Will There Be A ...

A while back, Tariq Mehmood announced a 24 hours strike on August 2nd, but the winds of revolt may have died down. I don't keep up with Mehmood's decrees but, last I heard, the self-proclaimed "powerful and great leader" was thinking about pulling back to the usual ho-hum honkathon at City Hall.


If I'm reading the tea leaves correctly, I think other protest leaders have decided to either follow suit or not protest at all. And, indeed, why should they? The MTA has already compromised or agreed to compromise on most of the driver's concerns.


Plus, it doesn't made a lot of sense to protest on a day when San Francisco's cab drivers almost certainly will be given a 20% raise.


The raise is one of two taxi items on the agenda for the SFMTA Board meeting on Tuesday.


1. A Meter Increase 


of 10 cents for every 1/5th of a mile and 10 cents for every minute of waiting time, which was worked out by drivers at Town Hall meetings, has already been approved by the board.


In addition the board will discuss adding 40 cents to the flag drop thus raising the drop to $3.50.


That there is to be no discussion of a gate increase at this meeting is a good sign for the drivers. Hopefully, this means that the board has wisely decided that there should be no gate increase for the foreseeable future. If so, drivers will get a 20% raise even if credit card fees continue to be passed on by the companies.


2. The Issuance of New Medallions


The plan on the agenda calls for:

• 50 new single operator part-time taxi permits.
• 25 new full time permits given to drivers on the list.
• 10 new full time permits to be sold by the MTA.
• 2 full-time temporary electric vehicle permits.

The presence of this item is a good sign because it means that the back-door efforts of John Lazar of Luxor Cab and Jim Gillespie of Yellow Cab to kill the item (so that they could flood the city with taxis) failed.


Appointing Edward Reiskin to the position of  Director of Transportation, effective August 15, 2011, will also be on the agenda.


What can also be expected is an hysterical, full-bore, slanderous, misogynistic attack on Deputy Director of Taxi Services Christiane Hayashi by the  Mehmood. I'm sure that Tariq sees this as his last best chance to get rid of the nice lady that he's demonized. In this he'll be backed by a group of misinformed drivers who've never met and don't know Hayahsi, and a few of the more corrupt cab companies who want to continue cheating drivers out of their money.


It would be nice if taxi people who have worked with the Deputy Director and know what a fair, honest and brilliant administrator she has been would speak on her behalf. If you've done this before, please to do it again if you can. Show Director Reiskin the support she really has in the cab community. You owe it to yourselves.


The SFMTA Board meeting will be held at Room 400 City Hall at 1 P.M. Public comment usually takes place fairly soon after the meetings begin.

What Happened to the Good Old Days?

The taxicab industry has always been divided but not that long ago we all came together in a spirit of mutual respect and cooperation and saved the business with a plan that gave a little to everybody but not too much to anybody. 


Look at that picture. They're all there: representatives from all the major companies and driver's organizations and drivers themselves sitting or standing around the mediator of that peace, Deputy Director Christiane Hayashi.


That was only a year and a half ago. Hard to believe isn't it? Look what's happened since:


We've had a Taxi Advisory Council that, as one of their first acts, voted to give their own members and their kin medallions as key personnel, without having to follow the same rules as everyone else.


We've had Tariq Mehmood (sitting so politely in the second row) turn himself into a local fool by running around making asinine slanders against Hayashi at every city meeting he can find and to every public official who will agree to listen to him - as if lies could become truth through repetition.


And, of course we've had endless protests lately - including a few against agreements that many of the protesters themselves helped to formulate at Town Hall Meetings. And now they're threatening to strike even if they get what they want - despite the fact (as previously noted) that the protesters have no unified goal. And, if they do strike on August 2nd, it will be on a day when (in all probability) new medallions will be issued to the Waiting List and drivers will get a 22% raise.


Adding to this absurdity, we have Luxor, Yellow and Desoto Cabs going behind Hayashi's back to temporary Executive Director of the SFMTA Debra Johnson, trying to undercut a plan that was developed through Town Hall Meetings for the issuance of 50 Single Operator Permits and 35 medallions to the List (25 issued to the top of the list and 10 sold by the SFMTA). And, this is a plan that their own company representatives agreed to at a TAC meeting. 


