2 Cab Firms 1 Too Many

I am a franchise taxicab driver for Valley Cab Co.

I am a taxpayer, a registered voter and own property within the city of Los Angeles. I support two children and am active in community affairs.

I work 12-hour shifts, six days a week, to support my family. This means that I pay about $480 a week just to work and have been doing so for almost three years. I am on unpaid leave from a municipal government services agency where I worked for 12 years and left pending a stress lawsuit.

I have watched Art Snyder and his associates, the Babaeian brothers, for the past few years. I noted how they misled senior citizens with half-truths and obfuscatory statements.

Simple supply and demand logic will demonstrate that the citizens of the San Fernando Valley are receiving a fair and equitable taxi service under the existing franchise service structure.

Sometimes there are more calls than cabs. Mostly though, there are more cabs than calls. There are always Valley Cabs that are empty and waiting for fares. Even during the high demand hours, you will find empty cars waiting at the hotels, bus stations and Universal City. During lax demand hours, even more cabs are empty.

If you allow a second franchise to exist, there will be far too many cabs competing for the same fares. You will not lower fares; these are set by the Transportation Commission. You will, however, cost me a job.

I simply cannot work harder for less money. I lose money in fares every day to the “bandit” taxicabs that work Universal Studios, to the supercar-type taxis that claim to be limousine services, to the cabs dispatched from Burbank into North Hollywood and Reseda and Canoga Park.

There are simply too many bandit-type cabs operating now. If you legally create a second franchise, you will create chaos.

I realize that you, and society in general, believe the average cabdriver to be uneducated, unwashed, unprincipled, unemployable scum. In some cases-- especially among the bandit cab drivers--this is pretty close to the truth. However, some of us are heads of households, family men who take every dime home to keep our families together and retain our fragile grip on “respectability.”

Don’t take our jobs away because of the cheap political trickery of the smoke-and-mirror lobbyists.

R. GENE JENKINS

Van Nuys