Hailing a Booster

One of the first impressions many visitors get of a city comes from their cabbie, often the kind of grouch who would have honked at Lady Godiva for slowing up traffic. But when a recent visitor to Omaha joked with his driver about the city, he was amazed at the rebuttal: a glowing description of Omaha's waterfront development project along the Missouri River. "You should see the barge traffic going through here now," the driver boasted.

Impressed, the visitor told Omaha Mayor Eugene Leahy about his upbeat arrival by cab. As a result, all six of the area's taxi companies have agreed to send their drivers to briefings and guided tours of the 54-mile waterway project. "They can be the greatest goodwill, or bad-will, ambassadors," explains the mayor. It remains to be demonstrated whether the indoctrinations will succeed in altering the seemingly irrepressible urge of a taxi driver to knock rather than boost.

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