Beyond the Sun
Brynn Korolchuck, 24, is not unlike any of the thousands of young professionals trying to make their way in Las Vegas. She works hard. She pays her bills.
On the weekends she likes to go out. And she likes to be responsible about getting home.
She takes a cab.
That’s the problem. After a night downtown, she has trouble finding a cabbie willing to make the roughly 20-mile journey back to her home in Green Valley — about a $40 ride.
“I get in the cab, and they say, ‘We don’t go there. Get out,’ ” Korolchuck said.
That is illegal. Cabbies can refuse to give a customer a ride only if they “have a reason to fear for their personal safety.” It’s hard to imagine the 5-foot-6 woman would seem threatening to a driver who makes a living picking up all sorts of characters.
It’s tough to say how often cabbies refuse the trip. But more than a dozen people interviewed for this story said they had been refused a ride to Summerlin or Henderson from either the Strip or downtown — or that it had been suggested that only a large tip would make it worth the driver’s time (Full disclosure: This has happened to Sun reporters).
The accepted theory is that cabbies do not want to face a drive back to the Strip without a fare, when they could be taking tourists around to different casinos.
“Nobody wants to come out here because they can’t get anyone to drive,” said Kristen Caporale, 25, of Summerlin. She has had to promise a large tip to get home.
Alison Monaghan, 24, recalls one night trying to get a cab home after having a few cocktails at Harrah’s piano bar. One driver laughed at her.
Finally, after 15 minutes of watching group after group hop into cabs, a driver took pity — after she and her friends promised a $20 tip.
Elisabeth Shurtleff, a spokeswoman for the state Business and Industry Department, which oversees taxis in Nevada, said few complaints are made about cabbies refusing to head to the suburbs, “mostly because consumers usually have other cabs available to them if one refuses to take them the distance they’ve requested.”
Customers can file complaints by phone or through the department’s Nevada Taxicab Authority Web site. If cited, drivers face a $100 fine for a first offense. The fine increases $100 for each additional offense. After five transgressions, a driver’s cab license can be revoked.
Korolchuck and others who spoke to the Sun said they had never filed a complaint. But that doesn’t mean they don’t complain. “I’m pretty irate about it,” Korolchuck said. “I think it’s discrimination. I want to go home and maybe I can’t for a couple of hours.”
In fairness, some Strip-goers interviewed by the Sun said they had never had a problem getting a ride to the suburbs. Sandy Heverly, executive director of the Las Vegas-based Stop DUI, said she hadn’t heard of the ride refusals.
Other cities that experience the problem have addressed it by tacking on fees for passengers who ask to leave city limits. In Chicago, a passenger pays 1 1/2 times the in-town fare to go to the suburbs.
Shurtleff said the Nevada Taxicab Authority has never considered that type of fee.
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