Airport taxi drivers upset about new policy change

Taxi drivers at Memphis International Airport are frustrated – they say a new policy has blocked some of them from doing business there. And the airport says some passengers have experienced longer-than-usual waits for taxis.

The problem: the airport has long charged a $2 fee to taxi drivers accessing the airport. On Monday, the airport stopped taking cash. Now, payments are credit card or debit card only. The catch: some drivers don’t have these cards.

“Last time I checked, if you don’t have credit, you can still work,” said Abdul Kenneh, a 35year-old taxi driver originally from Liberia in west Africa. “You don’t have to have a credit card to work.”

Kenneh said he has a debit card, but if he does too many transactions, he gets hit with a bank fee. And he said some of the other taxi drivers don’t have either credit cards or debit cards, and that means they can’t work at the airport.

The airport is automating its systems for commercial drivers, said Glen Thomas, a spokesman for the MemphisShelby County Airport Authority.

The airport informed the taxi companies of the change on June 26 and put signage in the areas where the drivers congregate, giving them advance notice they’d have to pay with credit cards starting Monday.

“We did have some of the drivers this morning refuse to do that,” Thomas said. “It did affect the service to some degree.”

Some passengers faced an extended wait for taxis, and the airport directed them to other forms of transportation, including shuttles, limousines and ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft.

“For those who opted to wait on the taxis, we did not have any waits greater than 10 minutes,” he said.

He said he wasn’t aware of reports that some drivers don’t have credit cards. “We have been in touch with the cab companies today hoping to get some resolution to the issue.”

The drivers say the policy change comes as they’re already struggling with the new ridesharing companies Uber and Lyft, which allow riders to summon a driver with a few taps of a smartphone. Drivers for these companies use their own vehicles.

Jerry Richardson, 67, a driver with a traditional taxi company, said he often has trouble earning enough to cover the $485 per week it costs him to lease a cab. “It’s insane,” he said.

Drivers with Uber and Lyft don’t have to use credit cards to pay the $2 fee for each airport trip. A “geofencing” system automatically keeps track of pickups and drop-offs at the airport, said the airport spokesman. Each month, the companies pay the access fees to the airport.

The walls of the drivers’ lounge at the airport are lined with vending machines, refrigerators and TV screens. A stack of colorful prayer rugs is piled in a chair - Muslim drivers lay out the rugs at worship times.

And two small machines stand off to one side. Those machines accepted cash and issued tickets that drivers could use to cover the $2 airport access fee.

Starting Monday, the airport began requiring drivers to use credit cards to buy access to the airport facility, using a new machine just outside the lounge. And the cards have to be major credit cards or bank-issued debit cards. “Prepaid debit cards cannot be used to pay taxi trip fees,” a sign hung up on the wall in the taxi drivers’ lounge says.

Driver Brian Guinle is a native-born U.S. citizen. But many of the other drivers come from African countries such as Somalia and Eritrea. Guinle said many don’t have credit histories.

The drivers said they want to explore alternatives - for instance, that the airport could issue special debit cards that would allow them to make the payments. And they said the taxi companies that they work for could do something similar.

Thomas, the airport spokesman, said the airport doesn’t have the ability to issue its own debit cards.