Boston needs more taxis

A recent Boston Globe story about the rising cost of Taxi Medallions (which is essentially a license that allows drivers to operate taxi cabs), caught my attention when it shared this little tid bit – Boston has capped the number of taxis at 1,825.

Although I’m the first to clamor for more oversight and regulation, I am also more than willing to admit that not all regulation makes sense.  For example, having less than 2,000 cabs in a city like Boston seems asinine.  The result of these limitations has two immediate consequences for consumers.

1) The ratio of cabs to consumers in Boston is 1 to 340 (in D.C. it is 1 to 90).  This makes it virtually impossible to get a cab if there is a large convention, bad weather or if you don’t live on a busy downtown street.

2) The industry is increasingly less profitable for new businesses.  A Medallion license in Boston now runs $400,000 (you need one medallion for each taxi cab).  So now the system really only serves to protect the interests of a few taxi companies rather than the citizens those taxis were intended to  serve.

I wish Boston would shun this system and find a better way to regulate taxis in the city or at a minimum help the city and its residents by doubling the number of taxi medallions to bring down the cost and add more cabs to the streets of Boston.