The urban renaissance in Hoboken and downtown Jersey City has resulted in oft made comparisons to New York’s outer boroughs (If you haven’t figured it out by now, New York’s Sixth slyly refers to Jersey City / Hoboken as the fabled Sixth Borough). Yet there is one obstacle that separates New Jersey from the Five Boroughs: taxi cabs.

Step into a cab (literally, inside), and the driver must by law whisk you away to any of the five boroughs, Westchester, Nassau, or the area airports. A needle may be easier to find in a haystack than a yellow cab in the outer boroughs, but a driver can’t refuse to take you there once you get in. Not so with trips to Hoboken or Jersey City.

Travelers heading to the west bank of the Hudson River can be refused service, and even when cab drivers agree, the charges are discretionary. In some cases, cab drivers charge a flat fee around $50. In other cases, drivers cite a fare of twice the meter plus the tunnel toll. Either way, consumers headed home to New Jersey pay about twice the cab fare as those headed to western Brooklyn or Queens.

In fairness of course, yellow cabs can’t pick up passengers in New Jersey, making every mile out of the Holland Tunnel cost them twice as much. But “double meter” fares usually include the entire trip, not just the New Jersey portion. That’s a great deal for those hailing a cab from canal street, but not so much when coming from upper Manhattan or an outer borough.

No part of Hoboken or downtown Jersey City is more than 2 miles from the Holland tunnel. Cabs cost $2 per mile making a $50 fare seems more like price gouging than a reasonable assessment. But there is one thing most cab drivers do in New Jersey: fill up on cheap gas. New York gas costs more than gas in New Jersey, largely because of taxes, and the difference can be twenty to thirty cents a gallon.

Either way, Hoboken councilman Ruben Ramos wants all this to change, according to Hoboken Now. He wrote a letter to the commissioner of the taxicab and limousine commission “regarding exorbitant fees for taxi rides from Manhattan to New Jersey municipalities.” Not that we disagree with his sentiments, but we don’t see the commission doing anything about it.