Portland, you've got hundreds of cabs coming to you! But you're still going to have a looooooong while to wait if you're calling at 2 am this weekend.
As we reported yesterday, the city's taxi board just authorized a whopping 242 new cab permits for existing cab companies. If Portland City Council says okay, another 51 permits could be issued to a brand new company, EcoCab.
It's an unprecedented move for a typically cautious Private For-Hire Transportation Board of Review, but it's also probably necessary. There are unquestionable cab shortages during peak times, and taxi companies want to be able to compete when services like Uber re-enter the market in April, as planned.
A day after the vote, though, it looks like there may be just one more cab in circulation this weekend.
"Both Green and Broadway (Cab) have said they want to bring new vehicles in," says Frank Dufay, the city's private for-hire transportation manager. "Broadway has said they want to bring a new vehicle in tomorrow."
The introduction of hundreds of new taxis was always bound to take a while, of course. But all these newly freed permits may take an especially long time to amount to actual results for YOU—the drunk, tired, tear-stained potential customer—because of conditions the city's set.
Before Portland's existing cab companies (well, the six that had new permit applications) can add any new cars to their fleet, they first need to get up to code as far as the wheelchair-accessible vehicles they offer. That's not cheap. We're talking vans with ramps that can cost double the price of new sedans.
And it's not like the cab companies are just a little behind the code-mandated 20 percent of their fleets that need to be accessible. Broadway needs 20 new vans to get legit, once its 30 new permits are factored in. Radio Cab needs 16. Green Cab, which was granted a dramatic 82 new permits yesterday—139 percent of its current fleet—will need 18. Every company in operation needs to add vehicles to meet the law.
Green and Broadway cab are in the best positions to do that immediately, because they provide subsidized rides to Oregon Health Plan patients using fleets of wheelchair-ready vans. That caused grumbling from Radio Cab officials, who say the companies have an unfair advantage in rolling out new vehicles, but it's going to mean fairly quick results for Broadway.
"We have one [going for inspection] tomorrow, and I think we're going to have six go in Monday," says Raye Miles, Broadway's president. Miles says her company could be up to compliance with city code tomorrow, if necessary. It has roughly 70 wheelchair-accessible vans that take OHP patients around, and could move some over to regular taxi service. But since Broadway has a number of new vans already coming in, she says those will get permits first.
Miles expects Broadway might start purchasing new cars (Priuses) next weekend.
"It's all happening so fast," she says. "It was done in such a 'kaboom' sort of fashion. We haven't had new permits since the '70s."
One caveat to all this: If any taxi company takes issue with yesterday's vote, it has 10 business days to file an appeal. Dufay says he doesn't expect that to happen, and so will hand out permits before that window closes.
If an appeal did come, though, it might be from Radio Cab General Manager Steve Entler, who brought up the appeals process at yesterday's meeting. (He told the Mercury afterward that he probably wouldn't file one.)
Entler, along with Radio Cab employee Darin Campbell, were the only two people to vote against the new permits at yesterday's meeting. They argued it was too many cabs to add to the streets. We reported that, with other news organizations reporting our reporting, and that's inspired two lengthy news releases today clarifying Entler's reasons for the vote. Both statements were sent by a spokesperson for the newly formed Transportation Fairness Alliance, a coalition of Portland taxi companies who are demanding Uber and its ilk abide by the same laws cabs do. Here's the gist:
Entler fully supports the approval of all 242 new permits granted to Portland’s current taxi companies, and was the first to vote in favor of the 51 permits for pending market entrant Eco-Cab.
When the motion was made in yesterday’s meeting to approve all of the taxi company’s outstanding permit applications, Entler voted in opposition, expressing concern that the process for approval did not accurately assess the ability of each cab company to immediately activate the new permits due to the associated costs. He had hoped for further discussion in the meeting to consider alternatives to releasing the volume of permits requested, with the end goal of immediately serving the demand of Portland passengers.
