Presently, San Francisco Taxi rates are $2.85 to get in the door, plus 45 cents per 1/5 mile or minute of waiting or delay. The controller's office is recommending an increase of 25 cents per mile, which the high tech calculator function in our iBook tells us will end up increasing the cover charge to $2.90, and the meter rate to 50 cents per 1/5 mile.

Cab rates haven't been increased since January 2003, back when gas was only $1.65 a gallon. Now it's $3.20 a gallon, making the profit margin for cabbies that much narrower.

This KGO article mentioned that "More than one person pointed out the city's car share program as an alternative to cabs" which we don't fully get. Maybe that's because we take cabs in part A) so we don't have to deal with parking or B) because we're too loaded to drive. Will we stop taking cabs (and start driving drunk, yeah!) if this increase is put into effect? Probably not, especially once we started considering that whole 97% increase is gas prices thing. How about you?

You can download the PDF of the entire report from this page (" Taxicab Industry Report -August 2006" under "News and Events"), it's actually kind of interesting and not too dry a read.