An ordinance initiated by Mayor Paul Soglin, Alder Mike Verveer and Bridget Maniaci may change the way local’s get home from State Street.
On August 7, the Common Council met to amend current Madison General Ordinance to prohibit taxicabs waiting for passengers on State Street. Currently cabs are permitted to provide services on State Street between the hours of 10 p.m. and 4 a.m.
This change would remove the ability of cab drivers to cruise up and down State Street looking for people who hail a cab. The only way a cab is permitted is for them to either pick up or drop off a person on State Street.
A Transit Mall exists between the 100-600 blocks of State Street, as stated by the State Street Capitol Concourse Mall project from 1974. This prohibits all private vehicles and street parking. It does allow busses, taxis and some delivery vehicles.
Cab Drivers for Madison Safety (CDMS), headed by Christina Ballard, is a group composed of taxi drivers, dispatchers, customers and other members of the community. They are working to ensure community safety and customer satisfaction by advocating for greater taxi access to State Street. They oppose the changes to State Street taxi laws.
CDMS has proposed their own change to the law that will allow taxis to enter State Street in order to find prospective customers and pick up anyone who waves them down.
Recently they gained support of The Dane County Coalition to Reduce Alcohol Abuse. CDMS and the Coalition share the goals of keeping drunk drivers off of the road and protecting State Street patrons from alcohol-fueled violence.
The City of Madison made cabstands on side streets off of State Street for people to meet and be dropped off. Two of the six locations, 200 W Henry St. and 300 W Johnson St., are right in front of Fontana Sports and A Room of Ones Own Bookstore.
Fontana Sports owner John Hutchinson wrote a letter to Executive Director of the Central Business Improvement District, Mary Carbine, expressing his differences with the amendment.
“With only three parking spaces on our street and being open until 7 p.m. we will miss the parking,” Hutchinson wrote.
From 6 p.m. to 6 a.m. those parking places will be turned into the cabstands.
A Room of Ones Own owner Sandi Torkildson also wrote to Carbine about issues with the parking spaces.
“I have not, as of yet, seen a single taxi use the space outside my store before 9 p.m. Having these spaces, and others, declared taxi stands at 6 p.m. has taken away many parking spaces that customers of downtown shops use at night,” Torkildson wrote.
Cab owners believe the effect will be hard. When Wisconsin played Nebraska last year, Madison Taxi received 1686 total calls between 9 p.m. to 4 a.m. Of those, 602 were people hailing cabs. Add in the numbers of the other cab companies and there were an estimated 5,000 calls on that particular weekend.
Cab drivers believe they provide a valuable service to the city by helping regulate the flow of people and helping prevent problematic situations that occur through excessive drinking. They believe that this would also create the problem of putting tourists in danger by directing them from their bars to a darkened area. Cabs also help in moving people around after hours when the busses end their runs.
“Main goal is to get Downtown cleaned out as fast as possible at closing time, and this is done by the cab Drivers,” said John Macknimara, business director of Union Cab of Madison
Most cab phone numbers are not readily available and most bartenders don’t have the time to be calling a cab for every single individual. At the late-night hours most phone banks that cab companies have are filled up, and it is difficult to get a call in to provide service. This is why many of the cab companies feel the need for State Street hailing to be available.