Seeking to increase the number of independent cab drivers in New Orleans' taxi fleet, the Taxicab Bureau issued 75 new operating permits to drivers who had been working for bigger cab companies. If they can prove they own their vehicles and have met new quality standards put in place last year, those drivers will carry their own Certificates of...
Seeking to increase the number of independent cab drivers in New Orleans' taxi fleet, the Taxicab Bureau issued 75 new operating permits to drivers who had been working for bigger cab companies.
If they can prove they own their vehicles and have met new quality standards put in place last year, those drivers will carry their own Certificates of Public Necessity and Convenience, or CPNCs.
Mayor Mitch Landrieu spokesman Ryan Berni said Thursday that the new CPNCs were meant to encourage drivers to consider their taxis independent, entrepreneurial enterprises.
The bureau also split another 25 CPNCs among the city's larger cab companies.
The administration doled out the CPNCs on a first-come, first-served basis that attracted more than 580 applicants, Taxicab Bureau Director Malachi Hull said. Should any of the chosen 75 fail to prove ownership or compliance with the new rules by March 11, then the bureau will dip back into the waiting list for the next applicant in line, he said.
The New Orleans Taxicab Bureau has issued 100 new taxi permits, or CPNCs to drivers currently working for a larger company.
Because the bureau only invited existing drivers to apply, the new CPNCs will not grow the city's taxi fleet, which hovers around 1,550 licensed drivers, Hull said. There are actually fewer cabs on the streets in recent weeks as some drivers have refused to comply with the new regulations that began in August. Hull and Berni said Thursday they didn't have an exact number of drivers in danger of losing their CPNCs.
The new permits are bound to hurt business done by the city's cab companies, which lease vehicles and CPNCs to their drivers.
"I can say, yes, we will have to replenish the drivers that we lose on top of the drivers that have retired because of the over-burdensome regulations the city has put out," said Jason Coleman, a member of the Coleman Cab Co.'s board of directors.
Coleman also wondered whether the applicants for the new CPNCs can jump through all the hoops fast enough. He said his company just learned on Wednesday that the Taxicab Bureau had awarded the permits, giving his drivers seeking their own CPNCs just five days to buy vehicles and make sure they're up to code.
"It's going to be interesting how many of those (CPNCs) are going to make it onto the street," Coleman said.
The administration advertised in December with the initial plan to hand out 30 new CPNCs to the cab companies. Eleven companies applied, but the bureau soon realized that only five owners ran them all. So the bureau limited each owner to five new CPNCs each, Berni said.
Berni said the administration has no plans to regularly issue new CPNCs. Instead, the bureau will keep them in reserve should the city's need for more taxis ever rise.
Although there is no initial cost for the new permits, drivers will have to pay $150 by Jan. 31 each year to renew them.
The dramatic changes enacted by the Landrieu administration last year riled several camps of cab drivers and companies. Forced to install security cameras, GPS devices, credit card machines at the cost of thousands of dollars for each taxi, groups staged regular protests throughout the fall on the steps of City Hall.
Nevertheless, Landrieu won a major victory in December, when the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that cab drivers and companies couldn't consider CPNCs to be rights, akin to pieces of property. That decision lets the city now intervene where it couldn't before in the sale or transfer of CPNCs from one owner to another.
That appellate decision angered many cab drivers, some of whom had spent as much as $60,000 to secure their first CPNCs.
Still, Coleman said he was happy for those drivers that got a shot at a new CPNC.
"They've now been blessed," he said. "They got something for nothing."