I got picked up downtown by a taxi driver on a Saturday morning (after at least seven empty cabs went by). I got in, and the cabbie, a young Black man, peered back at me. I told him my destination (Simeon high school) and he stopped the cab.
I got picked up downtown by a taxi driver on a Saturday morning (after at least seven empty cabs went by). I got in, and the cabbie, a young Black man, peered back at me. I told him my destination (Simeon high school) and he stopped the cab.
“I don’t go there,” he said, with a lilting accent that told me he wasn’t from the South Side, or the South for that matter. “Of course you do, I told him. You are a taxi. You go where the fare wants to go, and the fare gives you money.”
He said, “No offense, which is usually the prelude to an offense, but when I take people to those neighborhoods, sometimes they jump out of the cab and do not pay me.” I am long past the age when I can jump out of a cab and run away, but I tried to be understanding, and I insisted that he take me where I wanted to go. He then asked me something I’ve never been asked in a taxi. He asked me to pre-pay, to give him $20 before he rang up a dime on the meter. I was late for a speaking engagement at the school, so I gave him the $20 and sat back. I ended up giving him directions to the school because he really didn’t go there.
I’m sure he isn’t representative of all of the drivers out there, but if the cab drivers want more, they may have to give more.
Last weekend, one of the busiest travel weekends of the year, a group of Chicago taxi drivers decided to walk off the job.
The United Taxidrivers Community Council went on strike, calling for a 16 percent fare increase by Jan. 1. They complain that their fares don’t come close to meeting their expenses. The United Taxidrivers Community Council doesn’t represent all of the nearly 15,000 taxi drivers in Chicago. Only a small number of drivers even took part in the strike, which mostly affected travelers at O’Hare.
I recognize that taxi driving is a thankless job, ferrying individuals from corner to corner, all of them in a hurry. It is not the safest job, putting strangers behind you and driving them off to whatever destination they say. Yet these intrepid souls do the job and normally don’t have a lot of complaints.
But the worsening economy (hey, did you hear they finally called it a recession?) means that everyone is hurting, and taxi drivers, mobile entrepreneurs, are not immune. Their costs go up, the number of fares they get go down and they have trouble making ends meet.
The taxi drivers just lost a $1 surcharge that was applied while the price of gas was in the stratosphere. The surcharge dropped off once the price of gas dropped below $2.70.
That was the impetus for the limited strike. The cab drivers say they are going broke on the current fare structure. They want more money, and they want the city to give them an increase and promise to have fares revised every two years.
The Chicago Professional Taxicab Drivers Association, which represents some of the taxi drivers, said it wouldn’t go on strike, on a holiday, while many of their potential customers were losing their jobs, or having their homes foreclosed or grumbling about high gas prices and CTA fare hikes. It was not the best public relations move.
However, some of their potential customers, the ones who look like me, were wondering how long the strike has been going on. They have seen taxis pass them up as if they were invisible, only to pick up someone else 30 feet away, someone who doesn’t look like me.
It is not that all taxis won’t pick up Black people. Some of them do. It is not that all taxis don’t go into Black neighborhoods. Some of them do, and it would be economic stupidity for them to avoid such a large swatch of the city, south and west. But enough of them steer clear of those neighborhoods, and anyone they think might live in those neighborhoods, to make it a bit more difficult to hail a cab if you are Black.
No, Chicago probably isn’t as bad as New York. I’m betting Danny Glover can get a cab here. But if Danny Glover isn’t wearing a suit and nice shoes and isn’t going to 8147 S. Vincennes Ave., it might take him a while.
Lou Ransom is Executive Editor of the Chicago Defender. He can be reached via email at lransom@chicagodefender.com.
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