COMPETITION HACKS TAXI BIZ
Increasingly declining ridership, revenue hurting cabbies
In the years since Uber and Lyft launched, the Boston taxi industry has been ravaged, with revenue and trips plummeting, roughly half the city’s cabbies leaving the business and the price of once-coveted medallions falling about 95 percent, a Herald review shows. “I’m working more and I’m making less,” said Valery Jean, a Boston taxi driver. “It’s a dying industry, I’m doing my best to stay in this.” Jean said he works between 12 and 14 hours a day, six or seven days a week, and comes home with about $250 each day, half of what he would make five years ago. He pays $500 each week to lease a taxi medallion. Jean said he has largely stopped picking up on the street, and almost exclusively works Logan International Airport. Among cabbies, Jean is hardly alone. Last year, taxi revenue fell 21 percent compared to 2016, to a total of $132 million, according to data from the Boston Police Department’s Hackney Unit. That pales in comparison with the industry’s recent peak, when in 2013 cabs took in nearly $283 million. The number of trips also has fallen dramatically, with Boston cabs giving only 5.9 million rides last year, down roughly 60 percent from its 2012 high of 14.6 million. This year, Boston is on pace for 4.9 million, according to BPD data. “It used to be a lot easier to make money, you just go out and do the work and go home,” said Rahim Abbasi, another taxi driver. “Now you have to be a lot smarter; you don’t have the reliable business.” With revenue drying up, many taxi owners who took out huge loans to buy one of 1,825 Boston taxi medallions have been unable to make their payments. Medallions, which sold for $700,000 as recently as 2014, now routinely sell for just $40,000, according to transaction data from BPD. For some owners who bought medallions at the peak of the market, they lost their investment in a matter of years. One medallion, No. 1091, was sold for $685,000 on May 15, 2014. Exactly four years later, the same medallion was sold at an auction for just $58,668 after it had been repossessed by a bank, records show. “It’s something I’d been working on for a long time, and then to just go away, it’s painful,” said Tristan Ulysse, who bought No. 1091 in 2014. “I believed, I believed in myself, believe in the business, even though I didn’t have a driver, until in the end I could not do any more.” Ulysse, who has gone back to school to learn accounting, once owned four medallions, all of which were repossessed by banks and lenders, records show. Bankruptcies have become common, according to lawyers that work in the industry, and those who don’t declare bankruptcy can face the wrath of lenders. As the taxi business continues to erode, Uber, Lyft and similar companies have exploded, and now account for a vast majority of ridefor-hire trips that begin in Boston. Last year, according to the Department of Public Utilities, TNCs began a staggering 34.9 million trips in Boston, about seven times the number of taxi trips. City officials have attempted to give taxis a more even playing field, and have eliminated and changed some regulations in an attempt to lower costs. Mayor Martin J. Walsh has met taxi drivers and owners in recent months, and a new round of regulatory tweaks and adjustments are expected in the coming weeks. Still, the most drastic measures, including capping the number of Uber drivers, do not appear to have any traction among local or state lawmakers. As it becomes harder and harder to make a living behind the wheel of a taxi, thousands have fled the profession. There are roughly 3,000 active taxi drivers, according to Boston Police, down from more than 6,000 in 2016. Even some of the most vocal proponents who have historically led the charge on behalf of drivers have decided their time has come to leave the business. With 1,825 licensed taxis in the city, there are no longer enough drivers to keep every cab on the road the entire day, leaving many sitting idly by until a driver comes along for the day. Other taxis are completely inactive either because their owners cannot find drivers or because the medallion has been foreclosed on and will be auctioned off, according to industry insiders. “At this rate, I don’t think there’s any profit to be made,” Jean said. “I can sustain myself for a little bit, but I can’t keep going.”