Mirror File Photo

Mirror File Photo

In a college town such as Fairfield, certain things are expected to be available and to work properly, such as a cab system. It would make sense that with around 400 seniors living at the beach, we should be able to get to and from campus to the beach by cab and have it not be an extremely tiring affair.

However, in the town of Fairfield, it is an incredibly defunct system. Fairfield Cab Company is the only taxi service allowed on campus, and cabs take over 30 minutes to arrive after receiving a call, even during the middle of the day. At night you might as well forget it, and walk to the beach or Bravo; chances are you will get their before a cab gets to you.

Last year on a Tuesday night, there would be a gathering of students at the front gate to get a cab because they knew that the cab would never make it past the first gate, no matter what you said to the dispatcher. With fewer than 10 cabs from Fairfield Cab Company for a school of over 3,300 students, the math just does not seem to work out, especially when they are also serving the rest of the town of Fairfield with a population of 57,340. That is 10 cabs on a Friday night for basically 60,000 people.

The stories regarding the Fairfield cab services present a wide spectrum of unique situations from drivers coming to pick students up in their pickup trucks when they are off-duty, to buying alcohol for passengers after the students’ fake IDs have been turned down, to a driver being issued a criminal trespass warning (not being allowed back on campus) earlier this year after doing donuts in the snow with passengers behind Donnarumma, Not to mention, they are known for their extortionist prices that they charge when squeezing in an illegal passenger. With drivers doing donuts on campus, one would wonder whether a drunk driver or a cab driver would be the safer person behind the wheel.

Students, for the most part, look past these many shortcomings because of the end result: they get us where we need to be eventually. Eileen Delaney ’11 said, ‘Whenever I walk in there, they’re good about service, but sometimes on the phone they blow you off.’

But a cab service should never give you the feeling of being blown off.’ Whether you are sitting in a cab station or on the phone with the cab service, the customer expects good service.’ However, it seems as though the Fairfield Cab Compnay may’ have something against the students of Fairfield.

Sarah Kennedy ’11 said, ‘Well I think some of the drivers are creepy; it’s just a pain sometimes having to wait for them because there are so few cabs for the number of students who want to take them, especially on popular going out nights at Fairfield.’
‘ A surprising factor about Fairfield Cab is the state of the cabs themselves. You would expect in a town such as Fairfield that they would want their cabs to be pristine. I could understand sending cabs that are worse for wear to Fairfield on a Friday night because of the risk of vomit or other damage. However, when families take these cabs from the train station to the admissions building on campus, what type of message does it send about the town of Fairfield?

While Fairfield Cab provides students with a service, having only one cab company does a great disservice to students. When they are late, students can miss trains; when they drive recklessly and act in a sketchy manner towards passengers, it turns off students from using the cab company all together, forcing them to walk to their destinations if they have no other option.’ Having under 10 cabs on a Friday night is just not practical, and something must be done, even if it means a new cab company.

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