City bans out-of-town taxi pickup in New Brunswick
Sunday, March 20, 2011
The city council passed a new legislation on March 2 prohibiting out-of-town taxis from picking up riders within New Brunswick.
Previously, taxis not registered with New Brunswick could pick up within the city as long as their ultimate destination was outside of the city, said Bill Bray, city spokesman.
But police officers had a difficult time enforcing these old standards, Bray said. Some cabs picked up in New Brunswick and said they were going to drop off outside the city, but instead did just the opposite.
With the new ordinance to be set into effect late this month, Bray said he hopes New Brunswick police officers can enforce higher safety standards more easily.
"This will preserve public safety," Bray said. "The cabs will need criteria, a standard."
There have been instances where uninsured drivers from companies like Amigo Cabs or companies outside New Brunswick have gotten into accidents, he said.
Bray said suburban towns like East Brunswick do not need taxis, but provide licenses to cabs that do business in New Brunswick anyway, Bray said.
"A lot of surrounding towns don't need taxis, they just use the taxi licenses for revenue," he said.
Although such suburbs lend permits out to cabs, they do not look at taxi vehicles and they have no system of registering complaints from customers, Bray said.
"[New Brunswick] has a much higher standard because we need to," he said.
Out-of-town cabs have concerned city lawmakers and other cab drivers alike, Bray said. In early 2009 taxi drivers from several New Brunswick-based companies protested outside companies.
In addition to these safety hazards, managers at New Brunswick taxi companies said they were losing huge amounts of profit to out-of-town companies.
"So far we've lost a lot of business," said Joe Al-Adan, manager for All Brunswick Taxi.
Out-of-town taxis operate under private license plate numbers and it costs them less, Al-Adan said. All Brunswick Taxi pays $8,000 per year in insurance while others only pay $400.
"When we pick up in New Brunswick and drive a customer to Highland Park, we leave and come back to New Brunswick before picking up someone new," Al-Adan said. "We respect other town's regulations, but [unregistered taxi companies] do not respect ours."
With this new law in effect, out-of-town cars would be able to pick up outside of New Brunswick and drop off in the city, but before they can pick up a new customer, they have to leave New Brunswick, Bray said.
New Brunswick has five licensed taxi companies — Victory Taxi Association, All Brunswick Taxi Inc., Yellow Cab Co., Metro Taxi and All Around America Taxi, Bray said. Between these five companies, there are 43 licenses.
Once bought as a whole, these 43 licenses become privately owned, he said. The owners are free to trade and sell licenses as long as the purchaser is qualified — it is similar to the way a liquor license works.
In a town where there is higher demand for a license, the cost of that license will increase, Bray said. The city is creating two new licenses to be bid on soon.
Each license can be shared between taxi drivers, he said. This would mean that a cab could run 24 hours a day using different drivers.
George Moukrzar, manager of Victory Taxi Association, said the licenses are not cheap. His company paid $90,000 for each license and owns 15 at the moment.
Moukrzar said while local companies do not know if this legislation will bring them their desired change, they remain optimistic.
"Until now we haven't seen anything yet," said Moukrzar. "We hope it makes things safer."
Source; http://www.dailytargum.com/metro/city-b ... -1.2517511
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