Boston’s beloved taxi drivers – with an assist from the Steelworkers – are agitating for a fare hike. It’s all over the papers today. Thing is, today’s probably not the best day for the cabbies to beg for sympathy. That’s because the villains in today’s other wicked big story – Pike workers skimming thousands of dollars from the trough – were abetted, in large part, by this same crop of cabbies.
Put another way – if the drivers had done their jobs the way they’ve been supposed to do their jobs for years, there wouldn’t be any loose cash to fall into some hack’s pockets in the first place.
Hizzoner ordered cabbies to use elctronic Fast Lane transponders at city tollbooths, instead of cash, years ago. That way, tourists would get quicker trips from the airport into town. As would everybody else, without a line of cabs idling in the tollbooth lines. Amid a flurry of excuses, the cabbies have, by in large, refused to comply. City and state officials began their latest push to enforce the regulation last month. But that was years – and who knows how many trips through the tunnel – after the regulation first came down.
In the intervening period, noncompliance provided sticky-fingered Pike workers with a steady stream of cash-money that appears to have been sexually attracted to their pockets. And after this performance, they apparently deserve the public’s sympathy. Not to mention a fatter roll of cash. I held the door for some hapless bank robber last week – does that mean I’m in line for a raise, too?