As both a graduate student and teaching assistant at UW-Madison and a cab driver at Union Cab, I am pleased The Badger Herald is paying attention to taxicabs.

However, I was disturbed at the one-sidedness of your research and editorializing (“Socialist taxicabs” and “Time Capsule #2,” May 7, 2002).

Madison, to be sure, is a college town. But it is not just a college town. There are working-class neighborhoods and white-collar suburbs, “ghettos” made up of students as well as those based on income-level. If I’ve learned one thing “driving cabs” in Madison, it’s that all these neighborhoods have their own transportation needs.

Since the Herald is a student newspaper, it perhaps seems justifiable — at first glance — that you argue for the deregulation of Madison-area taxi services.

However, this argument is shortsighted on at least two counts.

First, a thoughtful student newspaper should not pit students against other, non-university community members. Currently, any resident of Madison is protected by a law that guarantees service at any time of day no matter what neighborhood he or she resides in. To you, this might seem “socialistic.” To me, it is nothing less than morally sound legislation.

Taxicabs, unlike many unregulated industries, provide a public service. While you who supposedly represent student opinion might not care if a woman with no vehicle of her own and who lives in an unsafe neighborhood cannot get home from work safely in the wee hours of the morning, it is nevertheless to the benefit of the entire community that she is able to get to and from work safely and on time.

In an unregulated environment, and in a town where bus service is not “round the clock,” such a customer would be left stranded without service. Cab drivers would then be free to operate only downtown in “safer” student neighborhoods. This might indeed be the situation you would prefer, but please don’t purport to be supporting or representing the underdog. We love students and greatly appreciate their business, but students are but one demographic in a larger, more diverse community.

Secondly, deregulation would neither lower prices nor increase convenience for students. I know from firsthand experience that when students call a cab, they want it to come quickly. A company with one cab on the road would certainly not “beat” a company with 30 or 40 cabs on the road. Even when reasonably on time, cab drivers often show up at a location only to find their student customers have left, presumably walking home or having found other transportation.

A company with only one driver would be consistently late, and the driver would subsequently spend much of his or her time driving to locations where the customer no longer wanted a ride. It would be hard to make any money in that situation. Whatever the “low” rates, they would surely and promptly increase.

As a mid-sized city, Madison has unique transportation needs. Frankly, there is enough business to support three cab companies, but there is not enough to provide rates comparable to larger cities such as New York or Chicago. I therefore feel your frustrations are understandable, but nonetheless misguided. When you claim rates are prohibitively expensive, rides that stay downtown or in the university area are not so. For solo student passengers, there is also the free campus Saferide option.

Finally, I was troubled by how little you know about operating a cab company and how little research you conducted in trying to find out. You say, “Individual cab drivers who currently have no choice but to fork over their earnings to Badger Cab and Madison Taxi could instead go independent and keep every dollar they earn.”

I ask you, then: Who buys the cars? Who pays the phone answerers and dispatchers? Who pays the mechanics? Who fills out the paperwork? Who trains the safe, courteous and defensive drivers? Get the picture?

I appreciate that you left Union Cab off the above list, but there is no sign you did it intentionally. A worker-owned and -operated cooperative, Union Cab has no boss making money off our laboring backs. Every dollar earned goes to paying the drivers and supporting staff a (barely) living wage and to ensuring we have the long-term means and equipment to provide all customers with courteous, prompt and safe service each and every time someone requests it.

We are not, however, getting rich off the backs of students. As a graduate student and driver living just below the national poverty level, I find your implications of over-charging distasteful. I do not write you as an official representative of Union Cab but rather to share with you my observations as a cabby in Mad City. I can tell you we charge only what we must in order to maintain a good level of service, and we do the job because we love it.

ask you again: Is two bucks per mile and a tip really too much to pay for a safe ride home? Any time of day. Guaranteed.

Greg Brown ([email protected]) is a UW graduate student. He is also a Union Cab driver.