 Photo by WeHo News. |
Currently, West Hollywood “drop rates,” the price at which the ride begins, is 40 cents lower than in Los Angeles.
The discrepancy is often taken advantage of by drivers who pick up passengers and drop the fare at the LA rate, hoping they are unaware of the difference.
West Hollywood's Taxi Rate is currently $2.20 drop (first 1/11 mile) $.20 per each additional 1/11 mile or part equivalent to $2.20 per mile $20 for each 30 seconds waiting time and/or traffic delay time ($24.00 per hour).
Los Angeles's Taxi Rate is $2.85 drop (first l/9 mile) $.30 per each l/9 mile or part equivalent to $2.70 per mile $.35 per each 37 seconds waiting time and/or traffic delay ($29.19 per hour).
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Under fire for slow response times when asked to pick up senior citizens with taxi vouchers at grocery stores, the increase is, in part, designed to better serve seniors.
 Photo by WeHo News. |
The primary concern of staff and council members was with raising/indexing the fee to that of Los Angeles and the impact to those coupon participants.
Any rate increase would diminish the value of West Hollywood’s current coupon books.
Currently, each participant pays $8 per booklet and receives $24 in coupons for taxi services.
Since taxi companies are only reimbursed 90 percent of the coupon value, staff often receives complaints by the coupon participants that they wait excessively long for responses to their calls for taxi service.
Indexing the rate to Los Angeles would represent roughly a 30% decrease to the existing coupon book value.
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 Photo by WeHo News. |
To offset that additional cost to the city, cab companies unanimously agreed to pay a Transportation Program Enhancement Fee of $215 per vehicle.
The increase spread over the 500-odd cabs serving the municipality would funnel an additional $112,000 to pay for the fare increases.
In the past, the city reimbursed the cab company only 90 percent of the voucher’s face value; in order to provide incentive to drivers to pick up voucher carriers, the cab companies agreed to reimburse their drivers 100 percent of the voucher – if the rate increase was approved.
The increase was supported unanimously in council and will go into effect in the new taxi cab Franchise agreement on July 1, 2009.
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