Transit Board Puts Brakes on Taxi Fare Plan

After a cool reception from taxi operators earlier this week, a plan to restructure taxi fares again met resistance, this time from the board of directors of the Metropolitan Transit Development Board at a Thursday meeting.

The plan, which would set aside San Diego’s 10-year system of essentially deregulated cab fares, would institute a two-tier fare structure, one for trips originating at the airport and another, discount rate for the rest of the city. Both rates, which have yet to be decided, would be based on the Consumer Price Index, and cab companies would be compelled to charge either the airport or discount rate.

Fares now range from $1.20 to $1.80 a mile, said Barbara Lupros, an MTDB staff member who helped write the proposal.

Lupros said the staff will take the board’s comments along with those of cab operators from a meeting earlier this week and resubmit a proposal in January.

County Supervisor Leon Williams said, “What I am concerned about is that we retain a competitive aspect of the pricing structure so that some companies can choose to find a market, even if that means going lower than the standard fares.” Williams is also vice chairman of the MTDB, which began regulating San Diego taxis at the beginning of this year.

Williams concedes, however, that problems of congestion and confusion at the airport justify standardized pricing on trips from Lindberg Field. For the rest of the city, Williams would prefer to allow cab companies to charge below the proposed fixed discount fare.

The difficulty in restructuring fares lies in balancing the need to rein in an increasingly uncontrollable airport situation while maintaining competition among cab operators.

“We want to make the rates low enough, competitive enough so that those who are transit-dependent get a good deal,” said Bruce Henderson, a member of the board who favors restricting only the maximum that a taxi may charge anywhere in the city. “I don’t think that there should be any regulation about minimum rates.”

“Taxis should be regulated; what we have now is chaos,” said board member Robert Burns. Although he also would like to have taxis be able to set prices lower than the proposed discount rate, Burns said he believes that the proposal will pass when the board meets Jan. 11.

Donald Swortwood, president of Yellow Cab Co., the largest taxi company in San Diego, said his firm “can live with any system,” provided that adjustments are made to allow a company to have different fare structures on some of its cars and have some cabs serve the airport every day.

Taxi operators meeting informally with MTDB staff members Monday expressed concerns over the logistics of setting up separate fare structures for cabs that serve both the airport and other parts of the city.