Tourists often decide to visit Las Vegas in part because of its many cheap travel options, including cheap airplane tickets, discount hotel rooms, and cheap vacation packages. Visitors to the city might be surprised to learn that Clark County taxi drivers sometimes take unsuspecting tourists on the scenic route to and from the airport.
Such extended cab rides cost tourists an estimated $14.8 million in 2012, according to a legislative audit recently released. These roundabout rides ran up the meter in the taxis and were found on almost 23 percent of the over 2,700 airport trips that were reviewed by the auditors.
Given that Taxicab trips are often the first and last experience tourists have in Las Vegas, auditors warned that long hauling may result in tourists having a negative experience.
The Clark County Taxicab Authority has not audited individual taxicab companies in over 3 and years. The state Legislature allocated more funds in 2003 so that the Taxicab Authority could audit cab companies on a timely basis. However the legislative audit determined that authority managers were assigning staff members to other tasks instead of the intended audits.
Another concern of the recent audit was that over half of the 600 driver trip sheets reviewed did not have proper time stamps which help ensure that drivers are not working too many hours and driving while fatigued.
Auditors recommended that the authority needs to better monitor the inventory of medallions: the metal plates that authorize a taxis operation. They found that one company reported two thirds of its medallions had been lost or stolen over the last six years.
Each permanent medallion annually generates an average of $190,000 in gross revenue. Poor records could result in some taxi companies gaining an unauthorized share of the market, making it hard for Taxi Authority board members to decide whether more cabs should be permitted to operate.
The downside to having too few medallions is that passengers would suffer excessive waits for rides. Too many medallions would result in too little work for drivers and encourage them to take passengers on unnecessarily long drives to make up for lost revenue.
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