In the winter of 2009, Ben Meyers needed to get his drunk friend home.
As they came out of a midtown bar, they spotted a taxi parked on the street. This would be a great way, Meyers thought, to get a lift for the mile walk back to Fraternity Row.
But Meyers, the current UF Student Senate president, ran into a problem — the driver never ran his meter.
And the ferryman asked a high price. For the mile-long drive, the driver asked Meyers to shell out $20.
“Bar fee,” he said the driver called it.
Not knowing what to do or how to negotiate, Meyers relented. He paid the fare, and for an entire year, he didn’t take the taxi again.
There have been many similar complaints of taxi drivers in Gainesville over-charging students for cab fares. Sometimes, the fares drivers demand can be things like $20 per passenger to travel only 10 blocks, Meyers said.
Situations like these are made possible by drivers who park outside bars and wait for drunk students to come out. Without a call being made to a dispatcher, drivers don’t have to report their fares, and are free to charge whatever fees they want to students, Meyers said.
In addition, if drunk students refuse to pay, drivers may threaten to call police in an effort to coax payment out of passengers.
“Knowing students, if I was a taxi driver and I had nobody looking over my shoulder, it would be fairly easy to pull a stunt like that,” Meyers said.
Nineteen-year-old Hannah Hong was another who got into similar situation.
In early fall semester, Hong was traveling downtown with three of her Alpha Delta Pi sorority sisters.
After getting a ride from another sister to the area, Hong found it difficult to find another ride back to her apartment on Sorority Row. The taxi seemed like a viable option.
When the taxi arrived, the driver did not inform Hong of how much she would be asked to pay. Instead, he just drove.
And when they arrived, Hong said, the bombshell came — $20 per person.
Hong found a way to scrape together the $80 sum that was being demanded, but she fumed.
“It was completely ridiculous,” she said.
Though Hong’s driver was deviating from a normal flat-rate, charging flat-rates to students is not illegal in Gainesville. Taxi drivers are permitted to charge whatever they like, so long as the charges are posted in the window and pre-approved by the city.
Despite its legality, flat-rate charging has led to situations where students are gouged by drivers claiming to be charging flat “bar rates,” Meyers said.
“The companies stand to lose from these policies,” he said. “If taxi drivers aren’t reporting that they’re giving rides, then they’re not giving their share of the fares to the company.”
When he assumed the position of Student Senate president, one of the issues Meyers sought to address was students’ rights and one of the problems on his mind was the taxis.
The issue came under the microscope of FICA, or the Fairness In Commerce Ad-Hoc Committee.
Meyers said he believes cooperating with the city would be the best way to get taxi drivers to run their meters.
On Tuesday at 7 p.m., a joint meeting between the City Commission and Student Government will take place in the Reitz Union Grand Ballroom, and the taxi issue will be on the docket.
In addition, SG has the Alternative Transportation Ad-Hoc, which aims to further promote methods of alternative transportation in the city.
By bulking up promotion of services like SNAP, GOTCHA and Zipcars, Meyers said he hopes to create more competition for taxis, which would in turn force taxis to offer more competitive prices.
Student Body President Ashton Charles is another SG official who once found herself at the mercy of over-charging taxi drivers.
She began talking to others in her apartment complex and found they had the same problems she did.
Some had reported being charged over $40 to get to midtown or downtown.
Charles decided to see for herself.
She, along with Meyers, decided to take part in a one-night sting operation in which they would take the taxi along with undercover police officers from the Gainesville Police Department on Dec. 8. The purpose of the operation would not be to make arrests, but rather to just see which drivers wouldn’t run the meter.
The majority of the time, the meter wasn’t running.
The operation ran from 10 p.m. that night to 3 a.m. the next morning.
Out of 19 fares, University Police Department spokesman Jeff Holcomb said, 11 did not run the meter.
According to a list compiled by the Gainesville Police Department, the following companies were found to have not run the meter: Bestway Cab, Unimet Taxicab Co., Safety Cabs and Gator Taxi Cab. Gainesville Cab Co. was the only company listed that was reported to have run the meter every time during the operation.
Michael Ross started Bestway Cab in 1997.
The now 44-year-old Ross said that his company has since been known for providing great service, in the process earning service contracts with the state attorney’s office and the public defender’s office.
City Ordinance 28-9 allows for flat-rate charging, and Ross said his charge sheet, which includes a variety of flat-rate charges, has been approved by city hall.
On top of that, Ross said that drivers will sometimes offer discounts on per-head flat rates when large parties come into a taxi.
“If we have to start running the meter, there will be no more discounts,” Ross said. “It’ll be what the meter says.”
Ross admitted that the charge sheet, which lists the company’s flat rate, is required by law to be posted in three places in all taxi cabs, could be confusing to students. On top of confusing rate sheets, Ross said that newer cab companies coming into town have created a negative perception of his company and Gainesville’s entire taxi industry.
“We’ve got new cab companies and they are flat-rating out of this world,” he said.
That’s why Ross puts the burden of responsibility on his drivers to make sure passengers agree to fares before rides.
However, not all drivers fulfill that obligation.
The only way Ross knows there’s even a passenger in the vehicle is when people call in for dispatch. When drivers are flagged down by customers, he relies on the driver’s word to know they had a fare.
He said a way to self-police his company would be to put cameras in cars, but that’s not feasible.
So Ross instead relies on the honor system, trusting his drivers to follow the rules out on the road.
One such driver is Joe, who drives a taxi in Gainesville.
Before he carried people around the city in his taxi, Joe, whose real name is being withheld, was a drummer.
Twenty-three years ago, he set the beat for his band, and that was all he ever intended on doing.
But after the band split and his wife became pregnant, Joe had to find a new profession. Armed with only his skills as a musician and a driver’s license, Joe decided to drive cabs for a living.
“[My favorite part is] meeting people from all walks of life and lots of different countries,” he said. “People come to UF from all over the world. It can be fun. Back when I was a dispatcher, I missed that part of it.”
But the biggest problem for Joe, and many other taxi drivers, is the pay.
“You never know how much you’re gonna make from one day to the next,” he said. “Trying to budget on a cab driver’s wage is difficult. You don’t even have minimum wage to rely on.”
Joe said that he believes there is a negative perception of taxi drivers and companies in Gainesville as being “crooked.” A lot of that has to do with the fares. Instead of clearly explaining fares, fare sheets leave a lot of gray area.
“Students definitely deserve a simpler system,” he said.
The system of flat rates is designed, Joe said, to make things easier on the drivers and the passengers. And it can sometimes work in favor of students as opposed to against them.
Joe gave the example of taking four students from The Swamp restaurant to downtown.
By running the meter, he would be charging a student a $10 minimum in addition to an additional $1 for extra passengers. The total would come out to $13.
But if he instead offered a per-head flat rate of $3, it would come out to $12, saving the students a dollar.
But the lack of a steady income could lead drivers to take advantage of the flat-rate system, Joe said.
“The honor system of reporting fares is only reliable as the honesty of the driver,” he said.
Ultimately, both Meyers and Student Body President Ashton Charles say that the issue of taxis overcharging students is one of student safety.
“The moment I hear that somebody’s willing to drive home four beers in rather than take a taxi,” Meyers said, “I know that there’s a major issue.”
