Taxi GPS Doesn't Eliminate Fare Zone Confusion

Express' Michael Grass shares a tale of zone-induced woe from a weekend cab ride.

WITH THE DISTRICT facing a deadline to act on taxicab reform this fall, some companies have been trumpeting their use of dashboard global positioning systems to navigate D.C.'s confusing jumble of taxicab fare zones.

But as I found out on Saturday, even with GPS technology in cabs, it still takes one's human GPS to figure out when a cabbie is making a fare-calculation error — or just trying to scam you.

Despite clearer zone maps and available technology, cab drivers can still prey on a passenger's unfamiliarity with D.C.'s fare-zone boundaries to snag an extra couple bucks. But I know precisely where those boundaries are and have been known to argue with cabbies to get the correct fare. And that's one of the problems with fare zone boundaries — the boundaries themselves.

From my Saturday afternoon ride ...

STARTING POINT: Zone 2A — Pennsylvania Avenue and 24th Street NW, two blocks west of the 22nd Street NW fare-zone boundary between Zone 1 and Zone 2.

DESTINATION: Zone 2A — Woodley Road, west of Connecticut Avenue, within view of the boundary between Zone 2A and Zone 2B. (The route is plotted below and the fare is calculated here on the D.C. Citizen Atlas.)

As the driver, wearing flashy Versace sunglasses, pulled up to the destination, I asked him how much the fare was. The driver replied $8.80, a two-zone trip, even though the trip started and ended in Zone 2A. I called him out on it and he asked me the address, looked it up on his detailed listings of D.C.'s street addresses, which have a corresponding zone classification. And that's where the fun began.

The cab driver insisted we were on Woodley Lane, which is a small one-way road a block east of Connecticut Avenue, in Zone 2B. (Woodley Lane was once called Woodley Place, and mapping tools often still refer to it as Woodley Place.) But we were actually in an alley off another Woodley, that being Woodley Road, which is in Zone 2A. After some arguing, he pulled out a small GPS device and on the map, it plotted his taxi at 2651 Woodley Road. (For the record, the device was different than the GPS featured in this 2006 article in The Post.) He pulled out his zone-specific street address listings. On his page full of "W" names, Woodley street names came at the bottom of the page. And there was no Woodley Road. Woodley Lane was the last his list. "Flip over the sheet," I told him, pointing to his half-folded piece of paper.

But he wouldn't. He insisted we were in Zone 2B and wanted the extra fare.

As traffic backed up behind the cab and the argument approached the two-minute mark, a man from another car asked what the problem was. "I'm sorry, but he's trying to charge me for an extra zone," I said. The stakes were high. I demanded the driver look at his listings again and flip to the next section. I also asked him to fill out a receipt.

Finally, he flipped over his sheet, and — voila! — there was Woodley Road and the block I was on was indeed in Zone 2A, the zone in which my trip started. I gave him a $20 and asked for $12 back. An $8 payment for a one-zone trip ain't bad for a cabbie who may have been manipulating the zones. With my change, I got out as the cabbie barked at me: "I am not overcharging you!"
It didn't matter. I felt victorious.

» D.C.'S NEW TAXI CAB MAP: When Adrian Fenty began his term as D.C. mayor this year, one of his initial slate of reform measures was to craft a new taxicab zone map, one that was oriented to true north and marked with clearer boundaries. But even that new map isn't entirely true to the realities of geography; for example, Connecticut Avenue, which runs for the most part as a straight line in real life, runs on the map as a zigzag. And that lack of information leaves customers vulnerable.

» KNOW WHERE YOU'RE GOING: Being an informed cab rider is your best defense, so get to know the zones you most often travel to. Then, make sure your pick-up and drop-off spots are well within zone boundaries.

For example, if you're going from Zone 1 to a known fare-zone boundary like U Street NW, ask to be dropped off a block away at T Street NW. That way you're safely inside Zone 1. Same thing goes if you're on Capitol Hill east of 2nd Street SE. If you're at Capitol Lounge or Hawk 'N' Dove, walk toward 1st Street to hail a cab if you're heading to someplace in Zone 1.

Let the great ongoing fare zone vs. meters debate continue ...

» "Report Adds to Debate Over Putting Meters In D.C. Cabs" [WaPo]
» "Poll Center: Does This Map Make Sense?" [Free Ride/Express]

RELATED:
» "GPS Device Is a Hit With Cab Users, Taxi Firm Says" [WaPo]
» "Taxi Zones and Phony Doctorates in the City of a Million Mysteries" [Raw Fisher/WaPo]
» "Meters Not Zones" [Official Site]

Taxicab zone map courtesy D.C. Taxicab Commission