Image is everything: 15-year-old taxis are bad ambassadors

Fast-changing Miami has few constants. One is the annual return of the buzzards that encircle our skyscrapers from their summers in Hinckley, Ohio. The other is the return of the taxi industry to county hall seeking permits for older and older cabs.

The buzzards don’t return until November, but the taxi industry is already circling, seeking to make permanent its “temporary” OKs for cabs up to 15 years old, clunkers that might have run a million miles before impressing riders with their comfort.

Moreover, the industry wants the premier Ambassador cabs that serve the airport and seaport greeting arrivals to be as old as 15, five years older than today’s limit of 10. What says Miami better than a 15-year-old Ambassador taxi?

The county-abetted aging of our licensed taxi fleet has been going on since 2010, when the visitor industry was already complaining about the pitiful impressions taxis made. And in those days the maximum use limit was just being raised to 10.

Year after year as the industry came to the county pleading hard times, the age rose to 8 years maximum and then 9 years and then 10 and so on. Each of those pieces of legislation bore the dictum “no further extensions shall be granted.”

When the age got to 11, Mayor Carlos Gimenez pushed through the Ambassador category as the only taxis that could pick up passengers arriving at the airport and seaport to get their first impressions of Miami. Among requirements of the Ambassador cabs was a maximum age of 10.

Meanwhile, all non-Ambassador taxis were permitted to be older and older. Finally, in 2019 the industry got the commission to allow taxis up to age 15 – but just on a two-year pilot program. When the pilot expired in 2021, commissioners OK’d another “pilot” for two years. That one just expired.

This week, commissioners are hearing legislation to make the pilot program permanent at 15 years. Further, the higher-level Ambassador cabs could also now be 15 – making every clunker on the road an Ambassador for Miami-Dade County.

Past requests to extend the lives of taxis came with excuses. First it was a bad economy. Then the reason was new competition from Uber and Lyft, which hadn’t existed when age limits were created. Then the plea was covid.

This year’s legislation doesn’t bother with a reason. It just says the county commission “believes it is in the best interest of residents and visitors of this county to extend the authorization on a permanent basis for vehicles 15 model years of age or less to be licensed and operated as taxicabs in this county.”

It utterly eludes me what that best interest of residents and visitors to ride in ancient cabs could possibly be. The best interest of the taxi fleet owners, yes, I can see that. But the rest of us? No way.
The legislation doesn’t even bother to argue that Uber and Lyft had company-imposed 15-year limits so why shouldn’t taxis?

That could be a ploy, except for one huge difference: ownership. Uber and Lyft drivers own their cars and drive one shift a day. Taxis have drivers around the clock, so they get far more mileage.

Taxi drivers have less interest in keeping the cars in top condition. They could be in another cab tomorrow. But Lyfts and Ubers are personal cars whose drivers are likely to look after them to maintain their investments.

Besides the entry of Uber and Lyft into the business, another change is term limits. Most county commissioners haven’t been around long enough to realize that the 15-year limit is far beyond anything envisioned a decade ago.

As the county was voting in 2012 whether to allow cabs 8, 9 or even 10 years old on the road, then-Commissioner Sally Heyman said, “Image is everything. I don’t think they [the public] should get into an 8- or 9-year-old car.”

An extension that year kept 351 over-age taxis on the road. This year, commissioners aren’t even getting statistics on numbers of cars affected. They’re just told “it’s in the best interest of residents and visitors.”

A New York City taxi’s age limit is seven years. And we plan 15? Come on.

Taxi patrons at Miami International Airport are either tourists or business visitors. Why would we greet either one with a cab more than twice as old as they’d see in Manhattan?

We feel for any business that must spend money to meet regulations. But using a 15-year-old car that may have run a million miles as a public conveyance is like flying a creaky airliner or a train without current safety features: government shouldn’t allow it.

Beyond the safety factor, a 15-year-old taxi is also a rotten first impression of a city that’s trying to be cutting edge. As Sally Heyman put it, “Image is everything.”