Court Clears Way For Fenty’s Meter Plan: The Post is reporting that Superior Court Judge Brook Hedge has sided with the mayor in his quest to install meters in taxi cabs. This appears to be a huge blow to area cab drivers. But let’s face it, they will most likely continue their fight against meters. We can expect to live with the zone system for a while. What are the cabbies going to do?

I predict: the cabbies—if they haven’t already—will file an appeal. And then another appeal. They may even strike (again) on a major holiday!–Jason Cherkis

I was running late to work this morning. I needed to be at a meeting at noon. I had 25 minutes to make the mile walk to CP’s offices. And there was snow falling. I know. I know. The roads and sidewalks were generally fine. And the snow flakes were the size of sea salt. I still immediately thought about wussing out and taking a cab.

All I had was $5. I knew my $5 wasn’t going to get me to the office. But my fiver could get me close to my destination. I figured maybe a cab driver would want to play good citizen on the occasion of our first bit of snow.

I found an idling cab on 16th Street–about two-thirds of the way to my office. Through a crack in the cab’s passenger-side window, I made my pitch to the cabbie: “All I have is $5,” I shouted. “Could you take me as far as my $5 could go?”

The cabbie just smiled and shook his head. He then drove away leaving me to dodge snow flakes and sidewalk puddles.

I arrived at my meeting on time. But I had to jog every other block to make it. I’m wondering why my cab driver wouldn’t accept my offer? It wouldn’t have taken up much of his time. And I was honest.

Because I grew up in an Old World household where I routinely absorbed tales of the privation my ancestors suffered–the five-mile uphill walk to school, laundry lists of all the things I had as a kid that my elders had to slaughter a herd of sheep to even feel OK dreaming about–I tend to have a relatively un-American attitude toward a dollar. Which is to say, I can be a cheapskate at times. So, yes, I know I’m about to grouse about a dollar.

Last Thursday I took a cab after rush hour from the Metro Center Metro station to CP’s offices in Adams Morgan. At the end of the trip, the cabbie told me the fare was $9.80–$8.80 for crossing two zones, plus a $1 gas surcharge. I didn’t see anything posted in the cab about such a thing, and said so.

“Ha ha ha ha ha ha,” said the cabbie, who then reassured me that there was indeed a gas surcharge.

I stiffed him on the tip. My ancestors could only dream of taking a cab to Adams Morgan one day.

I also dropped a line to the D.C. Taxi Commission, which today informed me that the latest gas surcharge expired weeks ago. “You are correct, the gas surcharge ended on September 19, 2007 @ 11:59 p.m.,” the anonymous respondent e-mailed me.

I thought about getting a snack from the vending machine to celebrate this small victory of fiscal rightitude, but they recently raised the prices to 80 cents.

The other night I hailed a cab in Adams Morgan. When I got in, the driver asked me if I wanted to pay by zones or by meter. Confused, I pointed out that D.C. doesn’t have metered cabs. He said he’s a Virginia cab, and he’s giving me a lift illegally. As an experiment, I opted for the meter. My ride home to Shaw always costs $8.80. By meter, it was $6.95. I vote for meters.

Not so long ago, D.C. cabbies followed strict procedures when it came to their licenses: They had to be displayed on the passenger-side sun visors of their vehicles in regulation plastic sleeves—which, for many years, were manufactured by inmates at Lorton Correctional Complex and distributed at the offices of the D.C. Taxicab Commission.

Protocol has slipped.

Philip Lebet, who has held a D.C. hack license since 1982, doesn’t drive a cab much anymore—he is currently the corporate secretary for Diamond Cab Company. When he does, his face is right there on his right-side sun visor, in a Lorton-made sleeve, though the piece of plastic is held in place with rubber bands, since the contraption’s straps fell off long ago.

He could just buy a new license holder, but Lebet says they’ve become hard to find since Lorton closed in 2001. There are places that sell versions of the accessory, including National Cab, a former cab company turned supply store that has been ordering overseas-manufactured license holders since Lorton closed. Some cabbies get them there.

But using one of the newer models could be breaking city rules. D.C. Municipal Regulations stipulate where and in what a driver’s “hack face” should be displayed—specifically, “attached to the right sun visor so as to be visible to any passenger in the vehicle” and inside “a bracket or receptacle of a type approved by the Commission.”

Lebet knows the one he has is approved by the commission, because the commission sold it to him. “To my knowledge, we can’t use any other ones,” he says. “If we can, it’s news to me.”

Causton Toney, chairperson of the Taxicab Commission, says his organization doesn’t maintain a list of approved picture sleeves these days. “We don’t have specs—which would be nice to do—on the size of the envelope, the transparency of the envelope, the means by which it would be affixed to the visor,” he says.

Toney says the primary concern is that licenses be visible to passengers, not to nitpick over how they are displayed, but Lebet plans to hold on to his old plastic envelope until the matter is resolved. “These sort of things are judgment calls,” he says. “Which means that there is potential for abuse.”