The job description is tempting: Meet new people. Travel. Set your own hours. Be your own boss.
But the reality of driving a taxi may not be so appealing. Those new people may be armed. The travel can be in the nastiest of neighborhoods. The days are 12 to 18 hours long, and six- and seven-day workweeks are not uncommon.
All in all, driving a taxicab may sound like one of the worst jobs around. But more than 14,000 people are willing to drive the 5,200 licensed cabs in Chicago.
Why?
The opportunity to be their own boss is what keeps many cabbies driving.
”If you`re an owner-operator, then you are your own boss,” which means you can set your own hours, said one cabdriver. ”Usually I work from 4 a.m. to 4 p.m., but today I had to take my wife to the doctor, so I started at 10 a.m.”
”The living is decent, but it`s not a respected job,” another driver said.
”I think most of the people drive cabs because it`s not punching a clock,” said Alexander Strickland, who has been driving a cab for eight years and is president of the Concerned Cabdrivers of Chicago, a group formed to bring the drivers` concern to the City Council after four Chicago cabdrivers were killed last summer. ”My kids are grown, and I work the way I want to work,” he said.
Taxis are an important part of any city`s transportation system. Nationally, taxis account for 20 percent of public transportation, with 305,000 cabbies driving 205,300 taxis carrying 2 billion passengers.
Chicago`s 55 million passengers ride about 162 million miles a year in taxis, with an average fare of 5.8 miles.
Despite the importance of cabdrivers to the city, getting a chauffeur`s license is relatively easy and cheap.
First, the fledgling cabbie needs a valid Illinois driver`s license. Then he or she must complete a two-day course offered by the City Colleges of Chicago. Next the applicant must pass a 40-question test covering rules of the road and city regulations and a geography test as well as a police background check. The training course costs $25; the chauffeur`s license costs $15 initially and $8 a year to renew it.
City officials say they have tightened the testing procedures and increased training since ”a slew of taxi reforms” were passed by the City Council in 1989. Before the reforms, drivers received 1/2 hours of training before taking the test, said Connie Buscemi, spokeswoman for the Department of Consumer Services, which regulates the taxi industry.
”The test was given at a counter with no particular care given to make sure the person taking the test was the right one,” she said.
Now it`s a proctored exam given twice a day. A computer randomly selects 40 questions from a base of 300, and identification is required.
A mastery of English is needed to pass the test, said Caroline Shoenberger, commissioner of consumer services. ”I can`t imagine passing the test without speaking English,” she said.
The amount of training required was doubled in 1989 and will increase to three full days in the next few months. Right now, drivers attend a two-day workshop given by City Colleges and usually taught by an off-duty Chicago police officer.
The drivers are instructed in city rules and regulations, the geography of Chicago, defensive driving, service to passengers and dealing with disabled passengers. The new three-day training will include more safety information.
Not everyone is impressed with the training.
”You get to see two movies and two lectures,” said Strickland of Concerned Cabdrivers of Chicago.
Strickland and his group are lobbying for a requirement of six weeks of training paid for by the driver. The course should include three or four field trips around the city with an instructor, he said. In New York City, drivers receive three weeks of training, he said.
The International Taxicab and Livery Association, a trade association for taxi and livery companies, is developing a manual that outlines what a training program should contain, said Alfred LaGasse, executive vice president. The effectiveness of training programs is not known, he said.
”It`s hard to measure any benefit. There`s no measurable evidence of better drivers coming out, but you get the feeling that they should be better,” LaGasse said.
Once they`re licensed, cabdrivers need taxis. Most drivers lease their cabs daily or weekly from a cab company. Chicago`s Yellow Cab Co./Checker Taxi Co., which is the largest taxi company in the United States and which owns 2,648 of the 5,200 medallions, or cab licenses, charges $76.59 for a 24-hour lease. The driver pays upfront and keeps whatever is left after paying his expenses, such as gas and insurance.
About 700 other cabdrivers who own their own cabs and medallions have a lease agreement with Checker Taxi Association, which comprises medallion holders who lease the checker colors from the Yellow/Checker company. For $411 a month, the association provides liability insurance, road service, free oil changes, unlimited car washes and use of the Checker colors, said John Moberg, association president. Collision insurance and use of the Gandalf radio system, a computerized dispatch system, also are available.
The number of medallions is increasing each year under a settlement of an early 1980s lawsuit. Yellow/Checker has agreed to give up 100 of its medallions a year, and the city is issuing another 100 a year, until 1997, when 5,700 licensed cabs will be on the streets.