They don't want no Single Operator Permits or 35 new medallions right now because issuing a these few medallions might relieve the pressure to flood the city with taxis later. They don't want no studies of whether new medallions are needed or not. They don't want no outside input. They want 500 taxis, they want them immediately and they don't want to give anyone else a chance to speak. Corporate oligarchy at its finest.


As if Ms. Johnson would be stupid enough to unleash another whirlwind of protest over 500 new medallions during her last few weeks as SFMTA chief,  just before she steps down to work for her successor, Ed Reiskin.


When Johnson didn't go along with their plan, the company reps went running off to peddle the same soap to Mayor Ed Lee with hopefully the same result. Why would Lee undermine Reiskin, his own favorite candidate for SFMTA director?


And all this when the country is on the brink of a politically induced recession.


I'm tempted to make  a call for unity - like the Beatles' song "Come Together Right Now." But, with all these clowns running around out there, I don't know if it's worth the gesture.


At least we in the taxicab business don't need to worry about being divided and conquered from the outside.  

A Review of the Protests: A Unified Front?

 Ursula, "He's got go anyhow."
Gudrun, "I know - ccertainly he's got go. Unfortunately, where does his go go to?"
                                              D. H. Lawrence Women in Love

Cab driver and medallion holder Brad Newsham (photo, center) has been charged up by the protests at City Hall and by Yellow Cab driver Tariq Mehmood's ability to organize demonstrations.

"Tariq ... has at least tapped the passion of the larger driver body in ways that I, and others, have hoped to do over the years, but at which we have failed miserably," Brad wrote to me in a comment.  "I hope we can use this moment of passion to throw off the MTA's yoke, to reject and demolish their plan to use the cab industry as a cash cow ... And I hope we can find some unity of purpose as we move forward."

Judging from the above and other statements he's made, Brad appears to think that if enough drivers passionately unify to "strike" often enough and loud enough the "yoke" and the "cash cow" will somehow magically disappear.

You'd think the unity of purpose would have to come first. But here are few things more addictive than an adrenalin rush.

I couldn't help but notice, for instance, that a great deal of that "passion"of the last "strike" was directed, not against the SFMTA or their policies, but by one group of drivers against others. Newsham himself (along with fellow protesters like Mark Gruberg and Rua Graffis of the United Taxicab Workers and others) was slammed by Mehmood and his followers for supporting Deputy Director of Taxi Services Christiane Hayashi whom Tariq pathologically hates.

Other drivers were booed by some taxi drivers at the MTA Board meeting following the protests for supporting a plan that had been negotiated by taxi drivers (including a few of the one's doing the booing) at a series of Town Hall Meetings.

In addition, Mehmood and Newsham have diametrically opposed ideas of how the cab business should operate. Brad wants a return to the days of Prop-k when medallion were not sold but given to drivers on a waiting list. Tariq wants open auctions.

A Divided Industry

This is not a business where a word like unity makes much sense. The normal divide between owners and workers is but a hint how split this industry is. There are divisions between:

• Large cab companies and small cab companies.
• Medallion holders and companies.
• Medallion holders who bought their medallion prior to Proposition K (Pre K's) and those who "earned" their medallions (Post-K's).
• New medallion holders who've recently bought their medallions and other medallion holders.
• Medallion holders and non-medallion holding drivers.
• Non-medallion holders who are on the Waiting List to either get a medallion or buy one and non-medallion holders not on the list. 
• Drivers who work for companies with good dispatching services and those who don't.
• Yellow Cab driver Ivonne (photo) and the rest of us.

And none of the above takes into account the interests of the City, the MTA or the general public.

A Short Study in Complexity; or, How Not to Negotiate

MTA Director Malcom Heinicke wanted Peak Time Permits that were run by the taxi companies to be part of a compromise plan to add more cabs to the taxi fleet. This has been talked about for 30 years because it makes sense. There is way too much business for taxis to handle on Friday nights and way too many cabs on the street on Monday nights.

