AURORA | Waiting, it seems, is just part of the taxi game in Colorado.
Whether you’re waving your arm on an Aurora street corner hoping to get a cabbie’s attention, or one of the cab drivers behind Mile High Cab waiting for the state to let you launch your company, few things come quickly.
Last week though, all that waiting — about five years in all — finally paid off for the group of drivers/owners behind Mile High Cab when state regulators gave the company the green light to join the state’s taxi cab market.
Tom Russell, a law professor at University of Denver who has worked with the company throughout their efforts, said the go-ahead from the state’s public utilities commission means Mile High’s cabs will hit the road sometime in the spring.
When the company is up and running, Mile High will become the state’s fifth sanctioned cab company.
The state’s two biggest taxi companies, Metro Taxi and Yellow Cab, opposed Mile High’s bid to enter the market, as they did Union Taxi’s efforts a few years prior.
The PUC initially sided with the big cab companies and said, essentially, that the market already had the ideal number of cabs. Opponents of Mile High said if the state adds too many more cabs, drivers wouldn’t be able to make a living, forcing good drivers with clean records to leave the industry.
But in their ruling granting Mile High Cab’s request, the PUC said those concerns are largely overblown and can be remedied locally.
At Denver International Airport, for example, the PUC pointed out that officials have limited the number of cabs allowed to 200 at a time, a policy that won’t change based on Mile High’s entry into the market.
There were also concerns from the PUC that Mile High didn’t have a digital dispatch system needed to efficiently manage its fleet, but the PUC said the company has since acquired an appropriate system.
The PUC also said concerns that Mile High Cab would lead to further crowding at cab stands in Downtown Denver were overblown. While there were reports of overcrowding at those stands after Union entered the market in 2008, the PUC noted that Mile High has a focus on suburban communities, not just Downtown Denver.
Russell said that focus on suburban areas — particularly Aurora — has always been a goal for Mile High.
For one, the bulk of the company’s drivers live in Aurora and the eastern metro area, he said.
Also, the company sees the market as ripe. While it can be relatively easy to hail a cab in Downtown Denver, people who live in Aurora or some other suburb away from Downtown rarely have that luxury.
“The claim that there are too many cabs doesn’t make sense to anybody outside of central Downtown Denver,” he said. “Aurora is obviously one of the places that needs more cab services.”
Mekonnen Gizaw, the treasurer of Mile High’s board of directors and one of the company’s owner/drivers, said Aurora will be a major focus for the company.
“We are focused on the suburb areas,” he said.
Gizaw said he is working as an accountant right now, but once Mile High gets up and running he will be driving one of the company’s 150 cabs.
Russell said that in the five years it has taken the company to finally get off the ground, several of the drivers who were involved in the beginning have left the company to pursue other opportunities. One driver who was starting medical school at the beginning of Mile High’s ordeal is now almost finished with his degree, he said.
“The players have changed,” he said.
But, Russell said, the company’s general idea — to have drivers who own their vehicles and the company, and as a result don’t pay the hefty vehicle leases that drivers for the major cab companies do — is the same.
The bulk of the company’s drivers are east African immigrants like Gizaw, Russell said, who came to the United States hoping to make it on their own.
“These are drivers who followed all the rules. They came to America legally in hopes of achieving the American dream,” he said. “It’s ironic that it took these determined immigrants from Ethiopia, Somalia and Eritrea to teach us something about capitalism and free enterprise.”
They didn’t follow all the rules, they discriminated against the initial leadership because they weren’t their same nationality. NIGERIANS FOUNDED MILE HIGH CAB INC AND MOST WERE BOOTED OUT FOR RACIST REASONS. CONTRACTS WITH UNSOPHISTICATED AND FINANCIALLY VULNERABLE INDIVIDUALS WERE BREACHED! Current Mile High Cab leadership was not legally appointed and is racist and opportunistic!