{"id":170,"date":"2004-07-18T23:41:25","date_gmt":"2004-07-19T03:41:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2004\/07\/18\/planettran-after-action-report\/"},"modified":"2011-06-18T23:30:17","modified_gmt":"2011-06-19T03:30:17","slug":"planettran-after-action-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/2004\/07\/planettran-after-action-report\/","title":{"rendered":"PlanetTran after-action report"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

After booking a reservation with PlanetTran via email, we were relieved
\nwhen the taxi did indeed show up a few strokes after 4:30 am on Friday
\nfor our trip to Logan Airport (and from thence, to Chicago and then
\nWisconsin). Our cabbie was none other than Seth Riney himself, the
\nfounder of PlanetTran.<\/p>\n

We had an interesting chat about PlanetTran’s business model and
\ngoals. It turns out Seth is propositioning the Cambridge License
\nCommision for 5 free medallions. Considering these suckers sell for
\nabout $200K each on the open market, PlanetTran is asking for what
\nappears to be a serious subsidy from the City of Cambridge. Flipped
\naround, however, you might argue – and Seth does – that the
\nCommission’s maintenance of a restrictive monopoly of taxis is what
\ndrives the price of these medallions so high, compounded with the fact
\nthey also fix taxi prices (and not <\/span>to
\nthe consumer’s advantage. We found this out when trying to arrange
\nhotel buses to and from the airport for our wedding, and the hotels
\ninformed us that they had to charge the taxi minimum, even though their
\nnormal rates were much lower). Even when seen as a subsidy, I think
\nit’s something Cambridge should pursue as a matter of policy, though I
\nsuspect the Commission is comprised less of the granola yuppies that
\nmake so much noise in town and more of hard-nosed businessmen.\n<\/p>\n

Total bill came to $34, almost $10 more than if we had taken a
\n“regular” cab. Seth explained that the price was pretty much set by the
\nCommission, and that if he did get his medallions that the price they’d
\ncharge the same as that of other taxis. He believed that even if the
\nPriuses turned out to be more expensive to maintain, the company would
\nstill be profitable thanks to the monopoly situation. He also mentioned
\nthat several hybrid vehicles specifically designed for taxi use were in
\ndevelopment in Europe and that he was hoping to be deploying those
\nheavier-duty (and presumably cheaper to maintain) vehicles in his fleet
\nwithin a few years. I wish him well, and hope to have the time to
\nattend the Commission meeting on Tuesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

After booking a reservation with PlanetTran via email, we were relieved when the taxi did indeed show up a few strokes after 4:30 am on Friday for our trip to Logan Airport (and from thence, to Chicago and then Wisconsin). … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":271,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44935],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-massachusetts-boston-cambridge"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/271"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":481,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/170\/revisions\/481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/anderkoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}