But at the Town Hall Meetings nobody wanted such permits - least of all the taxi companies. Instead the idea of Single Operator Permits (SLP) held sway. The SLP's would serve the same purpose except that they would be operated by cab drivers instead of companies  - specifically drivers who had worked in the industry for a long time but were not yet eligible to earn or buy a medallion.

It seemed like a win win win. More drivers would become their own bosses, there would be no more cabs on the street during slow times and the public would be served by having more taxis when needed.

A group of non-medallion drivers on the Waiting List presented some opposition because they wanted all new cabs to go to them. But the SLP concept was liked by most people at the Town Hall Meetings including Tariq Mehmood. There were different ideas, though, concerning how the SLP's should operate.

Mehmood and his disciples wanted the cabs to be run at fixed times. Most other people at the meetings like the ideal of a more flexible time frame. 

I won't go into the details but the logical thing to do would have been to try one solution and, if that didn't work, to try the other.

What Tariq Mehmood did instead was to take his clique into another room, come back, claim that all nine of his people favored his plan and that they were the majority so the majority should rule.

Other people at the meeting disagreed with them so Mahmood included an attack against Single Operator Permits as part of his "strike."

Enough Protests Already

A major reason for having a protest is to have the Powers-That-Be negotiate with the workers. The SFMTA has indeed done this with a series of Town Hall Meetings.

A more important reason is to get the Powers-That-Be to change their policies. The MTA has done this by: 

• Granting a 20% meter increase.
• Putting an end to the need for waybills.
• Putting Open Taxi Access on the agenda.
• Trying to reduce the 5% credit card fees.
• Re-examining their policy on back-seat terminals.

 On the other hand, it's not realistic to expect anything more than a compromise. The City and the public have their interests too. It's also childish to expect complicated issues to be solved immediately. It might take months to negotiate lower credit card fees, for instance, and (partly because of the constant protests) there hasn't been time to complete a study on the effects on the public of back-seat terminals.

The most recent protest was probably already one too many. The MTA was (and is) already negotiating with the drivers - which is more than any other Power-That-Be has done in the twenty-seven years I've been driving taxis. The one positive - looking into 3% credit card fees - could have been achieved without a protest.

There also were negative aspects to the "strike" that people like Newsham choose to ignore (see next post.)

I have a simple question. In an environment of "passion"as opposed to compromise or thought, in a world where people"strike" over petty details, how does one decide which group of strikers and which policies to support? 

The truth is that it's simply not possible to balance the various interests and solve the complicated problems in this business by honking horns and shouting. 

Next: Perpetual Strikes or the Fine Art of Shooting Yourself in the Foot.

Town Hall Meeting: Meter increase

Let me start by saying that I think that a meter increase will take place. It would have to be approved by the SFMTA Board but it appears as if they will approve a reasonable raise.

The only questions are: how much of an increase and how would such an increase be calculated.

The chart on the left was a working tool used to look at various possibilities.

Factors considered were:

• The initial drop.
• Distance and waiting time.
• Radio dispatch fees.
• Gas surcharge fees.

Needless to say that in four sessions there were an incredible number of suggestions. But, toward the end, the mood was summarized as K.I.S.S. - Keep It Simple Stupid.

The feeling was against gas surcharges per se (visible surcharges that is) and, if there was a to be a radio dispatch fee, it should probably be a set price of maybe $2. At least that was my impression - a lot of people had a lot of different ideas.

Toward the end three main plans held sway or at least my attention:

1. Christopher Fulkerson called for no increase in the drop and an additional 10 cents for every 1/5th of a mile which would bring the price to 55 cents every 1/5th of mile.
2. Tariq Mehmood called for no increase in the drop, an additional 10 cents per 1/5 of a mile plus an another additional 10 cents per 1/5 of a mile for a gas surcharge which brings the price to 65 cents for every 1/5th of a mile.
3. Tone Lee, on the other hand, wanted no increase in the drop but he only wanted an increase in the number of clicks from 5 to 6 per miles - meaning that there would be 45 cent for every 1/6th of mile.

