A downtown taxi stand will be up and running again Friday night after securing money from a private donor to keep the stand operating for the rest of the year.
The late-night weekend stand uses cabs from Madison Taxi, Badger Cab and Union Cab companies to pick up customers at a common meeting spot on the 600 block of University Avenue. Madison's Alcohol Policy Coordinator Katherine Plominski said the stand served as many as 700 riders per weekend when it began as a pilot program last April.
Despite the initial success of the pilot, the taxi stand struggled to find financial support needed to continue operating. After a summer hiatus, the stand returned in late August with help from a $1,000 donation from Madison's Central Business Improvement District, but was forced to shut down when the money ran out at the end of October.
Thanks to a private company donation, the taxi stand will now be able to return and run through the rest of 2009. Madison Taxi General Manager and stand supervisor Rick Nesvacil said the money is used to fund a staff monitor who manages the line and dispatches more cabs so customers can get home safely and quickly.
""Instead of standing on street corners waiting for cabs, [customers] can walk over to us, they get in line and within maybe five to 10 minutes we have everybody picked up,"" he said.
The taxi stand will undergo a few changes from its previous way of operating in order to maximize funding. Plominski said the stand will now run on Friday and Saturday nights from midnight to 3 a.m., eliminating the Thursday night service offered last fall due to comparatively low ridership.
Organizers also decided not to run the taxi stand every weekend of the year, instead coordinating its operating schedule with the student calendar. Nesvacil said the stand will run through May and resume service when students return for the fall semester.
Enthusiastic about the stand's revival, Plominski said the service benefits the community in a number of ways, from providing an alternative to drunk driving to improving order in the downtown area on weekend nights.
""Everybody hits the streets, everybody's competing for transportation, for food, for all these other things,"" Plominski said of the bar-time rush. ""The more efficient the taxis were, the less problems we had because it was just less concentration of intoxicated people.""
