Water taxis are local secret
Fleet's owner sees room for new wave of customers
Take a good look out on the harbor and you might spot one of Rob McPherson's water taxis, a melon-and-white checkered flag flying from the bow, breezing along to retrieve or deposit a passenger. Relatively little-known to Bostonians, McPherson's nine-boat fleet, collectively known as City Water Taxi, operates on the same principle as street cabs: Call when you need one, and it comes to you.
Just after 3 p.m. on a recent, cloudless Friday, McPherson received a typical request.
Two men facing a three-hour layover at Logan Airport were looking for something to eat. They were South African professors who had never been to Boston.
"Do you like seafood?" McPherson asked the pair, who met the boat at a dock in front of the Hyatt Harborside Hotel, the service's "airport" stop. The men shook their heads.
"How about Italian?" McPherson offered. They settled on Long Wharf, McPherson's stop closest to the North End restaurants and one of 18 points City Water Taxi serves (the others include the Seaport World Trade Center, Lovejoy Wharf by North Station, and the Charlestown Navy Yard).
Those who use the service tend to be, like the professors, business travelers shuttling to or from the airport, or weekend tourists wanting to see Faneuil Hall or connecting with a Provincetown ferry from Long Wharf or the World Trade Center. Most Bostonians, McPherson said, have only a vague idea of how the service works.
On the seven-minute ride downtown, the city closed in on both sides: To the east, Piers Park and East Boston's shipyard and marina, and to the west, the
At Long Wharf, the men paid the roundtrip fare - $17 apiece - saying they'd call after their meal for a return trip to the airport.
"Where else can you get that kind of service?" McPherson asked once the men had gone. "Your own private boat taking you where you want to go."
McPherson, 62, is a tall, wiry man with a direct and affable manner. His outfit, which he started in 1992, is one of two year-round taxi services on the harbor. The other, run by Rowes Wharf Water Transport, keeps the same hours (7 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Saturday, and 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. on Sunday), charges fixed fares ($10 one-way, $17 roundtrip for most stops), and serves most of the same stops.
Every now and again, workaday commuters also avail themselves of the service: One morning in the middle of last month, a power outage on the MBTA's Blue Line drove a dozen or so resourceful passengers stranded at Maverick Station to McPherson's boat.
McPherson, naturally, wished more of the T's passengers had joined them. "I could put a ton of boats out in a hurry to get people downtown," he said, and lamented that no one at the East Boston station had directed the commuters to the taxi dock.
His boat was idling at Long Wharf when two young, tanned men holding suitcases approached.
"Where you headed, sirs?" McPherson asked. The men, visiting firefighters who had been at Harvard for a national conference on pensions, were going to the airport. McPherson beckoned them aboard.
After dropping off the men at the Hyatt Harborside (from there, passengers can take a free shuttle to the airport), he recorded the trip in his log book and tore a number from a roll on the dock, much like the numbers one would find at a deli. Because Rowes Wharf Water Transport also uses this dock, the numbers dictate which of the two services is "top taxi," or the boat that gets the next fare.
"I know I have a place in this world when I have a number," McPherson said, waving hello to a Rowes Wharf driver.
Before starting City Water Taxi, McPherson captained a lobster boat and served in the Navy and the merchant marine. He also worked three years for the Rowes Wharf service, in those days known as Rowes Wharf Water Shuttle. Though relations between the two companies have not always been smooth, McPherson said, they are now good for the most part, an assessment with which his rival agreed.
"It works out very well when everyone is playing by the rules," said Jason Heywood, operations manager for Rowes Wharf Water Transport.
There seems enough business to go around, especially in the summer. During those busy months, McPherson said, he typically works seven days a week and employs as many as 18 drivers, serving perhaps 200 passengers each day.
He said his business has increased steadily through the years, spiking in 2006 after the Ted Williams Tunnel collapse and then slipping a bit last year. And he's taken all kinds of passengers, including the occasional celebrity.
"I had the mailman from 'Cheers' on here once."
Today, his passengers are the typical crew, though, on the familiar route between the Hyatt Harborside and Long Wharf, which he has taken to calling the "east-west treadmill." An Australian orthopedic surgeon was leaving a conference at the Hyatt for dinner in the North End. A family from Wayland, N.Y., in town for a medical procedure for their youngest son, was headed back to the airport.
"We thought it would be cheaper than taking a cab," said Rob Hoffman, the father. Though he, his wife, and three children had been to Boston many times, they had never taken a water taxi.
"It's definitely different," he said.
