COMMENTARY: Las Vegas taxi cabs and the shortest — or fastest — distance between two points

When it comes to driving, “short” has two possible meanings: a) distance and b) time. Indeed, the shortest distance between Point A and Point B might be not be the shortest distance in terms of time if the road — say, the Strip — is clogged to a standstill.

Most people already know this, but there’s this app on your smart-phone called “GPS” that you can look at and immediately determine whether there’s a traffic jam on your intended route. If so, and you want to get from Point A to Point B in the shortest time, you might very well take a longer route.

Leave it to government to screw up something so simple.

As Art Marroquin of the Review-Journal reported last week, Nevada taxi laws — which “haven’t been updated in more than 40 years” — require cabbies to take the “most direct route” from Point A to Point B. And Ron Grogan, chief bureaucrat for the Nevada Taxicab Authority, narrowly interprets “most direct” to mean distance and only distance — regardless of traffic conditions.

Which means even if the Strip is a virtual parking lot, taxi drivers aren’t allowed to take the “back way” — an alternative route behind Strip casinos — if the distance is greater, even if the trip itself would be a lot shorter and less expensive for the customer.

Doh!

This is the kind of common sense-defying idiocy you get when you allow government regulatory bureaucrats to micromanage the private sector. It’s also what happens when a few bad apples spoil the barrel.

The reason this is such a contentious issue is that a small number of unscrupulous Las Vegas taxi drivers “long-haul” visitors — intentionally taking passengers on a longer route to drive up the fare, not to save time. And when the practice was discovered and exposed a few years ago, it opened the door for government regulators to do what they do best … make a bad situation worse.

The fact is taking the “back way” to Strip casinos and resorts saves visitors both time and money. The taxicab companies know it. And the five appointed board members of the authority reportedly know it. But Mr. Grogan is now doing the second best thing paper-pushing bureaucrats do: Covering his butt.

As Mr. Marroquin reports, Mr. Grogan has sent a letter to the state attorney general’s office asking it to define for him what “most direct route” means rather than, you know, using common sense and making the decision himself.

In the meantime, the authority continues to issue citations to cab drivers it accuses of long-hauling rather than simply outlining alternative routes that the Legislative Counsel Bureau could review to determine legality.

“We’re still plodding along,” laments NTA board Chairman Stan Olsen with understandable exasperation, “year after year, accomplishing nothing.” Which, I think, is a direct quote from the Bureaucrats’ Creed.

The shortest distance between this Point A government foolishness and the Point B resolution of the problem would appear to be taking Mr. Grogan out of the decision-making process altogether. Alas, removing an obstructionist, CYA government bureaucrat takes something just shy of an act of God. Sad.

Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach and publisher of NevadaNewsandViews.com. He blogs at MuthsTruths.com.