I should say that there were quickie votes taken at both sessions and the Mehmood plan won by narrow margins in both cases. (Of course a nitpicker might point out that Mehmood had stacked the meeting with disciples so the votes were, shall we say, dubious). Nonetheless the powerful and great Tariq proclaimed this as THE DRIVER'S PLAN.

What we need is a quick comparison. 

 At current rates with a 3.10 drop and 45 cents per 1/5th of a mile. (Using calculations from the above chart as a starting point.)

• A 3 miles ride with 3 minutes of waiting time = $10.75
• A 13 mile SFO with 5 minutes of waiting time  = 34.15

Under the Fulkerson Plan with a 3.10 drop and 55 cents per 1/5th of mile. 

• 3 mile ride = $12.45
• 13 mile SFO = $41.05

Under the Tone Lee Plan with a 3.10 drop and 45 cent per 1/6th of a mile

• 3 mile ride = $11.20
• 13 mile SFO = $40.00

Under THE DRIVER'S PLAN

• 3 mile ride = $13.75
• 13 miles SFO = $47.15

Of course these are rough estimates.

• Increasing the drop to 3.50 that would add 40 cents to these totals.
• Deputy Director Hayashi wanted to add 75 cents as a gas/credit card surcharge.
• A radio response fee would add $2.00 or $5.00 depending.

 The majestic Mehmood, realizing that a ride to SFO would be a tad high under THE DRIVER'S PLAN , declared that there shall be a flat rate to the airport of $40 from downtown and $45 from Fisherman's Wharf.

Faced with the criticism that THE DRIVER'S PLAN would lose business by making the rides too expensive in the outer areas of the city, no less a personage than the great and powerful Tariq Mehmood himself decreed that there shall also be flat rates from areas like the Excelsior, the Ingleside, Park Merced, the Outer Richmond and the Outer Sunset.

Although I have been told (both in person and with vague threats and obscenities sent as comments to my blog) by Tariq the Terrible and THE DRIVERS, that I am forbidden to speak, I will add my two cents anyway.

I think that something along the lines of either Tone Lee's or Fulkerson's plan will be adopted - possibly with a gas surcharge on the drop as long as it's kept under $4.00.

THE DRIVER'S PLAN is both too complicated and far too expensive. The burden of the cost would fall on people taking shorter rides - especially paratransit people. For that reason alone, the MTA almost certainly will not adopt it.

Deputy Director Hayashi said, that in the future, the cost-of-living need for a meter increase will be reviewed every two years so we won't have wait 9 years for the next raise.

Hayashi also said that she will advise the SFMTA Board NOT to allow the companies to increase the gate as a quid pro for relieving them of the credit card charges.

This Week's Town Hall Meetings

There were four sessions of Town Hall Meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday. For those of us who went to them all it was just like a weekend in the Caribbean. 

It was almost more of an event than a meeting.

Various members of the press were there including Zoe Corneli of the online paper The Bay Citizen.

Members of the SFMTA hierarchy showed up including Executive Director Nat Ford who stopped by for about an hour. He was reported as saying that he thought Hayashi was doing a good job.

The MTA also sent Julia Rosenberg (Photo) and Henry Epstein to record the the proceeding and take down the driver's comments. Despite the expression I captured in the picture, she's a very friendly person.

And, of course, no meeting would complete without Tariq Mehmood and his impassioned disciples (See photo of acolyte yelling at Hayashi). They were generally well behaved -  except, of course, for Tariq himself who often acted as if he was running the proceeding, made his usual, paranoid personal attacks on Hayashi and shouted down anybody who tried to keep him on topic. Meaning mostly me. 

There were other angry drivers at various sessions. Drivers Murai and Christopher Fulkerson (photo, standing) also defended Hayashi against the cheap-shot, personal attacks that a few belligerent drivers were making.

On the whole, Hayashi handled the situation very well and many drivers left feeling better about the situation than when they came in.

MTA Board Meeting; or How to Make Gridlock

At the 4-18 MTA Board meeting, Director Nat Ford announced three all-day Town Hall Meetings that appear to be the result of cab driver Tariq Mehmood's uprising at the previous Board meeting. The subjects of meetings will be:

1. Electronic waybills.
2. Credit Cards.
3. Possible meter increase.

Ford did not announce the dates  but he did say that they would be conducted by somebody named "staff." Hopefully, this means that Deputy Director Chris Hayashi will be back from vacation to lead them because, if nothing else, she is a true master at such things.

