick up, but you can't flag them down on the street.
One thing I think should be improved is Cambridge Cabs. While I never was licensed in Cambridge and can not say I am a Cambridge expert this is the way I heard it.
There was a time that like Boston Cambridge taxi cabs had a requirement to all be in radio associations.
Here was the problem. There were only 2 legal associations and each charged $100+ a week. Cambridge thought by eliminating the association requirement the 2 associations Ambassador Brattle and Checker would drop prices and get their collective asses together.
They didn't they stayed exactly at expensive as hell. In response most drivers abandoned the radio associations.
There was a time that like Boston Cambridge taxi cabs had a requirement to all be in radio associations.
Here was the problem. There were only 2 legal associations and each charged $100+ a week. Cambridge thought by eliminating the association requirement the 2 associations Ambassador Brattle and Checker would drop prices and get their collective asses together.
They didn't they stayed exactly at expensive as hell. In response most drivers abandoned the radio associations.
Shepard
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Many Cambridge cabs are straight out of the third world. Brookline's too (although I find Town Taxi generally acceptable). Boston appears to have its act together ahead of the pack. And yet still, I see no evidence that any of the surrounding towns will be adopting Boston's livery colors (if white can be called that) or regulations (for example, the dividing window between front and back)
uber, uberX will force cab reform and its about time. I take uber to the airport, from the airport and on the occasional night out (more of a T person w. my monthly pass, but sometimes its a requirement). uber drivers have been better at picking up at the airport, which was spotty in the early months. They are also expanding to more north shore/metro west.
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I've always found Somerville's cabs to be surprising good - at least in the last two years I've lived there. Definitely true that Cambridge's are a crap-shoot.