Albany

I took a journey into a confusing and contradictory world. I rode in Capital Region taxi cabs.

If you've ridden in a cab around here lately, it won't surprise you that complaints about fares and traveling conditions are common. This isn't London. Taxi cabs in the Capital Region aren't exactly a source of civic pride.

So last week, I decided to take two rides — to the airport from downtown Albany, then back again. I enlisted Alysia Santo, a colleague here at the Times Union, to travel with me.

Our first ride went smoothly. We called Duffy's Taxi from a downtown office building, hopped into a cab 15 minutes later and we were on our way for the 12-mile ride to the airport.

The charge for two riders: $25.

That fare seemed reasonable, in part because I've heard horror stories about airport-bound passengers who were hit with outrageously steep charges.

Doug Myers, a spokesman for the airport, cites two recent examples that generated complaints: Three students who faced a $130 fare for a ride from the Rensselaer train station, and three lawyers who were charged $72 for the trip from downtown Albany.

Those kind of insane overcharges are possible because many of the region's cabs don't have meters. If you don't arrange the fare before the taxi starts moving, there may be an unpleasant surprise at the end of the ride.

"It's buyer beware," Myers said.

But things are supposed to be different when you're taking a taxi away from the airport. The airport authority has an exclusive contract with Capitaland Taxi that extends through 2016, forbids other taxi companies from waiting at the airport for passengers and lays out strict rules for drivers. Those rules, intended to professionalize the service, are supposed to remove issues for passengers.

Yet too many riders still have problems.

Alysia and I rode in the taxi as two passengers with different downtown destinations that were about three blocks apart. Now, if we'd been going to the same place, the driver would have turned on the meter — and the fare wouldn't, presumably, have been open to interpretation.

But when riders with different destinations share a cab, the rules mandate that each passenger be charged an "average" fare to the destination, but with a 25 percent discount. The meter, then, is off during the ride.

The dispatcher at the airport taxi stand explained that to us, kind of. He made it clear that we could take two separate cabs, if we wanted to, but told us we'd each be charged $25 if we rode together — as we ultimately were. (Not including the tip.)

So that means, then, that we were charged $25 total for the first trip, but paid twice that much for essentially the same trip back.

How does that make sense, exactly?

We learned later, with help from Myers, that we were slightly overcharged. The standard charge for a ride from the airport to downtown Albany is $23. I can't get too worked up over a $2 overcharge, but Capitaland owner Bret Peak was nevertheless apologetic.

"We're not in the business of ripping people off," Peak said.

But the airport authority uses mystery "shoppers" to monitor Capitaland's service, and those shoppers found the taxi company overcharging five times in the last year. The airport isn't exactly pleased with that.

"Capitaland's agreement with the airport authority is currently under review," Myers said.

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Part of the problem with Capital Region taxis is that there's no regional group that monitors service. Rules that govern taxis operating within Albany, or other municipalities, largely disappear when a rider travels beyond city limits -— as many riders do.

"Our train station is in another county," said Michele Vennard, head of the Albany County Convention and Visitors Bureau, which is pushing for broader taxi oversight.

"The question is, how do we do this regionally?" Vennard said. "Because you can't just do it city by city."

Unfortunately, though, there's no real constituency for better taxi service in the Capital Region, because, unlike in bigger cities, most people here ride in cabs infrequently. We typically take taxis only when we're headed to the airport or too drunk to drive.

But Vennard says taxis often play a large role in a visitor's first impression of the area — and too often that impression isn't a good one.

Clothing bin update

Last Sunday's column about clothing donation bins should have made clear that most of the clothes given to the Capital City Rescue Mission are given away by its thrift store.

"Our donors know us as the place that does not sell the clothes," said Perry Jones, the shelter's executive director. "I see people who are so poor that if they had to give us $15 for a shopping trip, then they wouldn't do it."

But not all clothes received by the mission make it onto the racks at Blessingdales, as its thrift shop is known. Clothes that are stained or damaged are sold into the rag market, Jones said, earning the mission $71,000 last year.

That was an eye-opener for me. I've operated under the faulty assumption that some items were too grungy to donate, but the mission, Jones said, happily accepts clothing that is "stained, ripped, has holes or is a fashion that nobody would ever wear."

cchurchill@timesunion.com • 518-454-5700 • @chris_churchill