More required than a passenger bill of rights

Boston City Councilors are seeking to create a taxi passenger bill of rights along the lines of providing a safe, functioning and clean cab, with no music playing in the cab or cabbies chatting on cell phones while driving. In their response, according to an article in the Globe, cab drivers want a bill of rights for themselves; no drunk and vomiting passengers, no more than four passengers per cab ride and no abuse of the driver by passengers.

What I want is to pay via a fairs fare system, not take my life in my hands when I (rarely) take a cab and a driver who knows where he or (rarely) she is going.

I can say in all honesty, that I have never ever had a good or even satisfactory cab ride in Boston. Compared to the black cabs in London or even the yellow cabs in New York, Boston’s thinly disguised white coated cabs and their drivers are more like opportunists in clapped-out, cast-off cruisers. That seems to go for the suburbs too, based on my recent experience.

Journeys over 12 miles are charged at a flat, non-metered rate. A cab from Logan Airport to a town like Lincoln, 18.4 miles away, costs a flat rate $46.80, plus an airport charge of $2.25, plus tunnel tolls of $4.50, say $53.75 in all. Flat rate fares are charged at $2.60 per mile, metered fares are charged at $2.40 per mile plus a starting meter charge of 2.25. Either way the base fare, excluding tolls and airport fees, is between $46 and $47.

When I took a cab from Alewife T station to Lincoln--a distance of 9.6 miles--I assumed the same rules would apply. Not so – at least according to the driver and the dispatcher he had me talk to on his cell phone.

I should have been clued in by the fact the driver disappeared for a few minutes when we got in his sweltering cab and left us sitting there while he talked to the driver behind him. I should have known when he did not start the meter that we were in for a flat rate and as it turned out a flat out ride.

We had been traveling from Ireland to Boston via Dublin and Heathrow, including layovers, for the better part of 18 hours and were understandably tired. We took the Silver Line to South Station and then the Red Line to Alewife Station. The cost for the 40-minute subway-ride was $1.75 and it was around 9:30pm when we dragged ourselves to the taxi rank.

Then the cab took us for a ride.

Loading our bags ourselves, we found that there was hardly room in the trunk for our two modest size suitcases (they weighed less than 42lbs each – thanks to judicious packing and the weight restrictions imposed on the Heathrow to Dublin leg of the flight).

We could not see out of the cab windows, any of them, because they were so steamed up. More to the point nor could the driver, except through a fuzzy patch the size of a laptop screen.

When we reached the ramp at the Lexington line, we were all plunged into a blackness that the cab’s single working headlight could not penetrate. The driver did not slow down from the maximum permitted speed of 65mph, or perhaps that was just how fast the straining engine could go. The driver’s solution was simplicity itself. He straddled the lane marker, even when three lanes became two and he followed it unerringly, despite the attempts of other vehicles to persuade him to pull over.

In fairness, he did get us home or at least to the top of the drive where he stopped on a our unlit narrow, but busy two-way road, 3 feet from the curb - without hazard indicators flashing.

I waited for the driver to tell me the fare, clutching a twenty and a ten, perhaps more in hope than any real expectation. I was definitely unprepared when he said the fare was $56.

I protested and asked to look at the book of fares. After five minutes of rummaging, he came up empty. I asked for the dispatch telephone number. That’s when I made my second mistake.

He dialed a number and spoke in a language I did not understand and then handed me his phone. I should have dialed the number on my phone.

The dispatcher, or someone who said he was the dispatcher, told me that the fare to Lincoln from Alewife is $56. I paid. It had been a long day.

Did I get the cab drivers name, cab plate, registration or telephone number? No, as I mentioned it had been a long day, now going on 20 hours of travel and foolishly, I was keener to get off the pitch-black road and indoors after 17 days away.

Did I get wise to the cab industry in Boston? Most certainly.

I will never get in cab without checking that its lights work, the driver has a medallion with his picture on it and I know the price he is going to charge.

These are your rights and mine; everything else is just a load of bill.