An Athenian Diary

8

How Does Athens Work?

Part 1: The Athenian Taxi

Today's the first day of a two day taxi strike. This strike is the third or fourth since we arrived. On ordinary days the streets of Athens are packed with yellow BMWs with a bright white TAXI sign stuck on the top. The cabs don't carry advertising as in the US, and there's almost no variation in brand, model, or color. (I wonder at the people foolhardy enough to buy a yellow car -- aren't they always being mistaken for taxis?)

As in New York and most other US cities I'm familiar with, to operate a taxi you must own a medallion. About twenty years ago the city of Athens stopped selling new ones. As a result (again as in New York) the value of a medallion has risen dramatically and constantly over the years, and they are now extremely valuable. (Someone who may or may not have reason to know told me about 100,000 euros, which seems like a lot -- but maybe not.) You wonder sometimes how the drivers and owners make money, since the fares have -- unlike almost all other costs in Athens -- not risen substantially above where they were years ago. A taxi ride from the Athens Centre to the American School the other day cost me about just under two euros; it was less than that for all four of us to taxi to the theater to see Pirates of the Caribbean a couple of Sundays ago.

The strike is, like many, about money. Cab drivers don't have to issue receipts (if you ask for one they'll write it out on a piece of paper), itself perhaps not very important -- except the absence of receipts means there is no way to track the income of a cab. Since people pay taxes on incomes, there is widespread suspicion, amounting in fact to certain conviction, that cab drivers report far less of their income than they actually make. Ordinary people I have talked with feel strongly that the cab owners are getting off easy; everybody else, including many people who do not own an asset as valuable as a taxi medallion, have to make up the difference out of their own taxes. Everybody else's income is carefully reported with official receipts, so that the opportunity to hide income afforded the cab owners does not exist for the ordinary worker. There is, you may imagine, limited sympathy for the strikes.

The immediate issue in the strike is the government's announcement that it would be requiring all cabs to install machines to create receipts and thus account for all money taken in by every cab. So as not to make the strike seem entirely like a selfish grab, the taxi owners are also claiming that they want permission to drive in the bus lanes. (This demand isn't quite as silly as it may sound at first, as we shall see.) The state has shown no interest in negotiating or giving in, and my ordinary friends are convinced that the taxi owners will ultimately lose.

But the taxi owners are not entirely powerless in this scenario. For taxis -- whose ubiquity is so extraordinarily striking in Athens on typical days -- are a central element in the Athenian public transportation system. That system (like that of most European cities) is far better structured, far more flexible, and far better suited to actual human needs than your typical American system, which is attuned simply to the needs of corporations to shuttle a workforce back and forth weekday mornings and late afternoons, between work and home (Hartford's abysmal system is an extreme example of the impact of this problem). The Metro is the newest and brightest star in this constellation, but that system's coverage is still limited, and of course always will be because of the constraints of construction costs. The real backbone of the system are the busses and trolleys (the latter simply electric busses running off overhead wires), which go virtually everywhere and run frequently. The interstices of the space left over are filled by the taxis. A bus costs 45 euro cents, so a ride of (say) a mile, which will run you less than two euros in a cab, can be accomplished without massive extra cost by hoping a cab, if (say) you are in a great hurry and don't want to, or can't, wait ten minutes for the next bus. The ubiquity of the cabs is a crucial element to making this work -- they are quite literally so common that (except for one occasion, exceptional in many ways) I doubt I have waited ever more than a minute to get one. Thus their absence from the streets during the strikes removes a mighty important component of the public transportation system, places considerably increased strain on the rest of the system, and raises the general level of inconvenience. (In counterbalance, everyone seems to feel the nephos, the air pollution, falls off markedly on the days the taxis are striking, and that the streets are less congested and quieter. I have to agree.)

After the last strike I asked a taxi driver during a ride about the effectiveness of the strikes. He shrugged, dismissive -- in apparent agreement with my friends that in the end the state would win. He didn't offer any spirited or high-minded defense of the strikes, readily admitting that the issue was just money and taxes (he didn't even mention the bus lane question -- which has some force I think given the role the taxis play in public transportation). But I'm sure that today and tomorrow he's spending like the taxi drivers I noticed during the last strike -- sitting around the garage, smoking, working on the taxi. Unless, of course, he's with those guys in the yellow cars without a big white TAXI sign on the top, whirling around Athens, picking up passengers and delivering them where they want to go. Without, of course, giving a receipt.

    Addendum

A few days after writing this, at the end of the strike, I had occasion to talk a bit with a taxi driver about the strike and its aims. He admitted that he didn't know whether it would work, and conceded the general view that Athens was quieter and less polluted when the taxis were striking. But he insisted that drivers only wanted money to support themselves and their parents and families, and to send their kids to school. (More later on the Greek educational system.) He was passionate about the need for that money, and didn't want it going to the state. So far, no resolution.

October 20, 2003

To return to the Table of Contents of the Athenian Diary, click here.