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Jan 28 2012
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By Martin Hussey City

All Yellow Taxis in D.C.?

by Martin Hussey

Caitlin McGrath/The Hoya

D.C. may be on the verge of major changes to its taxi infrastructure. The city will soon increase fares, as The Hoya reported last month, and new regulations may force taxi drivers to improve service to less-traveled areas of the District. But a more noticeable plan may force standardization of D.C.’s taxicab livery.

Councilmember Mary Cheh, the same D.C. councilor responsible for taxi reform and for purportedly exporting the District’s rats to Maryland and Virginia, set up an online survey to test public sentiment on what the city’s taxi colors should be. Among the more than 4,000 respondents, 38 percent favored standardized yellow cabs. The city, for its part, seems to support the idea of making all taxis the same color. Cheh’s survey simply asks people to vote for their favorite color.

One of the most unique things about Washington has to be the city’s colorful taxicabs. At any given moment, people hoping to catch a cab can step into any array of colorful taxis — green, silver, white, black, blue, red, and even pink. All of the hype over taxi reform, though, begs the question: Are D.C.’s different taxi liveries one of the city’s signatures? Or should the city now standardize the livery like that of New York?

My take on it — let’s keep the taxis all different colors. I love it when I flag down a purple or maroon cab. But if we want to be boring like New York and make all our cabs yellow and expensive, that is no loss to me. I take the bus anyway.

 

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Jan 23 2012
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By Martin Hussey City

DC’s War on Rats

by Martin Hussey

We’re all used to the ubiquitous sightings of Chihuahua-sized rats crossing our paths late at night, but Georgetown’s continuing rat problem — a population increasing since at least 2010 — is, for the moment, being eclipsed by a growing political crisis for the District fueled by surging rat populations at the Occupy D.C. protests and by statements that Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli made to Rush Limbaugh on his conservative radio show.

Cuccinelli sparked a firestorm of conservative blog activity after he alleged on Limbaugh’s Jan. 12 radio show that the District’s 2010 Wildlife Protection Act would lead to D.C. rats being exported to Virginia. Limbaugh repeated the claim last week, prompting national scrutiny about the D.C. policy enacted to treat the pesky animals humanely. (The law, in fact, does exempt rats, meaning that pest controllers can still kill them.) In response to the claims, Maryland Del. Pat McDonough plans to introduce a law to protect Maryland from any future imports of D.C. rats into the state. However, all of the recent chatter may be for naught, as The Washington Post reports that there have been no documented cases of rat-smuggling from D.C. into either Virginia or Maryland.

While the District fights off Cuccinelli’s and Limbaugh’s false claims of rat-smuggling, the D.C. Department of Health is starting a new battle against the rats occupying Occupy D.C. downtown. Last week, Mayor Vincent Gray asked the National Park Service to remove the encampments at McPherson Square and Freedom Plaza due to exploding rat populations near the sites. Protestors’ response to the threat of eviction? Georgetown rats are bigger than Occupy rats, and there is no plan to evict Georgetown residents.

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