After tonight, weekend rides will cost up to $5, with county still picking up the difference

Tonight is the last night to get a free cab ride courtesy of Santa Fe County’s Chauffeur and Designated Driver Program.

The program, called CADDy, which began in June as an attempt to reduce drunken driving, will continue. But starting next Friday, users will be charged $3 to $5 each for a ride, with price breaks given when riders travel together.

County DWI Program Coordinator Becky Beardsley said the plan from the beginning was to run the program during the summer months, then evaluate data and continue it with a small fee if it seemed to be working.

She said Santa Fe police statistics indicate DWI arrests decreased during the test period. County spokesman Stephen Ulibarri said the Santa Fe Police Department told the county 9 percent fewer DWI arrests occurred from June to August 2007 than in the same months of 2006. However, a law-enforcement crackdown on DWI also was in effect over the summer.

County data shows 888 people took advantage of the program. “That’s 888 people who could have potentially driven this summer while intoxicated who did not,” Ulibarri said.

About 68 percent of riders used their free trip to get to or from an establishment that sold alcohol, according to statistics provided by the county.

The program offered free rides from home to anywhere in Santa Fe or from anywhere to the user’s home, from 5:30 p.m. to 2:30 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights. It was paid for with liquor excise tax funds.

The county has paid about $24,277 for 1,544 rides to Capital City Cab since CADDy began. The company charges the county whatever the metered fare is on each ride.

When the service began, the county had set aside only $5,000 for the test period, but it increased the amount after the first weekend when 210 riders racked up $3,427 worth of rides.

Beardsley said demand for the service has fallen, with an average of about 95 people using it each weekend. “But it’s still much higher than we expected,” she said.

About $20,000 remains in a fund set up to extend the program through this year. “And then we’ll budget it again if we see this is something the community really wants,” Beardsley said.

She said almost 100 people filled out written surveys provided in the cabs that gave people free rides. All but three of the comments were positive, she said. The negative comments concerned long waits, but Beardsley said two of the people who wrote them used the service again. She said waits average five to 15 minutes.

The county will consider ways to make rides free on holidays such as Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve if they don’t fall on a Friday or Saturday, Beardsley said.

New fares for the CADDy program are $5 for one passenger, $10 for two or three riders and $15 for four or more passengers. Another new aspect of the program, which originally provided rides only within the city, is that users can pay the set fee to the city limits and then continue to a destination outside the city if they are willing to pay the remainder of the fare.

Capital City Cab will continue to calculate the full fare of each ride under the new CADDy terms but will subtract users’ payments before billing the county for the difference, Beardsley said.

To arrange for a ride from the service, call 995-9528.

Contact Phaedra Haywood at 986-3068 or phaywood@sfnewmexican.com.

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