The city holds a medallion lottery each summer, Buscemi said. Cabbies who have driven in 10 of the last 15 years or in 5 of the last 7 are given preference in the lottery. A computer randomly assigns numbers, and a machine with Ping-Pong balls similar to the ones used by the Illinois Lottery is used to award the medallions. The medallions cost $500 a year, she said.
”After your number has been chosen, you attend a one-day seminar,”
Buscemi said. The seminar covers information on running a business, taxes, maintenance, obtaining loans, safety requirements and paying employees.
”It stresses that you`re not an employee anymore; now you`re a small businessman,” she said.
It`s hard to get a peg on what drivers earn. The cab companies don`t want to know the income of individual drivers, LaGasse said. John Teets, spokesman for Yellow/Checker, the largest taxi company in the United States, agreed, saying it`s none of the company`s business because the drivers are independent operators. Most of the drivers don`t want to say what they earn, either.
Strickland said a good driver who is polite and works hard can make $15,000 to $22,000 a year.
Many, maybe most, of Chicago`s cabdrivers are immigrants looking for such an entry-level job.
Jeff Feldman, president of Yellow/Checker, estimates that 50 percent of his drivers are immigrants. They like the flexible hours and pay, he said.
An additional 25 percent are African-Americans, and ”the rest are students, people who are between jobs and people working second jobs,”
Feldman said.
John Coyne, co-owner of American Taxi Co., the largest taxi service in Chicago`s suburbs, estimates that 70 percent of his drivers are foreign-born. The murders of four cabdrivers this summer and the high number of driver robberies have put crime against cabbies in the news. That cabbies are often robbed is not disputed. But the extent of the problem and how to solve it are continuously debated.
Statistics on cabdriver assaults and robberies are not kept by local and state police or by the FBI, said John Stone, associate professor of civil engineering at North Carolina State University. Stone has just started a one- year study on crime against cabdrivers and the most effective methods to ameliorate it. He plans to talk to cab companies and others in cities around the country to determine the scope of the problem.
The most commonly suggested weapons against crime are panic lights, which the driver turns on to alert passersby he`s in trouble, a computerized scanning system that the driver activates to notify the dispatcher he`s in trouble (the dispatcher then calls police) and safety shields.
LaGasse of International Taxicab and Livery Association said only a few U.S. cities, and not Chicago, require shields.
Most cab companies oppose the shields for a number of reasons: They rattle, limit foot room in the back seat, prevent heat and air conditioning from reaching the passenger compartment and limit communication between the driver and the passenger.
”Communication is a problem to begin with because we have a lot of foreign drivers,” LaGasse said. ”A shield makes it that much more difficult to communicate.”
Allegations that the shields increase passenger injuries in accidents is another problem, LaGasse said. ”Most passengers do not wear seat belts,” he said, so in accidents they smash their heads into the shields.
The shields also are bullet-resistant, but not bulletproof, LaGasse said. Even cabbies don`t agree on the best method of protection. The 400 drivers in Strickland`s Concerned Cabdrivers of Chicago have demanded that the City Council force cab companies to equip the cabs with bulletproof shields. But many drivers and the cab companies oppose them.
Strickland condemns the panic lights and scanning systems as inviting death for the cabbies.
Crime is not as large a problem as the recent murders seem to indicate, said Feldman, who opposes the shields. Cabbies face greater danger from auto accidents than from crime, he said.
”It`s a fairly safe job. Fifty-five million passengers are transported by cab each year. As percentages go, (crimes against cabbies) is very low. I`m not belittling the deaths, but what makes a cabdriver different from an 8-year-old boy sitting on his front porch? Crime is an infection we all live in. We`re just a microcosm of society.
”I`m an expert in this business,” Feldman continued. ”I don`t know if there is an answer.”
The answer some drivers seem to have found is to break the law.
City ordinance and federal law require that cabdrivers not refuse service to anyone. But a lot of cabbies are doing that.
”I`d rather lose my license than my life,” said one 12-year cabdriver.
”A driver has to know who he`s picking up, the kind of neighborhood they`re going to,” he said.
Countered Shoenberger: ”Cabdrivers are common carriers and have an increased responsibility to the public. We cannot tolerate refusals.”
Refusing to pick up a passenger violates state and federal civil rights law, she said. Refusal of service is the second-highest complaint the city receives against cabdrivers, after overcharging, Shoenberger said.
Some drivers have told they use ”cabdriver`s intuition” to justify refusing service.
”There have to be articulatable and believable facts why you refused service,” Shoenberger said. Violators can be fined or have their license suspended or revoked.
Shoenberger stressed that she is not unsympathetic to driver concerns.
”It`s not easy to drive. It`s an honorable way to make a living. We want to try to lessen the risks.”
