Cabby-owned franchise in works
City Council asks staff members to formulate how plan would work.
Responding to taxi drivers’ calls to let them establish a driver-owned cab franchise in Austin, the City Council voted unanimously Thursday to have the city staff sketch out details by August of how one might work.
That plan would include suggesting how many taxi permits would be issued to what would be the city’s fourth cab franchise, something the Taxi Drivers Association of Austin pushed for this spring as the council considered renewing agreements with the other three franchises.
Austin Cab, Lone Star Cab and Yellow Cab have a combined 756 permits.
The council also inched another car length forward Thursday toward renewing the agreements with those three franchises, though the provisions could be revised again before the final vote June 4.
It also gave preliminary approval on “second reading” to what would be meaningful changes in the city’s general taxi ordinance. Those changes, also slated for final approval June 4, would include issuing chauffeur’s licenses directly to cabdrivers, rather than requiring each driver to be “sponsored” by one of the three cab companies, and requiring cabs to be replaced only when they failed required safety inspections, rather than when the vehicles are 7 years old, as is currently city law.
Hassan Aruri has driven for Yellow Cab for about five years, and he said the $17,000 a year that he must pay the company for its dispatch and other services put him in such a financial bind that he and his wife decided a few months ago that it would be best for her and their three children to return to the Palestinian territories. He has been sleeping on a friend’s couch and working seven days a week, he said.
Aruri said the chauffeur’s permit change is more important than it might appear. He said the requirement for cab companies to, in effect, approve those permits, which come up for re- newal every two years, gives the companies unfair power over drivers who are, in theory, independent contractors.
“If the cab company declines to sponsor you, that’s it,” Aruri said. “You’re out of business.”
More than 100 cabdrivers attended the hearing at City Hall and gave the council sustained applause for its actions, preliminary though most of them were.
The franchise agreements considered Thursday would have a term of just one year, but Council Member Ann Kitchen, chairwoman of the Mobility Committee, said she anticipates the term will be longer in the final version of the agreement.