PUC denies Yellow Cab’s requested surcharge

Yellow Cab Co. of Pittsburgh can’t impose a variable surcharge for weekends and holidays of up to $8 per trip, because it would be unclear to passengers how much they had to pay, the Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission ruled in a unanimous vote Thursday.

But Yellow Cab president Jamie Campolongo questioned how such a fee would be different from the surge pricing model used by taxi challenger Uber.

“It’s hard to be competitive in this arena,” Mr. Campolongo said. “We’re taking it on the chin, and Uber can surge its prices whenever it wants to, but we can’t. We can’t continue to operate in two different worlds. It’s not fair.”

Yellow Cab has a certificate of public convenience, which requires it to get any changes to its rates approved by the PUC. Uber and Lyft, which rely on drivers using their own private vehicles, are

operating in Pennsylvania under two-year temporary “experimental” licenses.

Both ride share companies have made rate changes recently; Lyft when it raised fares by 15 percent in June, and Uber when it reduced rates by 15 percent earlier this month.

“Yellow Cab has proposed a variable surcharge rate that does not allow a passenger to determine if it is the proper amount,” Commissioner James Cawley wrote in his motion to deny the request.

Yellow Cab also sought to raise the “flag drop” charge, which is the starting amount on the meter when a trip begins, from $2.25 per trip to $4 per trip, while the per-minute waiting time rate would have been raised from 25 cents to 55 cents. Those matters were remanded back to PUC staff for financial analysis, a PUC spokeswoman said.

Mr. Campolongo said he’ll await the outcome of that review before deciding how to proceed.

The ride share companies aren’t the only factor that Yellow Cab cited in its rate increase request. Health care cost increases of 5 percent, a vehicle registration fee increase of 42 percent and an attempt to “help drivers offset their rising expenses” are other reasons the company said it needs to hike rates.

“We would have been happy with a static surcharge,” Mr. Campolongo added. “But if we want to preserve traditional taxi services, they have to give taxi companies the flexibility to be competitive.”

The fare increase would have been Yellow Cab’s first since 2008. But on Thursday, the commissioners also ordered Yellow Cab to “cease and desist” a 1 percent surcharge that went into effect in 2008 under emergency order.

Today marks the one-year anniversary of Yellow Cab’s ZTrip service, which began taking passengers in April. It uses both taxi drivers and some drivers in their own vehicles and connects them with passengers via a smartphone app. Mr. Campolongo said the service has about 60 drivers at present.