It's officially safe to hail a taxi again in the middle of 18th Street in Adams Morgan, as a doomed taxi stand concept has been laid to rest.
The pilot program was supposed to last for 90 days, but the plug was pulled in December and was officially killed off on Friday, according to the Washington Examiner.
The idea was simple: keep taxis from trolling up and down 18th Street and tying up traffic in the heavily crowded bar area. Instead, taxis were supposed to head to taxi stands on each end of 18th and pick up drunken revelers bar patrons who were told to patiently stand in line.
Why didn't it work? Well, quite simply, it was a bad idea. Cabbies weren't happy with it, and some refused to take part. Others just went on side streets and picked up people there instead. Many people didn't even know what the heck they were supposed to do, while others were ticked off they had to wait in lines in Washington's winter chill.
So the pilot program barely got off the ground, and its crash back down to earth was hardly Sully-like.
The best description comes from an ANC chairman:
“I tend to think it’s a little bit like cold fusion or the Bush tax cuts or the Washington Wizards actually being a good basketball team,” Bryan Weaver, chairman of the Adams Morgan Advisory Neighborhood Commission, told the Examiner. “In theory it could work, but in practice it didn’t work at all.”
Will the program be tried again? Possibly, as organizers hinted it could return in the spring.
But until then, it remains ever drunk for himself. And, really, isn't that the way it should be in Adams Morgan?
