L.A. Threatens to Bar 2 Taxi Groups From Airport Over Pact Violations

The Los Angeles Board of Transportation Commissioners on Friday handed down an ultimatum to two big independent taxicab associations: Either start complying with past operating agreements or lose indefinitely the right to pick up passengers at Los Angeles International Airport.

In unanimous votes, the five commissioners said the restrictions on airport service by the United Independent Taxi Owners Assn. and the United Independent Taxi Drivers Assn.--each with about 200 taxis--would take effect in 15 days unless the associations were in compliance by that time.

Specifically, the board said both associations must hire professional managers and confiscate and hand in to city officials permits belonging to any of their members who have not been complying with a 3-year-old agreement that they drive their own cabs at least 40 hours a week.

Aides in the city’s Department of Transportation said that about one-third of the operators have not been driving their own cabs but have instead leased them out to others. In some cases, they said, the independent operators have become taxi entrepreneurs, controlling three or four vehicles.

Estimate Made

The aides said that even if the independent associations are suspended, there should still be roughly 800 cabs available to adequately service the airport.

Commission Chairman Nathan L. Chroman said he and other commissioners have lost patience with repeated delays by the independent taxi associations in living up to terms of a 1984 agreement that was negotiated with the commission by the independents’ own attorneys.

The commission also decided that the 51-taxi Beverly Hills Cab Co. will receive a 20-day suspension unless it started providing required preventive maintenance records and logs of weekly driver inspections to the Transportation Department within 15 days.

The actions came after more than two hours of often sharp exchanges with the new presidents of the two independent associations, David Shapiro of the Taxi Drivers Assn. and Mark Aaronson of the Taxi Owners Assn., as well as with members of the groups.

Driving Rule

Both Shapiro and Aaronson said they had only recently become presidents of their groups and that they and their members were, for the most part, ignorant of past agreements. Aaronson said it had been everyone’s impression that the 40-hour driving rule, for instance, was “a dead letter.”

All five commissioners said that they found such assertions incredible and noted that the taxi associations had received frequent admonitions to adhere to the rules they had accepted.

The meeting turned acrimonious when Shapiro suggested that the commission’s threat of suspensions “smacks of another country’s way of doing things.”

“We’ve taken a lot of abuse today from all of these people who have said we’re Draconian,” Commissioner Larry B. Faigin replied. “But, in fact, we’ve shown unbelievable restraint.”