Rooks and Rook Carriers
You will have a hard time trying to find a state-owned taxicab these days as practically all state cab companies have broken up or have been turned into service stations and garages. True, some have managed to survive under a new name as private businesses. But we will leave them aside for awhile, focusing instead on their rivals, individual drivers earning their income from working on the side. Ironically dubbed rooks, they prefer to leave that name to their clients, calling themselves rook carriers instead.
Certainly, at some point every car owner has given lifts for money, but, while for the majority this makes only supplementary and casual income, for the rooks it is a business. One of my acquaintances who is also in this business told a story of a rook from Ternopil who loaded his vehicle with cans of gasoline and departed for Kyiv on New Year’s Eve to work as a cabby. He did so for two weeks, sleeping in his car. Incidentally, the capital city draws rooks from other regions like a magnet. It is quite common is when a group of cabbies from one region goes to Kyiv, hires a large apartment, and works for a couple of months. This life has its anecdotes. Recently, one passenger asked a cabby to take him from Artem Street to Lev Tolstoi Square. The driver took the client but stopped at every streetlight to open a huge map of Kyiv to find the shortest way. Understandably, the ride took some time, although costing a mere three hryvnias (a little over half a dollar — Ed.).
STRANGERS DON’T DRIVE HERE
Cabbies from other cities are eyed with scorn by the locals as they charge less and for 3-5 hryvnias are ready to take their customers halfway across the city. By contrast, Kyiv cabbies charge 15-20 hryvnias on average to take you from downtown to the Left Bank of the Dnipro. On the other hand, provincial rooks stand little chance of picking up plum clients at lucrative spots, railway stations, airports, nightclubs, and restaurants where the charges can be way above the average. These spots are worked by closely knit local cabby networks who never let outsiders cut in. As a rule, provincial brethren have no hard feelings, leaving in search of other less competitive grounds. If, however, a newcomer risks stalking a blue chip client, he stands a good chance of being punished for this, with either the local cabbies taking justice into their own hands, or hiring thugs. The means of coercion are far from humane. While the locals might resort to blocking outsiders’ cars or slashing their tires (for which purpose they carry an assortment of sharp instruments like nails or awls) and grab a stunned client in their vehicles, thugs, once called, prefer rougher means of coercion, and you can well guess what they are. If, following this, an ill-fated rook from the provinces has enough strength to leave the place on his own, there is a 100% certainty that he will never return to the spot again. As for protection kickbacks to thugs, they are apparently not too steep for drivers, and typically one of them takes care of such payments. A cabby stationed near a Brazilia or Saigon type nightclub pays about twenty dollars a month in protection money, earning between $20 and $30 on a good night. The money is so good that, on their way back to the club, cabbies do not stop to pick up casual passengers despite higher night charges as it is more profitable for them to get back and wait for another wealthy client pickup near the club.
Enticed by fat payments, provincial drivers resort to smart tactics. They park close to a nightclub in the hope that a client who cannot afford a 50 hryvnia charge for a ride claimed at the doorstep will accept a 30 hryvnia fee some distance away. Some way toward the highway, though, the same ride can be bought for the typical 15 hryvnias. The similar tactics work at other lucrative spots, with slight variations due to daytime conditions. For example, instead of coughing up $20 for a ride from the railroad station to Obolon, you can get the one for ten hryvnias from Urytsky Street.
CABBIES’ GOLDEN AGE
State-owned taxi companies began to quickly lose ground in the early nineties under pressure from mushrooming cabby cooperatives. At the time, a cabby could earn between 100 and 200 rubles a day, after getting a patent and paying a mere 70 rubles a month for it. Note, these were in old and still strong rubles. Such good conFirst, it took a host of permits at the time to start a private taxi business, and it was not easy to get them. Second, many wannabe entrepreneurs were given to Soviet-period stereotypes, fearing fierce competition from the still strong state-owned taxi companies. On the other hand, the new business had its drawbacks, with frequent checks by traffic police giving a hard time to cabbies working without a permit.
Typically, plainclothes police would negotiate a fee to some place with a cabby, then go there only to accuse the driver of illegally rendering services. Although the fines were not small, for cabbies the game was worth it since a cabby could well make from 300 to 400 rubles for a ride from the railroad station or airport to Chernihiv or Zhytomyr, a small fortune compared with the then low gas prices.
APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY
According to cabbies, young men aged about 25 and Balzacian women are plum clients. More often than not, they would not engage in negotiating a fee or starting dull conversations while on the way. In fact, with time every experienced cabby becomes quite a good psychologist, and judging by one’s looks, manner of speech, or other nuances (a hand thrust in one’s pocket or emotional condition of a client), a cabby might come to the decision not to pull up at all or not to go even for a fat fare. In fact, the work of a cabby involves heavy risks and many have paid a price for learning them, with robbery topping the list. The pattern is simple: a passenger in the back seat threatens a driver with a knife or something looking like one, while the one in the front seat grabs the money. Not all were as lucky as one inventive cabby who, threatened by armed robbers, trailed a police car with his bright headlights on to provoke the cops. At the moment, the police reacted immediately and seized the malefactors. Unfortunately, these same cops more often prefer to set up speed traps for drivers.
For the number of clients, the rooks’ best time is morning and evening rush hours. For money, the best time comes at night when they can operate without any competition. There is one interesting detail: it costs five times less to get from the city outskirts to the center than the other way around. This is because all cabbies always want to return downtown, and that is why catching a ride there for a lesser fare is so easy.
With rooks, holidays present a special time. Cabdrivers are among the few professions that put in most of their work on such days. Typically, a cabby sees in the New Year in with his family and immediately leaves for work, even without the traditional glass of champagne and never grumbles. Their major worry is that due to the huge competition their takes on such holidays as the New Year or Independence Day have shrunk to what they used to earn on quite ordinary days off in the early nineties.
INSTEAD OF AN AFTERWORD
In general, experts estimate that there are as many as 12,000 illegal cabbies in Kyiv, with about 15% of fessional groups. We have mentioned earlier that, stationed in the most lucrative spots in terms of financial profits, gypsy cabs keep a watchful eye on any poachers from the provinces. Just like newcomers to Kyiv, even licensed cabdrivers can be punished for intruding on sacred turf. Illegal cabs cost the city budget about 7-8 million hryvnias in lost revenues. But, strange enough, the local government seem to be quite happy with it. The authority of the city council covers only shuttle taxi busses, was the answer given to The Day by representatives of the local government.
Before the collapse of the Soviet Union, the state-run taxi companies were supervised by the Transport Ministry. Then Kyiv was serviced by a fleet of from 3,500 to 4,000 cabs distributed among the capital’s four companies, large enough to meet Kyiv’s needs. The standard of service was quite remarkable, with conductors on in-coming trains selling taxi boarding coupons and reporting the number of such sold coupons to a dispatcher in the capital. The latter ordered an appropriate number of cabs, and passengers with coupons could take taxies ahead of the usual lines. A similar procedure was used at the River Port and Boryspil Airport. The work of cabdrivers was controlled by two lights, green and red, installed above the windshield. When the meter was on, the red light was also on, indicating the presence of a passenger, while a car without a passenger had a green light on. Any inconsistency in this procedure meant being stopped by a traffic cop, with the delinquent cabby facing a fine or even dismissal. It would be naive to say that in the past cabbies were honest and brought all their fees to the company’s cash desk. But, given the system of total control, they were very watchful about earning extra money. Now licensed cabbies have a grudge against the local government because they do not operate on a par with illegal rooks. Working legally, from every 5,000 earned in fares a law-abiding cabdriver pays 1,700 in taxes. Understandably, illegal cabbies do not care about paying taxes. Moreover, in the absence of the legislation regulating transport by cabs, neither the tax authorities, nor the police have the right to deal with illegal cabdrivers. But this practice exists only in the post-Soviet states. Elsewhere in the world, such a notion as illegal cab driving is nonexistent because there are appropriate laws and a rigid system of licensing. For their part, fearing to lose their jobs, licensed cabbies are the best watchdogs against illegal rooks. The lost-profit shortfall for the Kyiv budget vividly demonstrates that the authorities should have long ago addressed this problem. Could such a lack of action be a reflection of what is going on in Russia’s capital? Moscow Mayor Luzhkov explains his reluctance to combat illegal cabs and pass the needed legislation by the likelihood of social turmoil, and for quite an obvious reason: for many rooks illegal cab driving is the only way to scrape up some money for their families.
