

In 2019 they allowed 15 years – but only for the following two years. Miami-Dade commissioners have been for years “temporarily” lengthening maximum use to nine years, then nine and a half, then 10. Miami then allowed eight years.īut that wasn’t enough. A few years ago the average taxi there was on the road 3.3 years, with a five-year maximum. The average Manhattan taxi goes 180 miles a shift three shifts a day, totaling almost 200,000 miles a year carrying passengers and often luggage too. And think of cars not driven by a caring owner but by a non-owner concerned mostly about how many paid miles he can possibly roll.
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Think of a car that may be driven around the clock seven days a week by shifts of drivers who aren’t headed to work and parking for eight hours but remain on the road as much as possible.

The situation was so bad a decade ago that the county voted to bar cabs after they hit eight years in use.ĭon’t compare this with your family car at eight years old. As Uber and Lyft lured customers from unpleasant rides in overworked and undermaintained cabs, commissioners kept offering the taxis relief in numerous ways – one being allowing them to run older and older cabs to carry us all, including visitors who get their first impression of Miami when they climb into clunkers leaving the airport. Monestime is seeking falls neatly into line with Uber’s aims while also trying to bail out the county’s taxi industry, which has long been his cause. Uber is cooperating with taxis in Germany, Austria, Spain, Colombia, Turkey and more, An Uber executive told an investor conference in February that it intends to have every taxi in the world on its platform by 2025. Like Uber, taxis announce fares in advance, include Uber’s surge prices in peak hours. In the New York experiment, two taxi services are on Uber’s platform and handle calls, with cab drivers paying both Uber and their own companies’ fees for each job. Now the industries are forced together: Uber and Lyft have beaten up the taxis, but the ride-sharing services lost droves of drivers during the pandemic and have trouble filling calls for rides. Years later, people have to be told what a taxi is. They first had to tell to me what Uber is. Years ago a taxi industry delegation explained to me that Uber was the devil himself and should be forever barred from Miami-Dade.
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Hailing the two industries together is outgoing county Commissioner Jean Monestime, who via this week’s agenda would direct the mayor to monitor pilot New York and San Francisco efforts to hail taxis through Uber and recommend how to link those industries here too.Ĭonsidering that the two industries have been at each other’s throat for a decade, that would be a revolution rather than just evolution. If they’re going to do things in a new way, they should junk the jalopies.

Unfortunately, ancient refers to both the age of the industry and the age of many taxis on our roads. Miami-Dade this week may join an evolution in transportation to unite the ancient taxi industry and its modern foe Uber.
