Taxi Owners Not Satisfied With PPA Appointed Dispatching Company
By Pat Loeb
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - The Philadelphia Parking Authority is expected to extend a contract for taxi credit card and dispatching services, when it meets Monday. But taxi owners say the technology has never worked and they want to have input before they're stuck with it for another year.
Jeff Hornstein of the newly formed "Greater Philadelphia Taxi Association" says the contractor VTS is primarily a credit card processing company and that there have been multiple problems with its attempt to become a dispatching service.
"The consensus in the industry is that the technology has been a failure," Hornstein said.
Hornstein says VTS has had an exclusive contract for dispatching for five years and his members believe it's led to long waiting times for customers and has prevented innovations such as handicapped accessible cabs and energy-efficient hybrid cabs.
He says they were anxiously waiting for the contract to expire and only just learned that the contract is being extended without any public input.
"We simply want the process to be opened up."
Neither the Parking Authority nor VTS could be reached for comment.
