But protecting our cab drivers is also a sensible publicWM: The cabs have needed this protection since at least the late seventies, when I drove cab. The companies (Red & White, Blue & White, Yellow, etc.) were all too cheap to spring for any sort of screening or protection for the drivers. This scenario has been going on since Eastman's greed for reparian rights caused St. Anthony Falls to cave in. (He wanted yet another tunnel from the end of Nicollet Island to squeeze yet more mills onto the space around the falls. There's a huge painting of the falls caving in at the central library.) When the falls caved, it was the Corps of Engineers who had to come in and pay for the apron so the falls wouldn't peter out into rapids and cancel the raison d'etre for Minneapolis. Mpls. was still milling lumber at the time. Grain milling was still small business at the time.
investment, certainly more beneficial to the city than funding TARGET or
the TWINS.
The same reasoning bailed out Northwest Airlines some years back, supposedly for an overhaul base in Duluth which was "guaranteed" to bring many more jobs. The US bailed out General Motors under the same rubric.
The cab companies have not cared a tinker's dam about their drivers. They knew by 1975 that the safe thing was to install protections in the cabs. They did nothing, still do nothing. I think the pressure should be directed at the cab companies to force them to install thick protection shields. Cab companies are inspected through the city's inspections department. At most the city might assign low interest loans and a deadline for installing them but focused at the cab companies.
WizardMarks, Central
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