Sometimes there’s no way home if you’re out and you miss the last train and the last bus. You’re supposed to be able to hail or call a cab.

Depending on who you are, where you are, and where you’re going, though, that is not always a real option.

For example, a certain person I know fell asleep on the last Blue Line train from downtown a few weeks ago and missed the Eastern Market stop, waking up instead at Benning Road. This person, whose name is not Arthur Delaney, could not persuade any cab even to stop for him, much less to drive to Northeast Anacostia to pick him up, so he had to walk all the way home to Capitol Hill (all the while following advice from a passing bike-patrol officer: "Don’t get robbed!").

If you’re black and you want to travel to Anacostia from Northwest, you can just forget it, most of the time.

"I’ve stood there on the corner in the rain dressed decently and watched cab drivers slowly drive by and pick up people no less than 10 feet up the street," says Jon Edwards, a 23-year-old Howard University grad student (and friend of mine). He grew up here, he’s black, and catching a cab home to Anacostia generally is impossible for him. Even if a taxi stops to pick him up, the driver often will tell him to get out after learning where he’s going. It’s maddening: "I really hope that I can die without giving another cab driver another dollar," he says.

"It’s not necessarily that [drivers] don’t want to take that particular type of individual," says Causton Toney, chairman of the D.C. Taxicab Commission. It’s economics: Cabbies don’t want to drive any person a long distance if it isn’t also through many fare-increasing zones, and they don’t want to take a person somewhere they can’t pick up another fare. Refusing to do so is illegal. But without compliance checks on a large scale, there’s nothing to dissuade cabbies from breaking the law.

Refusal-to-haul is just one of the many complaints the D.C. Taxicab Commission heard from D.C. residents at public hearings in September and October. Toney says the commission hopefully will release a report on the hearings before the end of the year.

Another big beef is signage in cabs. Toney says people complain that they want to see the driver’s ID more easily, and they want a clearer zone map. The current backseat map is utterly confusing; it’s an unrecognizable puke-blob on which north isn’t even up. Unless a person already knows how much his or her trip is supposed to cost, a driver can ask for any amount and the almost-totally blank zone map doesn’t help the passenger make a case.

"Guys have to be trained to understand that every passenger has a right to service and that there is going to be a level of accountability," Toney says. "The commission is looking at ways to build into the system stronger incentive to behave properly."

That could mean more rigorous rule enforcement through sting operations, stronger punishments for bad behavior, or a different fare structure.

Until change happens, my recommendation to passengers is: Wear your walking shoes. If you catch a cab, know your fare in advance — don’t get robbed!

Un-Fare: Congress nixes zone system, home rule (again)

President Bush on Oct. 17 signed the D.C. Omnibus Authorization Act, which D.C.’s nonvoting Congressional Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D) hailed as a significant step towards home rule for its provisions allowing the city a greater degree of budget autonomy.

But Sen. Carl Levin (D), no doubt looking out for his constituents in Michigan, inserted into the bill a provision requiring D.C. taxi drivers to adopt a meter system within a year.

Levin’s office declined to comment.

Not wanting federal reign on her home-rule parade, Norton made sure the bill also provided the option for a mayoral meter veto.

"We were able to work with the sponsor of the legislation to avoid a violation of home rule on metered taxicabs with an opt-out provision that leaves the issue where it is today, with the mayor of the District of Columbia," goes a statement released by Norton’s office.

The Taxicab Commission has been trying out meters in a number of cars anyway. Norton and city officials believe a year is plenty of time for the mayor to make up his mind whether to go with a new system or to opt out of Levin’s decree. But that doesn’t mean there’s no resentment towards Congress for telling Washingtonians what to do.

"As a resident of the city, the mayor is always offended when Congress passes these laws that attempt to dictate how the city runs itself," says mayoral spokesman Vince Morris. "As a matter of principle he’s disappointed," but "in the big scheme of things it’s not that serious' because Congress is dictating something the mayor’s already pushing for."

The District never really wanted the zone system in the first place. Zones came about because of a 1933 meter ban by -- who else? Congress.

 Representative democracy: vomit from a disabled mallard

The disenfranchisement of D.C. residents is more prominent in the news now than it has been in recent memory. And D.C. Vote, the nonprofit group committed to winning congressional representation for D.C. residents, is salivating at the prospect of passing voting-rights legislation this year.

Press releases have been flying. The D.C. voting rights bill, introduced by Rep. Tom Davis (R-Va.), has bipartisan support and is on the verge of passing. A recent mass e-mail from D.C. Vote begs people to call the White House and to tell out-of-town friends and family to write their congressmen.

"Our goal is to try to use the last opportunity in this Congress, to move this bill forward," says D.C. Vote Executive Director Ilir Zherka, who is confident about the bill’s prospects.

This legislation is just a start. I it gives the District a vote only in the House. Once it succeeds, if it does, D.C. Vote will switch gears to the fight for home rule and representation in the Senate. It’s all about wrapping up "the unfinished business of the American Revolution," as Zherka puts it.

News stories on the issue have been popping up every day. Even the president — who probably thought he’d washed his hands of this after removing the "Taxation Without Representation" tags from his inaugural limo —  is being forced to pay attention. In response to a reporter’s query about the bill on Nov. 8, Bush acknowledged the importance of representative government, sort of: "I didn't know that's going to come up from the lame duck," he said.