Kenner and New Orleans have regularly butted heads over Louis Armstrong International Airport since it opened as Moisant Field in 1946. Noise and safety have been frequent topics for tussle, as have runways and revenue. Now it's taxis, specifically New Orleans' new rules that all cabs picking up fares at the Crescent City's airport in Kenner -- regardless of...
Kenner and New Orleans have regularly butted heads over Louis Armstrong International Airport since it opened as Moisant Field in 1946. Noise and safety have been frequent topics for tussle, as have runways and revenue.
Now it's taxis, specifically New Orleans' new rules that all cabs picking up fares at the Crescent City's airport in Kenner -- regardless of which government licenses the vehicles -- must be equipped with credit-card machines, satellite-navigation devices, surveillance cameras and functioning air-conditioning.
After failing to squash the regulations, New Orleans-licensed cabbies are rushing to retrofit their vehicles, leaving owners licensed by Kenner in a lurch. They told the Kenner City Council on Thursday that New Orleans cabs have overwhelmed the limited number of vendors doing the specialized work, meaning the Kenner operators won't be able to meet the Jan. 1 deadline for the changes and, thus will be forbidden to troll for airport customers. Some Kenner operators can't get an appointment for the work until mid-February, said Councilman Kent Denapolis, who has been working on taxi issues with Councilwoman Maria DeFrancesch.
"We're being phased out," Kenner cabbie Oscar Marin said.
New Orleans was said to have about 1,600 cabs lined up for the new equipment, roughly 600 of them working the airport. Many are affiliated with major taxi services, making them a critical mass of customers for the equipment vendors. Kenner, by contrast, reportedly has about 350 cabbies, many of them independent operators without the strength of numbers to muscle to the head of the line.
Kenner's code enforcement director, Tamithia Shaw, said New Orleans officials recently sent over a list of additional vendors for the new equipment. That could provide some relief, but Kenner officials said they will ask New Orleans for an extension.
The discussion of the new equipment rules expanded into venting over a larger, longer-standing frustration for Kenner's cabbies and politicians: that Kenner taxi operators who take fares from Armstrong International to New Orleans hotels are forbidden to collect fares there for delivery back to the airport.
Councilwoman Michele Branigan explained the historical underpinnings: New Orleans lets cabbies sell their taxi certificates, making them commodities that can command $50,000 or more, and asserts that Kenner-licensed drivers have no right to pick up
Jeannie Black
That stalemate has prevailed for years.
"Obviously New Orleans has had some heavy lobbying from New Orleans cab drivers," Kenner Councilwoman Jeannie Black said.