Fleet Taxis and Employees

The dawn of the New Year seems a good time for exercises in nostalgia and theory.

President of Desoto Cab, Jane Bolig, wants a return to the good old days when cab companies owned corporate permits. In a TaxTownSF post,  Remembrance of Peak Times Past, she writes that San Francisco didn't need Peak Time permits back in the good old 60's because Old Yellow Cab owned its medallions and didn't have to pay the medallion holder the fees that cripple companies today.

"To pay them (the fees),"  Jane says, "they (the cab companies)  have to put out all their cabs every shift, every day of the week, every week of the year. That is why drivers fight for rides most Sunday mornings and passengers can’t find cabs any Friday night."

Old Yellow was apparently so profitable that they could "hold back unneeded cabs (sometimes equaling 40% of its fleet)" on slow days and put cabs out when it was busy. "It’s why we discuss peak time medallions in 2010," Jane says, "and why we didn’t in 1968."

The thrust of Jane's essay is that allowing cab companies to have fleet medallions would cure all our peak time problems.

Simple as that!

Unfortunately, Jane is leaving out parts of the equation. Back in the good old days, cab drivers were all employees and belonged to unions. The real reason why Old Yellow didn't put the taxis out at slow times was that they split the meter with the drivers - to whom they first had to pay minimum wage. It wouldn't have been profitable for the companies. In fact, they could have been the ones losing money on bad shifts instead drivers who can't cover their gates today.

Jane also seems to be envisioning combining fleet taxis with a "gates & gas" system. Well ... it certainly would be a way for taxi companies to maximize profits but would they really hold back cabs on slow days? During a recession when people are desperate for any kind of work?

We're talking about the characters who currently manage cab companies in San Francisco - not in Shangri la. In short, fat chance.

Ms Bolig appears to be waxing nostalgic about the other side of the problem as well by assuming that Old Yellow covered the City better back in the good old days. Was this true?

I have word-of-mouth, anecdotal evidence that the service really was better in the neighborhood but this was largely due the fact that companies split the meter and paid minimum wage to the drivers. The companies made their money by actually dispatching taxis to pick up orders and drivers could afford to work areas like the Sunset or wait at the cabstands which were spotted around the outlying areas of the city.

But, how about coverage at peak times and on Friday nights?

San Francisco had a population about 10% lower than it does now and about half as many taxis. 1968 was peak time for the Vietnam war. Sailors and solders embarked for Asia from here. According to the old, old timers this was one of the busiest eras in San Francisco taxi history.

So ... Right Jane,  nobody waited for a cab back then.

The First Taxi Advisory Council (TAC) Meeting

The first Taxi Advisory Council meeting took place Wednesday, August 18, 2010 with Director Chris Hayashi acting as temporary chair. Although most of its business was administrative in nature, there were a few things worth noting.

Deputy City Attorney Mariam Morley gave a brief talk on the rules of San Francisco's Sunshine Ordinance which begins by stating,  "Government's duty is to serve the public, reaching its decisions in full view of the public."

Morley went on to explain that, under the rules of the ordinance, members of the council should not discuss council business, aside from official meetings, if more than a quorum of eight or more of the fifteen members are present. This means:

• They shouldn't discuss official business at group meals or other similar gatherings.
• There should no be mass e-mailings or mass chats among the members.
• The members should be careful even about discussing council business in small groups because (let me do the math) if 3 members discuss an issue, than each of the 3 talks about it with 2 other members, they would be violating the Sunshine Ordinance.

A righteous ideal.

The council also had its first skirmish when Barry Korengold of the SFCDA motioned that, instead of appointing one Chair to head the council, the Chair should rotate with a different member leading each meeting. Korengold said that he was concerned that a permanent Chair would have too much power to affect the proceedings.

Such a plan probably would be unique and difficult to work with but I believe that Barry was reacting to the bias favoring ownership that is built into this council. While Chris Hayashi clearly has bent over backwards to fill the council with a "variety of voices and viewpoints," it can't be denied that either seven or eight of the council members own, manage or own stock in cab companies. (I'm not sure if Ramp Taxi Medallion Holder Laurie Graham owns stock in Yellow or not.)

Indeed, sides in the fray were drawn up along class lines with six of the seven members of the Owner's and Manager's Block (as I shall call it until proved otherwise) lining up for a single Chair and most of the non-medallion holders backing the idea of a rotating Chair. Laurie Graham, I think it was, suggested compromising by having four rotating Chairs to cover the two year period of the TAC. Jane Bolig of Desoto Cab Co-op agreed to the compromise as did Barry Korengold, drivers John Han and Bill Mounsey and most other non-medallion holders while most of the Owners and Managers Block initially held out for a single Chair.

Dan Hines of National/Veterns Cab said the he "didn't like the direction" that the conversation was going and that the important thing was for everyone to come together to save the cab industry.

If this was intended to be a unifying speech, it appeared to backfire because Hinds was clearly unwilling to accept the other side's point of view.

The members went around and around before finally arriving at a compromise. There will be three Chairs for periods of six months each, meaning that there will be a single Chair from next meeting until the council makes its report to the MTA on the Pilot Plan.  However, the power of the Chair will be greatly limited.

• The Chair must give every member who wants to comment a chance to speak.
• Every member of the public who wants to speak during the public comment periods must be given a chance to do so.
• The Agenda for the next meeting will be set by the council at the end of every meeting instead of letting the Chair do it.

Call it a draw. 

The next meeting will be held on Monday, August 30, 2010 at 1 pm in the 2nd fl Atrium at the MTA building #1 South Van Ness and every second Monday after that.

Given the make-up of the council, it would behoove drivers on the Waiting List and ordinary drivers to attend. It's a good idea anyway.

Players & Plans: Jane Bolig Comments & Clarifies

Another out of the box thinker is Jane Bolig, President of the Board at Desoto Cab. She wants to transfer the medallions but instead of selling them to individuals, she thinks they should be sold to "all the drivers and employees in their companies ..." Bolig says that this could be done through federal programs called Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOP) that have worked successfully for almost 50 years and "carry enormous tax advantages."

I'm not clear as to how this would work but, having once helped put together a paper with Jane in the distant past, I'm certain that she can provide a detailed and logical argument. Some features of her proposal are:

• Both individual medallions and the List would continue.
• Companies could continue to contract only with medallion holders but when the owners retired they could sell their companies to an ESOP.
• K medallion holders could continue to work them as usual. When they retired or died the medallion would be given to the next person on the list just as they are now. Or the holder could sell the K medallion to an ESOP.
• New medallions would go to people on the list.
• The City could charge a fee for each medallion sale.

The plan is idealistic and would solve more problems than any other plan out there. Non-medallion holding drivers would benefit far more from this proposal then they would from anything else that has been offered so far. Unlike the UTW or the Asian Law Caucus, Bolig actually addresses the fundamental weakness of the ordinary driver's situation - a lack of power or control.

It's a great proposal and could make medallion holders, ordinary drivers and the City all happy. Now all Jane has to do is convince her fellow owners to go along with her idea.