The party of the people wants to rip off Boston cabdrivers. With John Kerry’s fund-raising going so well, you’d think the Democratic National Committee wouldn’t need to hustle Boston cabbies for a cheap ride--or illegal campaign contributions. But that’s pretty much the effect of the DNC’s misguided plan to provide subsidized cab rides for delegates at their Boston convention. At issue are the taxi vouchers the DNC wants to give to delegates arriving at Boston’s Logan Airport. Under the DNC’s proposal, taxi drivers would be required to accept the vouchers, worth $12 per passenger, in lieu of payment, even though the meter fare from Logan into the city, including tolls and an airport surcharge, is typically over $40. To add insult to injury, they’d then have to apply to the DNC to redeem the vouchers. In the spirit of civic boosterism, the Massachusetts Port Authority magnanimously offered to waive their surcharge, although the Massachusetts Turnpike Authority, known for making fire engines stop to pay tolls on the way to emergencies, declined to follow suit. So even with three passengers per cab, which the DNC’s voucher rules permit, the drivers would still be subsidizing the cost of the ride.
What the cabbies want to do is nothing more revolutionary than to charge the meter rate--something they do for every other convention that comes to town, from dentists’ to paleontologists’. Many have threatened to take the week off. Some are even talking about filing a complaint with the Federal Elections Commission, on the grounds that the voucher scheme amounts to a coerced contribution to the Democrats. In short, it’s been a PR nightmare for the party of the working stiff. This fiasco could easily have been avoided if the DNC had simply applied some basic knowledge about how people make choices in competitive markets. One obvious approach would be to let the delegates pay for their own rides. According to published estimates, 35,000 people will be spending around $125 million at the convention. That’s an average of over $3,500 per person, and that doesn’t include the cost of airfare or cab rides between the delegates’ homes and home airports. |