There are several reasons why they call Boston “America’s walking city.” It’s small in size, many of our historical relics are close by one another and driving directions are absurd. Our public transportation crawls along at the pace of a paraplegic, and street parking is hard to find throughout most of the city, allowing predatory meter maids to leave $55 fines under your wipers while you’re running in to grab your takeout. But on those rare occasions when walking just won’t do – say, during the months of November through March, or perhaps when you’re lugging suitcases home from Logan – who are you going to call to get around town? A taxi cab, obviously.
I think I can say that only some of my Boston taxi experiences have been pleasant ones. I recently rode along with a driver, Amjad, as the subject for a photo-story assignment for my journalism class. Amjad, a recent U.S. citizen who is originally from the northern Punjab province of Pakistan, has the classic immigrant back story: he came to the states, enrolled in Bunker Hill Community College for business and found a wife who now stays with their 6-month-old daughter in Pakistan waiting for their visas to get through red tape. He’s got a taxi job to make money in the meantime. Amjad is the most hospitable person I’ve ever met. He told me that as long as I’m in his cab, I’m his guest, and in typical Sodom-and-Gomorrah fashion, he said if I was facing jeopardy from invaders while under his care, he’d rather give up his father or his sister or his whole family to save me from peril.
Unfortunately, Amjad is a rarity in his field. He has a code of dignity that he follows. He has respect for his customers. He’s not trying to screw over helpless passengers like most Boston drivers by looping around in circles to rack up meter rates.
On a recent trip back from the airport, a friend of mine opted to take a cab instead of the hour-and-a-half train ride back to Allston. The driver took her out of Logan, onto the freeway and down the Mass Pike. They merged onto I-93 South and then down into South Boston before turning around and heading straight through Government Center, popping out onto Storrow Drive and finally, after many wasted miles, turning west. This guy was good. My friend’s cost of taking Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride: $40.
But what do you do in that situation? Speak up and anger the man who’s holding your life in his hands? Complain to an irate dispatch manager who cares less about you than a bucket of spit? There should be a real safety net for passengers from jerk cabbies – like in New York City, where cabs have GPS video screens monitoring your progress, or a decent organization devoted to consumer’s rights. I know we are in Boston, where swindlers run the city’s services, but with so many tourists and college students as easy prey, it’s ludicrous what these cabs can get away with.
It’s up to us riders, then, to know the roads beforehand and to demand our route. Many cabbies will ask you which route you want to take from the outset. But beware. Except in rare cases, drivers see you as commodities.
Galen Mook, a senior in the University Professors Program, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].