Philadelphia cabbies back on road; end strike

Philadelphia's striking taxi drivers called off their 48-hour strike a day early yesterday, but still vowed to continue opposing the convoluted new high-tech dispatch and credit card systems made mandatory by the Philadelphia Parking Authority.

An estimated 85 percent of the city's 3,000 drivers participated in Wednesday's strike, according to Ronald Blount, president of the Taxi Workers Alliance of Pennsylvania.

The GPS (global positioning system) produced for the authority by VTS, a New York joint venture of VeriFone Inc. and TaxiTronic integrates the cab with the cab dispatcher. Also, each cab has a machine that allows passengers to pay via debit or credit card.

The systems installed in vehicles as part of new requirements mandated by the Philadelphia Parking Authority last year to tackle poor dispatching problems, however, ballooned flawed navigation and late payment cases.

Charging the new technological systems of faulty working, Blount highlighted that the GPS frequently lost contact with the satellite, thus breaking contacts between cab and dispatchers. “So when a passenger calls for a cab, the closest cab is often not dispatched, thus resulting in lost fares”, Blount emphasized.

Further, the credit card machine also failed due to signal breakdowns and also in some cases payment from credit-card purchases can take as long as three weeks.

The $4 million dispatch-fare system has been under testing in Philadelphia but supposed to get underway beginning October 1 in New York taxis.

Admitting the errors with the system, Jim Ney, director of the authority's taxicab and limousine division said, "We're still in the testing phase in the system, we acknowledge there are glitches, and we always knew there would be until the final system is rolled out."

The Philadelphia Parking Authority plans to work out problems over the next six to nine months.

While Philadelphia has 1,600 medallion cabs and approximately 200 non-medallion cabs, New York houses roughly 13,180 medallion cabs in which the new system is to be installed.