Feature: Hell Called. It Wants Its Cabs Back.

In Philly, most cab drivers can’t even dream of buying one of those 1,600 medallions. There are several hundred owners of Philadelphia medallions — some have one or two, some have many — who lease them to drivers. Many cities, including New York, where medallions go for about $900,000 apiece, operate under the same system — but we’re still way behind the times.

Simon Abitbol is one of Philly’s most prominent and wealthy medallion owners. In 1999, he moved here from New York, where he had started as a driver and eventually worked his way to owning one of the city’s largest cab fleets. But he left it all behind because there was a fresh opportunity here.

Back then, medallions sold for about $50,000, and Abitbol knew that was a problem. With a regulatory system in the dumps and the sale and transfer of medallions handled by just two brokers, he realized no one was actively investing in the city’s cab industry. So he started buying and selling medallions in order to break up the party and share the wealth; banks offering would-be medallion owners better financing rates helped the process along.

Medallion values in Philly rose rapidly, and the value of the medallion, says Abitbol, is everything. For one, it encourages new revenue possibilities for the industry. For instance, if the state decided to add 30 new Philly medallions at their current value, that’s a $9 million windfall that could potentially then be invested in newer vehicles and technologies. A higher medallion value also encourages more responsible investing, which in turn should encourage better service. It’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg business gamble: Would nicer cabs and better-trained drivers increase ridership significantly? We won’t really know until we try it. But with increased ridership, drivers would obviously earn more, and medallion owners could then charge more to lease them.

In November, Abitbol, who says he owns more than 200 medallions, was awarded a $900,000 grant from Harrisburg to put 50 new handicap-accessible, natural-gas-fueled vehicles on the street. A score for the good fight, and an indication that perhaps the millions of dollars flowing through the medallion system will be the source of our taxicab redemption.

IN SPEEDY’S TAXI, with the small Jamaican flag dangling from the rearview mirror like a talisman, I can’t help but think that what makes our city’s cab experience so sad and lack-luster has just as much to do with the human stories behind it as it does the money and political will that may one day fix our cabs. Maybe the medallion owners will eventually give us our touchscreens and hybrids. Maybe the PPA, which just released a new 236-page book of proposed rules and regulations that include retiring cabs after 200,000 miles, will be the good cop after all. Maybe.