Some (wonky) details on the accessible taxi grant program I am sponsoring

I wanted to explain the ‘accessible taxi cab grant program’ that I and Alder Myadze have proposed. This blog post is a bit aimed specifically at my Common Council colleagues, so I apologize if any of the terms are wonky and for the length. This item ( https://madison.legistar.com/LegislationDetail.aspx?ID=6024412&GUID=496A496A-B433-4745-B1FC-2B0C5808E578 ) is up for consideration at the Finance Committee on March 6th and then the Common Council on March 7th. 

I'll have my regular weekly update out tomorrow. 

Overview

The top-line basics: The resolution would create a grant program that makes available up to $250,000 dollars, funded out of the City’s Capital budget and paid for via ‘General Obligation’ bonds. The grants would be used to buy accessible taxi cabs - think minivans with wheelchair lifts installed in the back. An accessible taxi cab costs between $50,000-$60,0000. The grant program would be open to licensed Madison taxi companies, of which there are two: Union Cab and Madison Taxi. Uber/Lyft/etc are not eligible. 

The cab companies would own the vehicles but the City would maintain a lien on them so the City could reclaim them if the cab companies stop using them. There are otherwise very few strings attached, in part not to put too great a burden on the cab companies and in part not to put too great a burden on City staff to administer the program. No matching funds are required.

My estimation is it would add about 32 cents to the annual property tax of an average home. It does not affect the City’s levy limit. (Though that is my estimate and not from Finance)

To award the grant, City staff will develop a scoring system that can rank proposals. We have a federal program (the 5310 program from the Federal Transit Administration) that has scoring systems we will use as a template. The City’s Transportation Commission will approve the scoring system, City staff (with help from other experts) will score proposals and recommend the awardees. As with all grants, the Common Council will sign off on the final awards. The grants would probably be available in the late summer or fall, and awarded later in the year, depending on staff workload and bandwidth. 

Currently, Union Cab has 7 wheelchair-accessible vehicles in their fleet, but they really only use 3 of them, and they are approaching the end of their useful lives. Madison Taxi does not have any wheelchair-accessible cabs in their fleet. My estimation is this grant program would double the number of accessible taxi cabs on the road. Both companies are aware of the grant program and are at least considering applying, should the grant program be opened. 

There is considerable need for more accessible taxi rides in Madison. The Cap Times had a cover story on it earlier this year: https://captimes.com/news/government/hardly-any-madison-taxi-rides-for-those-with-disabilities/article_73527cd5-3d51-57a1-a73b-cc975ac9feea.html - see also coverage in Tone Madison ( https://tonemadison.com/articles/madisons-transit-system-grows-more-fragmented/ ) , The Badger Herald ( https://badgerherald.com/opinion/2023/02/23/improvement-in-accessible-public-transportation-needed-to-support-madison-residents/ ) and WORT-FM (https://www.wortfm.org/why-wont-accessible-cabs-come-up-during-madison-budget-week/ )

But this problem is not new - the Isthmus wrote about it 6 years ago: https://isthmus.com/news/cover-story/taxicab-troubles-could-ground-people-with-disabilities/ and as anticipated in the Isthmus piece, things have gotten worse. In fact, things have gotten worse even since the Finance Committee considered this in September of 2022: in November, Zerology shut down ( https://madison.com/business/all-electric-green-cab-of-madison-ceases-operations/article_7a850eec-0d99-553b-a0a1-b974820f265f.html ), taking with it not only Green Cab but also VanGo, its accessible van service, eliminating a major provider of accessible rides. 

What’s different now in this resolution than what was before the Finance Committee in September of 2022?

During the fall budget proposal, the amendment we offered was intentionally light about the actual program - it purposefully didn’t specify if the cab companies would own the cabs or if the City would own the cabs and rent them out, or if matching money was required, or if should be done in conjunction with some kind of Federal program. The idea was that we would put the budget in place first and then design the program to fit the budget, and not spend a lot of staff time designing a program that might not be approved. The feedback we got from several Finance Committee members was that they would prefer to see the program before approving the budget, so this resolution picks a specific plan. 

This resolution has been considered by the Transportation Commission and the Disability Rights Commission and is recommended for approval by both of them. The September budget amendment proposal had not gone through the BCC process. 

Will this grant program make a difference, and what are the risks that it won’t have the intended effects?

Short answer: Yes, probably. 

This grant program is likely to make it easier for people who need accessible cab rides to get one, however, there are some broader risks. The main headwind the taxi industry is facing is the  challenge of finding and retaining drivers. The labor market is very tight. Taxis also face competition from Uber and Lyft, so there are concerns about their ability to continue as an ongoing operation, though right now taxi companies are more limited by finding drivers than finding paying riders. 

Finding drivers who are willing to regularly give accessible rides is another part of the challenge. Taxi drivers are paid in part by the number of rides they give, and it takes more time to give accessible rides, so it is possible that even if the cab companies can hire drivers those drivers may not want to drive the accessible cabs. We do have some early confidence that enough drivers will opt into driving the accessible vehicles and that we will be able to consistently keep the accessible vehicles on the road. 

Accessible Taxis and Madison Metro Paratransit - is this the same or different?

