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An
Ethiopian taxi driver in Washington DC explained to his
baffled listener: “Go one way, towards downtown, in other
words, towards ‘K’ Street; the fare would be minimal,” “But,
go the other way, the fare was double and sometimes treble,
for the same distance.
Today,
said the same taxi driver, the city has a mayor who
literally bulldozed into law, a metered-taxi system. Most
taxi drivers, who also own their cabs were against it, but
had little say in the matter. There were, admitted the
Ethiopian taxi driver, some unscrupulous drivers on the
road; but they could have been reined in easily. Instead,
he said, a system has been put in place that is leeching
away his already small income. He said that he had to pay
for the metre he did not want or need.
He is
chary of the argument that he is making more money. He
concedes that he made money during and up to the run-up to
the election and, a little beyond. But, he asks: “How often
does that come about?” He answered his own question: every
four years. He doubted if he could keep afloat till then.
There
are many foreigners in the Washington area and Ethiopians
are prominent in that mix. There are many in the service
industries, as there are many professionals. There are
scientists, both in industry and in government; there are
teachers at all levels of academia.
Not all
are affected in the same way by the country-wide slowing of
the economy. Those in the service industry are the most
worried. Restaurants are not as busy as they were a few
months back. Taxi drivers fret over fewer passengers.
There
were, at the height of the boom just a short 12 months ago,
up to 20,000 people a day that used to come in by plane into
the two airports serving Washington. The city is only an
hour’s flight away from Boston and New York. These
passengers, lawyers and lobbyists would come in the morning
and leave by five o’clock the same day. Chicago, President
Obama’s home city, is just an hour and half away as the crow
flies.
It is
easy to forget that Americans use the plane as the European
uses the high-speed train to get from here to there, to do
business. On the short haul from Boston or New York, to
Washington, the passenger pays the stewardess on board the
plane, and, after the plane has taken off. Your bus or
train conductor taken to the extreme!
But, of
late, these do not seem to be helping businesses like taxi
services as they used to. There is definitely a pall over
the Washington DC area. It can be felt as ever- dismal
economic figures are continuously churned out by various
government departments, all located in this fair city.
‘Unemployment is up’, scream the minute-by-minute headlines
on TV news channels. And, as national holidays seem to come
and go in increasing regularity, there are reports that not
as many people are taking the drive or flight to some
exalted or other holiday spot. Not even the value of the
dollar is helping out. Whichever way you look, one cannot
afford it. And even if they could, they will stay home
because they have no idea if their job will be waiting for
them when they get back. Such is the dark shroud of
uncertainty pervasive the US capital in sharp contrast to
the euphoria in the days following ‘January the twentieth’.
It is
felt that Washingtonians are cocooned by the presence of the
federal government in their midst and it is assumed, because
of that fact, that they are in the main, immune from most of
the effects of the economic meltdown. It is just as terrible
for those in this area, but they are nonetheless accused of
being insensitive to what is happening in the rest of the
country.
Perhaps
this is what has prompted President Obama’s recent trips
outside Washington to three cities that have been devastated
by the economic slump. True, he was not preaching to the
already converted at every turn. Even the President’s much
avowed power of persuasion failed him with a Republican
senator who had been invited to accompany him on the
presidential Air Force One on one of the junkets. The
senator, as it so happened, the youngest in the august
100-people body, voted against the president’s so-called
stimulus package in the end.
But
there again, that group and the senator were just props on
the stage, a means by which the president was hoping to
effectively get his message across to those that matter to
him – not just the wavering, liberal Republican members of
Congress and some not-so-liberal members of his own party;
but to the public at large. He got part of his message
across in this the first of many important rounds: his bill
became law when he signed a day after Presidents’ Day,
Monday, February 16, 2009.
But, it
seems as if it is his intention to be out of Washington as
much as possible so as to enable him to get real grassroots
support, as it is obvious that he cannot get it from the
opposition. His absence from the capital does not mean
everything grinds to a halt. To begin with, there is an
influx of political animals in the city. Not just the
president, of course. The vice-president has also moved into
his new abode, making his presence felt straight away, it is
said, by his allowing the thermostat to be raised
considerably in his surroundings from the teeth-chattering
62 degrees Fahrenheit (16 Celsius), to a more manageable 72
degrees Fahrenheit, suitable, it is quipped for a more warm
blooded animal.
The
city grinds on, and after the signing of the bill, many have
a surer spring to their step. Many roads and bridges will be
earmarked for construction or renovation. This city, with
many dormitory villages surrounding it, has one of the most
developed public transport systems in any metropolitan area
of the country. The underground (train) system will be
upgraded, with the planned extension to the main airport
outside the city, the Dulles Airport, getting a much needed
boost.
But, as
the saying goes, one man’s meat is another man’s poison: the
taxis of the metropolitan area will suffer – as if they are
not already suffering enough in today’s uncertain times.
Washington taxi drivers will have you know that theirs is
not an easy trade. It is a hard slog trying to make a living
driving a taxi in any city, but especially so in the
Washington area. They say that the method of charging for
fares was, until just a year ago, one of the most antiquated
and the most bizarre ever planned.
It was
designed so that the people working on Capitol Hill, in fact
those that wrote the rules and regulations for the city
would be charged the least amount in fares. All you had to
do was look at the map of the city; it was drawn with
elliptical concentric circles, with the Capitol building at
its centre. The various circles were then portioned into
“Zones”, the fare within the “zones” increasing in direct
proportion to the distance from the Capitol – except to the
downtown area where all the lawyers servicing the lawmakers
happened to have their offices. This is where the famous, or
if you prefer, infamous ‘K’ Street is located.
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