Locals complain taxis ignore neighborhoods, focus on Strip

Wednesday, Feb. 23, 2000 | 11:01 a.m.

A citizen transportation watchdog group says Clark County's 13 taxi companies spend too much time on the Strip and are doing an inadequate job serving the rest of the county.

A representative of the Citizens Committee for Better Transportation told the Nevada Taxicab Authority Tuesday that calls to the three largest taxi companies in Las Vegas last Wednesday were ignored or responded to too late to do a customer any good.

"A consumer should not be treated as a second-class customer just because they don't pay $20 to go to a club from a Strip hotel," said Chris Christoff, vice chairman of research for the 35-member citizens group.

Taxicab Authority Chairman James Jimmerson said Christoff and his group were preaching to the choir. He said he and his fellow commissioners have heard scattered complaints about cab companies ignoring locals in favor of tourists and conventioneers.

But Jimmerson said the regulatory agency for Clark County's taxi industry hasn't received any hard evidence to support the allegations. He encouraged Christoff to document any service problems and report them to Taxicab Authority Administrator Robert Anselmo.

Christoff said he understands why cab companies like to "cherry pick" fares from the Strip. Drivers usually can make more money transporting a tourist from a hotel to the airport than they can for a local lift.

Christoff warned cab companies that they need to pay more attention to local customers because he believes when a monorail is built it will cut into taxi fares, leaving cabbies with a smaller base of customers from which to draw.

Private and public monorail projects along the resort corridor are on the drawing board. The private proposal would be a northern extension of the existing monorail between MGM Grand and Bally's.

Christoff suggested that cab drivers be required to rotate some of their days by serving outlying areas and not going to the Strip some days.

Christoff addressed the Taxicab Authority at the tail end of a seven-hour meeting after many of the cab company representatives had left. Throughout the meeting, cab companies and the regulators wrestled with several issues involving proposals to increase the number of cabs on the city's streets.

On three separate votes, the commission voted to bring proposals for additional cab medallions back for reconsideration at future meetings.

The Taxicab Authority weeks ago had planned a public workshop on a number of transportation issues. Commisioners agreed to defer votes on cab medallions until after they had heard testimony from the workshop, which will be Tuesday at 9:30 a.m.

But that didn't stop a wide range of debates on the issuance of medallions and the allocation process.

The first to be deferred was a proposal to issue three additional medallions to Deluxe Taxicab Service, a small company that is geographically restricted to serve the area south of Sunset Road, including Henderson and Boulder City.

Commissioners and cab companies got tangled up on whether the awarding of medallions to Deluxe meant Deluxe's competitors also could receive additional medallions. Some of those competitors have similar geographic restrictions. But some don't. The commission voted to revisit the issue in March.

Also coming back for consideration in March is a proposal for turning temporary medallion allocations approved in 1999 into permanent allocations. The commission has made a policy of adding more cabs to the city's streets on a temporary basis before making a final determination.

One of the new temporary allocations occurs March 1 and commissioners decided to let that take effect before making a decision on whether that and other temporary allocations should be made permanent.

Commissioners also have experimented with "time-restricted" medallions -- the allowance of cabs on the streets during certain hours of the day. The regulators have to determine whether they want to keep time restrictions in place and whether they want to make them permanent.

Finally, the board decided to delay until April a decision on whether the agency's established allocation formula should be altered. Jimmerson said the agency generally allows a new cab for each company whenever an additional 228,000 trips total per month are logged by the 13 companies.

Commissioners decided they needed to digest statistics from the first quarter of 2000 before deciding whether the allocation formula needed to be modified.

Jimmerson instructed Anselmo to work with the cab companies to develop proposals on medallion allocations that would be fair to the industry while serving the needs of the public.

Cab companies generally support additional medallion allocations because of the additional revenues they generate. But the Professional Drivers Association and the union representing drivers, the Industrial Technical Professional Employees Union, urged caution on additional allocations.

Drivers fear additional medallions will dilute the total amount of fares collected over a greater number of drivers, meaning most drivers would make less money.

Daryl Poelman, director of the Professional Drivers Association, also asked the commission to keep a watch on "blown trips" -- a company's failure to put a cab on the street while authorized to do so. Drivers say companies shouldn't receive more medallions if they aren't using the ones they have. But the companies say they don't put the maximum number of cabs on the street for several reasons.

They say it doesn't make sense to put a high number of cabs out when the level of business won't support it -- like at 4 a.m. Sometimes, they said, they don't use the maximum level of cabs out because they don't have enough drivers to cover the shifts.