This grant is separate from Paratransit. Metro’s Paratransit service is a “door to door” service that picks people up and takes them to their destination. It is open to people who cannot use Metro’s regular fixed route services due to a disability. In order to use Paratransit, you must be evaluated by paratransit staff to see if you meet the fairly stringent eligibility requirements. Paratransit service covers about the same geographic area and service times as Metro does, you can’t use Paratransit to get to Cottage Grove or Waunakee, or to get a ride downtown at 3am.

There are two important things to know about Paratransit, and they’re closely related and are sort of “opposite forces”: 

• Paratransit requires rides to be scheduled in advance, at least the day before. You cannot get same-day paratransit rides.
• Paratransit is a “no denial” service- if you’re eligible for paratransit and you schedule your ride by the deadline, Metro must provide that ride. 

In an ideal world, Paratransit would be available with no advanced reservations required, because life happens and sometimes things need to be dealt with right that day: you wake up sick and you need to get to urgent care, or you need to get to the bank that day, or you get invited to join friends for a last-minute outing, or any number of other things that just can’t wait a day. 

But running a service that can handle every request and never say “sorry, we’re full” is very hard to do without having a lot of resources in reserve. Imagine if you ran a restaurant that anyone could always get a table at without reservations. You would have to have a restaurant as big as your busiest night and keep it permanently staffed as though every night might be the busiest night, even though most nights it won’t be busy. You can understand why that's expensive and hard to do.

As it is, even with the one day in advance schedule, Paratransit sometimes has to scramble to be sure that everyone who requests a ride in time gets their ride, and thus far it’s mostly worked out - but on bad days Metro might send an entire empty bus to pick up one person to make every ride possible. So for now, it’s just not feasible to turn paratransit into a service that could guarantee everyone a ride without making a reservation in advance. 

One thing to know: some days, Metro Paratransit sometimes uses taxi companies to provide the accessible rides that Metro is obligated to provide. When the schedule is tough and Metro planners have to get creative, sometimes “outsourcing” a ride to a cab company is a way to make sure that everyone who needs to get a ride that day gets one. Having more accessible cabs on the road will help Paratransit. 

Does this grant program do anything to help people afford the fares?

Short answer: No.

One big difference between paratransit and taxi cab service, besides the scheduling difference, is paratransit is a fixed low-cost ride. A taxi ride, however, is charged at regular rates and is considerably more expensive - a $25 one-way fare from the east side to downtown is roughly the going rate. This grant program does not propose any subsidies for individual riders. The grant does require that riders using the accessible features of the cab are charged the same as riders who do not use the accessible features, but taxi riders pay considerably more than metro or paratransit. 

A program to subsidize fares would have to be funded out of the operating budget and unless there was a creative new funding stream, would likely be up against the levy limit. 

How do other cities manage this?

In New York City, the ‘Taxi and Limousine Commission’ set a goal to have 50% of the taxi fleet in NYC be wheelchair accessible. In order to pay for it, they imposed a 30 cent surcharge on taxis, and use that money to fund subsidies to taxi owners to offset some of the costs to buy an accessible vehicle. (Note that NYC has not met their goal of 50% wheelchair accessible - see https://www.thecity.nyc/2022/3/15/22979913/tlc-blows-by-deadline-in-struggle-to-get-50-of-city-taxis-wheelchair-accessible - but they’re at 37%. Imagine how amazing it would be if 37% of Madison’s taxi fleet was wheelchair accessible!)

In Chicago, non-accessible taxis are charged a higher registration fee, those fees are pooled and used to provide a subsidy for taxi owners to either upgrade their vans or buy a factory-built van.  

There is a paper linked to in the Legistar item that has some information about a few other cities - see https://madison.legistar.com/View.ashx?M=F&ID=11639754&GUID=ECDBE07D-784B-4536-BC48-8E74FCE7F62B 

What is (some of) the history of accessible taxi cabs in Madison?

In 2004, the Common Council nearly enacted a program to require all taxi companies in Madison to provide accessible vehicles as part of their fleet 24/7. However, in the end, Union Cab announced that they would provide accessible service at all hours, and so the Common Council decided to adopt the ordinances that would require all taxi companies to provide accessible service - however, the ordinance would be suspended so long as there was at least one cab company that provided accessible service. Since Union Cab provided 24/7 accessible service and has since 2004, the ordinance never went into effect. 

The (suspended) ordinance would have also allowed for taxi companies to add a surcharge to all fares to help cover the cost of accessible rides. Because the ordinance has never gone into effect, there has not been any surcharge to support accessible rides. 

The ordinance required the City Traffic Engineer to write an annual report to the Council and confirm that at least one company was providing 24/7 accessible service. If the Traffic Engineer ever found that there wasn’t accessible service in Madison and there was a “finding of need”, the ordinance would go into effect. 

The ordinance also provided that after doing the reports for five years, and in each year the City Traffic Engineer reported that there was a company providing the service, that the whole ordinance would be permanently sunsetted. Because Union Cab kept providing the service, the accessible taxi ordinances that were passed in 2004 never went into effect, and would need the Council to act to reinstate them if the Council so desired, including to allow for an accessible vehicle support surcharge.