D.C. MAYOR ADRIAN FENTY today reaffirmed May 1 as the mandatory date for the city's taxi drivers to install time-and-distance meters in their cars or face $1,000 fines each time they're caught without them.

Drivers who are found operating cabs without meters during May will be issued a warning ticket. They must then install a meter or the warning will convert to the $1,000 fine, The Post's Paul Duggan and David Nakamura report.

D.C. Council member Jim Graham said the fine wasn't Fenty's idea — it emerged from the city's taxicab commission, he said — but that the amount was an intentionally eye-popping incentive to get drivers to foot the $350-$500 bill to install the required meters.

"I commend the Mayor for this approach. There has to be psychological acclimation," Graham said. "Would you be happy to get a $1,000 ticket? I just asked somebody [on the street] that question, and they said they'd move out of town [if slapped with such a fine]."

"We're going to have to just do our best to get these meters installed," Graham said.

Photo by Michael Williamson/The Washington Post

Posted by Clinton Yates at 12:58 PM on April 22, 2008
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