Panel Puts Off Decision on 2nd Taxi Franchise

Following more than three hours of often heated testimony, the Los Angeles Board of Transportation commissioners voted Thursday to delay a decision on who would receive a second taxi franchise for the San Fernando Valley.

The commissioners delayed a decision for 30 days to gain more time to study proposals by four taxi companies seeking the franchise--especially to determine whether Babaeian Transportation Co. of Burbank has enough money to provide the service the company promised.

The second franchise was requested in June by the Los Angeles City Council to improve taxi service in the Valley and provide competition for Valley Cab Co., which has had an exclusive city franchise in the Valley since 1984.

The Department of Transportation has recommended that the franchise be awarded to Babaeian, which operates about 100 taxis in Burbank, Glendale and Pasadena. Other bidders are United Independent Taxi Drivers Inc., the Independent Taxi Owners Assn. and Los Angeles Checker Cab Co. Inc., which holds one of five taxi franchises downtown.

Much of the testimony came from representatives of the four competing taxi firms, who praised their own companies while trying to discredit the others. At one point, a Babaeian representative and Valley Cab President Lloyd Conway accused each other of lying.

But most of the discussion among commissioners was about whether Babaeian could afford to provide the service it promised in the Valley.

Babaeian has offered to put 85 taxis on the road, including five “clean air vehicles” that would run on natural gas and five wheelchair-accessible vans. The company has also promised to use a computerized dispatch service and provide telephone-keyboard service for the deaf and bilingual operators for Spanish-speaking customers.

Conway charged that Babaeian did not have the money to pay for such services and faces 100 lawsuits filed against it in Los Angeles Superior Court in the past 60 days. “They could tell you one lie after another; you can never get the truth out of these people,” Conway told the commissioners.

Gilbert M. Archuletta Jr., an attorney for Babaeian, rejected Conway’s charges, adding that the company would be willing to put $200,000 in a trust fund to prove that it has the money to fund operations in the Valley.

“I have no idea what he is talking about,” Archuletta said of the alleged 100 lawsuits. “This is absolutely false. It’s absolutely absurd.”

Valley Cab and Babaeian Transportation have had an increasingly antagonistic relationship since Babaeian began nearly two years ago to lobby city officials for a second Valley franchise.

Commissioner David A. Leveton asked that the Department of Transportation investigate Conway’s charges about the 100 lawsuits. Leveton and other commissioners said they too were concerned about whether Babaeian had the money to support the level of service it promised.