Taxi drivers, including Fisseha Tesfaye, gather outside Gaylord National before delivering a letter calling on the hotel to provide a taxi stand in view of hotel guests
The Taxi Link airs Sat. 7-8 pm on WUST 1120 AM. Listen here:
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Just over the District line, Prince George’s County taxi drivers are stepping up their fight to continue servicing guests at National Harbor, the upscale mini-city, resort and convention center on the Potomac River. While the construction of National Harbor required hundreds of millions of public dollars for roads and other infrastructure needs, The Peterson Cos.-run operation appears to be on the verge of handing over Prince George’s County taxi jobs to Veolia, a French multinational water and transportation company.
Beginning this month, the largest of National Harbor’s six hotels, Gaylord National, is expanding its contract with Veolia. In addition to black sedans, Veolia will provide Gaylord with lower-priced hybrid vehicles designed to compete directly with taxis. But the competition may be less than fair since Veolia’s vehicles park directly outside Gaylord while taxis must pay $60 a month to wait across the street on the third floor of a parking garage, out of sight of hotel guests.
Gaylord, which has been serviced by taxis around-the-clock since it opened five years ago, explained its rational in a written statement provided to The Taxi Link: “Our guests have expressed their desires for high-quality personal transportation service with clean vehicles, courteous and knowledgeable drivers.”
“My first reaction is, ‘Holy hell, this is racist.’ This is an extremely nasty thing to say,” said Mateos Chekol, a researcher with the AFL-CIO and National Taxi Workers Alliance. “These drivers aren’t just operating willy-nilly, they have to be approved and certified by the county.”
In a letter hand-delivered Thursday, drivers reiterated their “demand for a taxi stand that is visible to Gaylord guests.” But Gaylord, which is operated by Marriott, has no intention of providing taxi drivers with a chance to compete with Veolia, said taxi leader Fisseha Tesfaye. “They don’t want taxi drivers,” Tesfaye told The Taxi Link.
Meanwhile in D.C., taxi chair Ron Linton said he’s sorry for disparaging two drivers. The drivers, Sharanjit Singh and Ephream Eshete, were arrested and charged with simple assault after an altercation at a gas station with a third individual on May 10. But before D.C. Superior Court dismissed their charges last week, the taxi commission announced their suspension in a May 17 press release in which Linton said, “The behavior of these drivers is intolerable.”
Speaking to The Taxi Link in his office on Friday, Linton apologized for the remark. “Any charge, before disposed of by the judiciary system, is an alleged charge and it should have been written as an alleged charge,” Linton said.
Notwithstanding the dismissal of their criminal charges, the taxi commission maintains that the suspension of Singh and Eshete should continue indefinitely. The commission’s policy is to suspend drivers “considered an imminent danger,” explained Linton.
The basis for the suspensions are violations of the taxi code which are “separate and distinct from the [criminal charges],” said taxi commission spokesman Neville Waters. The three violations cited include failure to inform the commission of an arrest within five days, use of offensive language and “being accused of abuse and use of physical force,” said Waters.
Asked by The Taxi Link whether a mere accusation against a driver could be a violation of the taxi code, Waters said, “That is a violation.”
“This is a provision that needs to be legally challenged,” said The Taxi Link co-host Tony Norman. “There is a presumption of guilt in all of these technical violations… I submit [the commission] does not have a legal right to do [this].”
* The initial posting had an incorrect spelling for Ephream Eshete’s name.
– The D.C. Council’s Committee on Transportation and the Environment is scheduled told a hearing on taxi passenger safety Wednesday, June 5 at 11 a.m. at the John A. Wilson Building, 1350 Pennsylvania Ave., NW. To sign up to testify, contact Aukima Benjamin at (202) 724-8062 or abenjamin@dccouncil.us.
The Taxi Link airs Saturday 7-8 p.m. on WUST 1120 AM. The show is sponsored by The Small Business Association of DC Taxicab Drivers; hosted by TheFightBack’s Pete Tucker and D.C. Advisory Neighborhood Commission 1B chairman Tony Norman; produced by Will Martin; and engineered by Mark Taylor, with special thanks to Stefan Ilie for engineering this week’s broadcast.