Wednesday night, after drinking myself silly till late trying to assuage my wounded only $140! Babes for Boobs ego, I took an Arlington cab home and watched the meter in amazement. A 20 minute journey, what Google Maps tells me was around 6 miles, came out to $11. The next morning, stumbling through a hang-over to work, my morning taxi was $9.90 for a 2 mile commute.

Tell me, does that compute?

Not the drinking part, but the amazing 3x more expensive per mile drive in a DC Taxi with the new taxi fares. And yet when I talked with the taxi driver, all he could do was say, in a mindless repetition, gas prices, gas prices, gas prices.

Well gas prices my ass – even at $3 a gallon. If DC cabs weren’t $6.50 to go three blocks, or if you get out on the wrong side of the street $8.80 because you crossed an imaginary, arbitrary, and ill-defined line, we would take more of them, more often. I wouldn’t walk the extra two blocks to save $2, and I could take one across town with confidence instead of confusion.

When I tried to explain the difference between 10 rides at $8.80 and 20 at $5, again all the taxi driver could do was mumble about gas prices. Like he wasn’t wasting half his tank just circling around looking for a fare anyway, getting closer to a psycho taxi driver breakdown.

Please, now that we’re about to be Smoke Free DC, can we be Taxi Meter DC too?