I haven't been to one of these Board meetings in a long time but, after seeing this one, I'm beginning to understand Emile Lawrence.

Emile used to write a newspaper column called the Midnight Cabbie. He went back to school, got a bookkeeping degree but couldn't get a job. He went back to taxi driving and used to show up at the Board meetings to yell at Ford for not hiring him as a bookkeeper. Very entertaining.

Not that I approve of yelling at the Executive Director but, after witnessing the irrationality of the Board's decision making process last Tuesday, I wanted to scream at somebody.

The particular case in point was the Board's decision to turn to Hayes into a two-way street between Van Ness and Gough. In order to reduce the overflow, they planned to channel part of the traffic south onto Van Ness and then change Fell into a two way street between Van Ness and Franklin so that the traffic on Van Ness could take a right turn onto one lane on Fell in order to head to the Sunset.

You professional drivers have doubtless already recognized this as insane. An intelligent ten year old could tell you that this would result in grid-lock on Hayes, Fell and Van Ness. In fact, if you set out to deliberately shut down the area, you'd be hard pressed to find a better way to do it. The only thing that would beat it would be to change Van Ness south into a dead end street - but this plan would effectively do that anyway.

This appeared to be the brainchild of Director Cheryl Brinkman who likes to bicycle and walk and, ironically, is the former chair of the Board of Directors of Livable City San Francisco. She said that she held a meeting at (I think) the Hayes Valley Community Center and nobody spoke against the plan.

She did not mention whether or not she went to the community centers of the Haight or the Richmond or the Sunset or the Parkside and asked the thousands of people that would be brutalized by the plan how they liked the idea of spending a hellish extra hour or two each week on their commutes so that the a couple of hundred people in Hayes Valley might lead more livable lives. But, then, she didn't have to.

A nice young man, appropriately attired in a dark suit, presented a study to justify the plan. He had calculated the number of cars that go up Hayes, then turn on Franklin and Gough. He hadn't bothered to calculate the number of cars on Van Ness heading south or the number on Fell between Franklin and Van Ness. Nor had he bothered to estimate the number of vehicles on Market that were going be stalled at the inter-section of 9th, Market, Hayes and Larkin by the traffic backing up from Van Ness. Nor did he calculate the cost of hiring traffic control officers at said intersection for four hours a day as the only hope of allowing the cars and buses to pass through.

At one point, he said that he wasn't sure where the cars would go. "Maybe they'll go up Larkin," he said vaguely. Needless to say he hadn't calculated the number of cars that currently go up Larkin during rush hour or he would've already known where the cars will go.

They'll go nowhere!

And, of course, he failed to estimate the additional emissions and fumes, the enlarged carbon footprint, that would be poured into the atmosphere by the impeded vehicles and the lengthening of the commutes.

The only member of the MTA Board to vote against the measure was Director Malcom Heinicke.

You know what frightens me about all this?

It's the possibility that the MTA Board was not paid off by the Hayes Valley merchants and that they really think this is a workable idea.

Screeeeeaaaammmmmmmmm!

The True Story of the Town Hall Meetings: A Radical Approach, A Revolutionary Plan

We people who took part in the Town Hall Meetings, who developed the Pilot Plan, know that we did things new and extraordinary. We looked at an industry where almost everyone was at odds with everyone else, where no two cab drivers could agree on anything, where there were at least three sides to every issue, where even the taxi companies needed two associations instead of one because they couldn't get along with each other and we forged a consensus, a compromise plan that gave something to every single faction and is backed by the vast majority of people in the taxicab business.

Even more remarkable was the fact that we got the SFMTA to sign off on the plan instead of stealing all the taxis and selling them like Mayor Newsom originally wanted.

This was an amazing, unprecedented accomplishment and I'll be proud to be associated with it until the day I die.

I was therefore stunned when I read press coverage describing a Pilot Plan that had nothing in common with the one we actually created.

