In Friday's (3.14) Sun we outlined the plight of two Naperville cab drivers who say they are getting the short end of the stick - and paying for it through the nose.They play by the rules, shelling out their hard-earned cash for the proper licensing and sticker fees. But they say they've suffered a significant lack of business - and income - due to unlicensed, unstickered cabs who compete for their business, primarily for customers during peak times at the train station. The Naperville guys say the fall-off in business and the increased competition is due to lack of enforcement by the city. You'd think in these challenging economic times we could at least take care of our own, in this case our own Naperville taxi drivers instead of letting their business go to out-of-town, unlicensed cabbies. Anyone have a thought on this?
Naperville cab drivers getting a raw deal?
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While I sympathized with the cab drivers who've seen their income go down, the purpose of Naperville's licensing program is NOT to limit the number of cabs. The guys that have legitimate licenses would still likely have a competition problem even if the other guys all played by the rules.
I have some compassion for cab companies that are legitimately owned and operated as a Naperville business. However the very nature of any taxi business is to take passengers from point A to point B. Point B may or may not be within Naperville. I think we all recognize that taxi's like any other vehicles in the transportation business try to minimize the amount of time/distance they are not transporting a fare paying passenger. That will mean that a Naperville taxi will end up somewhere else at times and non-Naperville taxi's will end up in Naperville at times. As consumers, it will cost us all more in the long run if we demand these taxi's return to their "home" areas without passengers to seek their next fare.
In the bigger picture the taxi license laws in Naperville and most other suburban municipalities are nothing more than words written on a piece of paper that are mostly useful to generate fees for the local bureaucracy. If no one in local government has the time, interest, or inclination to enforce these laws then they should be rescinded.
Possibly, in this day and age, we would all be better served by a DuPage Taxi Commission or some such type of organization that would create a level playing field of rules, fares, licenses, fees, insurance, etc for all taxi companies operating in the entire county... or maybe even on a greater metropolitan basis?
It seems all their energy is focused on spying on the Napergate Man.
That man can't sneeze without them knowing! They don't have their priorities straight, unfortunately.
If you want some action in your neighborhood, just invite the Napergate Man over for dinner one evening, and you could be assured they will be monitoring your neighborhood! They appear to be tailing him like the tail on his dog, Abby, tails her.
"take care of our own"
You've got to be kidding me. The longer you live in Naperville you see that we don't take care of our own. Police don't do anything unless you call them out on it. I truly believe they would run from gun shots not go towards them.
I can't even get commercial vehicles parking on personal driveways out of driveways throughout the neighborhood. We have a semi-cab on someones driveway. A big yellow one hour heating and cooling truck on someones driveway. A comcast van on another driveway. The list goes on and on. The police and code enforcement just point fingers at each other.
"take care of our own" HA!