The light at Marion had turned red. It was chilly this morning and I found myself wishing I’d worn a thicker layer, so a brief respite from moving air was welcome. In the lane to my right was a Toyota Prius taxicab. This was one I hadn’t seen before.
Prius taxis are becoming a much more common sight on Seattle’s streets. So far, they only appear in the colors of STITA (Sea-Tac Airport; they’re white) and Orange Cab, the livery of this particular example.
The driver rolls down his window and says, “you must get much better gas mileage than I do.”
“Yes, but you can carry more passengers than I can,” I reply. And you have a heater.
I ask what kind of gas mileage he gets. He turns and touches the screen in the middle of the dashboard, so I assume he’s looking it up (”Trip Information” menu option). “Forty-six miles per gallon,” he says.
“That’s way better than a Crown Vic, huh?”
“You got that right,” he replied. And with that, the light changed and we had to go.
Wow. That must be how these guys can afford to buy $25,000 hybrids.
I once applied for a job driving a taxi. Part of the interview was a ride with one of the owners of the company, on the last two hours of his shift.
We discussed things like vehicle choice (the company ran these old Ford Fairmonts because they could always find two or three for sale cheap; if they ran, great, if not, spare part heaven), and the relative economics of driving people around for money.
At the end of his (12-hour) shift, my interviewer had taken in exactly $100. The “nut,” the fee paid for the use of the vehicle, was 55% of your take. That left him with 45 bucks. Oh, and the car had to returned to the yard with a full gas tank. At the time, gas was about $1.50 a gallon.
I thanked him for his time and didn’t take the job.
Talking to Seattle cabbies today, they tell me a typical shift will gross $100-150. But now, everyone’s an “independent contractor.” The driver owns the vehicle, and pays a fee for dispatching and the right to paint it some garish color (in Seattle, taxis are yellow, orange or chartreuse with a yellow stripe). So, out of that 3-figure daily sum, the driver must pay for maintenance, fuel and insurance, which can be horrendously expensive.
Lots of people who don’t know anything about the taxi business ask why all taxis aren’t hybrids. Do the math, and you’ll see why most taxicabs in Seattle and other cities besides New York, San Francisco and Chicago are retired police cars, which you can pick up at auction for as little as $3,000. They even still have the “Police Interceptor” badge on the trunk lid.
So yeah, 46 mpg vs. 8 or 9 is a huge saving.
The City Council is debating legislation that would require all taxis in Seattle to get 30 mpg or more. No one is saying anything about how that would be determined; if you used EPA combined mpg, the only eligible vehicles would be the Prius, the Camry hybrid, and the Nissan Altima hybrid, which isn’t available here.
People are always saying Vancouver, B.C. is hybrid taxi Nirvana. Well, yeah, there are lots of Priuses up there, but for the last few years, the majority of Vancouver’s taxis have been Toyota Corollas. Lots cheaper, decent gas mileage, and probably a better ROI. In fact, yesterday I saw a new Corolla in Farwest colors (those are the chartreuse ones) on the way back from Bellevue.
And this has to do with scooters, how? For some scooterists, taxis serve the same purpose as the Escape does for me. Handy for those occasions when the scooter just isn’t enough…
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