How Taxicab Drivers Make, or Don't Make, a Living

On a taxicab ride from Princeton Junction to Princeton, the driver gave me the lowdown on the economics of taxi cab driving. There may be other arrangements out there, but this post tells one cab driver's story. What he described sounded about as inefficient as any system for human transport that could be devised. The conversation began with my wondering where he would go after dropping us off. "Back to the Princeton Junction train station," he said, because there's nowhere else to go. So half of his driving provides no service to anyone. And when he gets back to the train station, he has to get in line with as many as 40 other taxi drivers. Because it's cold, he has to keep his car idling, while he waits in line for as long as four hours for the next passenger. If he's unlucky, it will be someone going only a short distance, which puts him back at the end of the line with little money to show for it.

The company he works for provides the car, but he pays for the gas, and can burn through a quarter of a tank just idling at the train station waiting for the next rider. Because he pays for the gas, the company has no incentive to provide a fuel efficient car. He splits the fare with the company 40/60, with the larger portion going to the company. Our ride to Princeton was only his third ride of the day, after nine hours on the job. He gets to keep only $12 of the $30 fare, plus tip. He expected the New Years Eve business that evening to be pretty good, but the next few weeks will be slow. Some drivers avoid this doldrums to some extent by having their own list of clients who will call them directly for a ride.

What this job offers, if precious little money, is hope of getting lucky. Maybe tomorrow will be better than today. But when most everyone in the Princeton area has a car, or a friend to pick them up, there isn't much luck to go around. It's a step up from playing the lottery, in some ways like fishing. Imagine a hundred fishing vessels trawling for the last few fish in an ocean inlet. The economics make little sense not only for the driver but also for the rider, who pays $15 to take the train 50 miles from New York, then $30+ for the last 4 miles to Princeton.

For the planet, it makes even less sense. When not actually transporting riders somewhere, taxis devote themselves completely to their primary role as climate changing devices, their engines pumping fossil carbon into the air. In the U.S., this role is expedited because they tend to be designed to get the worst gas mileage possible. In the older parts of Paris, they are rare because the metro and bike/ped options are so good. In Buenos Aires, which has many buses but not much of a subway system, and the bike share option is just getting going, the taxis are at least small and powered by natural gas, but are so numerous that they flow like a current in the streets.

A taxi's inefficiency is not in complete contrast with public transportation, since empty buses and trains are burning fossil fuels much like idling taxis, all for the sake of being available if anyone comes along who wants a ride.

As a teenager, I briefly worked as a golf caddy, which meant sitting in a dusty yard behind the pro shop waiting for my number to be called. Most golfers preferred golf carts by then, so we caddies had to wait a long time before making a few bucks carrying someone's clubs around the course. Though I wasn't burning fossil fuels while I idled, the golf carts may well have been more ecological, given that, unlike the carts, I had to drive myself out there and back every day.

If taxis are necessary, and they do provide a useful service of custom transport, the ideal compromise would be a vehicle that gets good mileage and has some means other than running the engine to keep the waiting driver comfortable, combined with some system to prevent the needless overabundance of drivers at any one location, much as fisheries are managed to balance the number of fishermen with the number of fish.

The waste--in the drivers' time, in gasoline, and the suburban sprawl that makes people helplessly dependent on cars--is driven to a large extent by the relative cheapness of gasoline--a highly subsidized commodity.