Of course we all now know that the UTW, the one taxi group that refused to go along with the plan, had embarked on a campaign of misinformation, disinformation and downright lies for the benefit of local journalists.

It must also be said that many of these "journalists" were only too eager to be sucked in. I believe that this was mostly because Mark Gruberg and the UTW fed the press clichés with which they were familiar (evil owners and oppressed workers.) On the other hand, these pundits didn't exactly raise a sweat trying to discover the truth behind the lies.

My favorite one of these characters was Barbara Taylor of KCBS who reported that the plan called for auctioning off medallions and would lead to the taxi companies owning them all. I called her on the phone and got involved in the following conversation:

• Me, "You got the facts wrong."
• BT, "That's your opinion ... what I do is collect opinions. You have your opinion and they have their opinion."
• Me, "But all you have to do is read the document."
• BT, "I'm a very busy woman. I don't have time to read."
• Me, "But what you said was false."
• BT, "That's your opinion."

Then she hung up the phone. When I e-mailed her a copy of the Pilot Plan she spammed it.

We've been on the defense ever since. I think it's about time we change this dynamic and tell the world what the Pilot Plan really is and how it came about.

The first thing to know is that Plan is the result of negotiations involving every group in the taxicab industry that took place over a period of months and included: drivers on the medallion list, drivers not on the medallion list, medallion holders, taxi company personnel, the UTW, the MHA, the SFCDA, Director Chris Hayashi and members of the public.

Therefore the Pilot Plan is NOT Mayor Newsom's or the SFMTA's or Malcom Heinicke's or the taxi companies' or the "owner's" or Chris Hayashi's. The plan is a product of negotiation, it's a compromise, between all these people and groups as well as working cab drivers. It's our plan.

Coming Soon: How the Pilot Plan's provisions were arrived at.

Chris Hayashi's New Plan

Deputy Director of Taxis Chris Hayashi had an epiphany the other night which led to a change of emphasis during the October 16th Town Hall meeting. Originally she had intended to discuss two separate plans: one offering medallions holders a chance to buy a retirement and the other offering the chance sell a medallion at a fixed rate.

Ms Hayashi's revelation was that the two ideas could be combined into one. She only saw the broad strokes in her vision so the details have yet to be worked out. However, the outline goes something like this:

• Medallion holders could opt for either retirement or sale.
• The List would be maintained and drivers on it apparently would have a choice between getting the medallion by paying for it or not.
• The City would take fees of at least $10 million for brokering the deal because they are giving us public access to the streets ... or something.
• Some of these fees would go back to the taxi industry in the form of enforcement against illegal taxis and limos as well benefits for the non-medallion drivers.

It's hard to see how some of this would work but the genius is always in the details and we won't begin to see those until Monday.

I think the idea was generally greeted with enthusiasm - especially by those of us who thought that the twain could never meet between the plans; and that the people favoring one side or the other could never reach an agreement.

There was hostility loudly expressed against the high percentage of the fees (ranging from 20% to 50%) that the MTA wants to charge the taxi industry for putting Deputy Director Hayashi's plan (or any other plan) into effect, mostly by medallion holder Jim Templeton and myself. Jim argued that it was absurd for us to be contributing to the salaries of MTA personnel who make more than twice as much money as we do. I concentrated my attack on the fact that we would be hit by much higher taxes than anyone else pays.

I'm afraid that we both of got a little carried away. Jim had the good grace to apologize for his outburst but I did not. I should have. My Irish temper had the best of me. My animosity was (or should have been) directed at the idea not the person. Let me apologize now.

In any case, our complaints had no effect. Ms Hayashi told us that we should talk to an attorney. Her legal opinion is that the MTA has the right impose any fees that they wish.

She saved the best news for last. She told us that the plan that wouldn't die is finally dead.

"I tried to get one of you to say something good about the plan but couldn't," she told us.

She deflected all attempts to get details about this radical change of direction with a series of impish "yes" and "no" answers to all queries on the subject. In the shadowy Byzantine world of the MTA, the force apparently is finally with Deputy Director Hayashi.

The people in the taxi industry are apparently to be given the chance to decide their own destinies.

Let's hope the wind stays at her back.