A Conversation with Desoto President Hansu Kim

I was about to publish an interview that I'd had with Desoto Cab President Hansu Kim awhile back when local journalist's came out with the story that Kim was thinking of turning Desoto into a sedan service – one writer said that it might happen in as little as 90 days.

Mr. Kim denied that he said he intended to convert to a sedan service in  "90 days." Only that he could convert in 90 days if he had to. But has "no intention doing so."

What he was doing was giving an "if" scenario.

"What I'm saying is that the taxi business as we know it will not be in existence in 18 months 'IF' the industry continues to be deregulated as it is."

"I don't believe that the taxi business will ever disappear but it could be that full service, dispatch-centric companies will no longer be in business as they are today."

"My feeling is that in a deregulated environment, it would be a race to the bottom."

Aside from usual sensationalism and inaccuracies that one has come to expect from the local media on the subject of  taxis, the coverage of Kim's statements lack context and understanding of what deregulation of faux taxi services like Uber x really means. What Kim and the other cab companies are spending money on is public safety.

Uber and the rest are endangering the public by cutting corners. To use a metaphor from the construction business I grew up in, what they are doing (not carrying proper insurance, not fingerprinting drivers, not guaranteeing the safety of passengers or pedestrians) is the moral equivalent of pouring sand into the foundation of a building in order to save money on concrete.

Chris Hayashi at the CPUC

Director of Taxi Services Christiane Hayashi (photo) gave two powerful speeches at the recent CPUC hearing on Order Instituting Rulemaking on Regulations Relating to Passenger Carriers, Ridesharing, and New Online-Enabled Transportation Services.

Hayashi illuminated issues obscured by the rhetoric of both the so-called NOETS and the CPUC spokespersons. She also explained the negative consequences for the public of legalizing these bogus taxicab services.


The first talk begins with a comment on sharing the podium with Uber. The joke is that Uber had held court for over forty minutes before Director Hayashi was given the opportunity to speak. And, of course, Uber and Hayashi don't like each other very much.

The second talk is brilliant and impassioned. It's ending also points out the varying levels of respect given by the CPUC to the spokenperson for the City of San Francisco and the one for Uber.

A CPUC "facilitator" rudely shut down Director Hayashi before she had a chance to finish by claiming that Illya Abyzov, a manager for Uber, had only been given two minutes to talk before his Q & A. Actually Uber attorney Ed O'Neil's introduction of Mr. Abyzov took two minutes by itself and, as I mentioned before, the entire performance took up over forty minutes with Illya neither saying much nor answering any question he didn't like. The kicker is that Illya Abyzov is not listed as a "Party" to the Rulemaking. That is to say - he should not have been allowed to speak at all.

You might also have noticed that Hayashi was cut off precisely when she was about to give the "specific" ideas for change that the "facilitator" claimed to be asking for.

Why Do You Have to Wait for a Taxi? Part 1

The short, cheeky answer is: because it's a taxi not a private limo. A fact obvious yet profound and usually ignored by people who profess to study taxicab service.

• When Assistant Director Jordana Thigpen of the San Francisco Taxi commission reported the findings of a 2007 taxi study, she couldn't understand why cab drivers broke out laughing after she told them that a doorman of the St. Francis Hotel had complained that he sometimes had to wait for cabs.
• The reason that they laughed was because the St. Francis has a line of cabs sitting in front of it 95% of the time - and that's a low estimate. It's like somebody complaining about the weather because it's 75 instead of 74. In the real world, the only way to improve the service at that hotel would be to eliminate the doormen. I'm not talking anything untoward here but the preening they go though as they work the passengers for tips slows everything down.
• People also complain when they wait for cabs: during conventions, on Friday nights, when the opera breaks, when concerts get out, when the ball games are over, in out of the way places, when it rains, when the bars close.
• I'm going to tell you right now that this never going to change no matter what you do. You could flood the city with cabs and hire The Heroes to do the driving and people are still going to wait for taxis.
• Why? Because we're cab drivers not your private chauffeur. We can't anticipate when and from where you will call. We can't control traffic, weather or a dozen other things that affect service.

Am I saying that the cab service in San Francisco couldn't be better?

• Given the way cabs are allocated, the system by which cab drivers earn their money and the circumstances under which they work - yes, that is indeed what I'm saying.
  
• Whether medallions are sold or not would make no difference whatsoever - except that if you were to follow Newsom's plan and suddenly replace veteran drivers with newbies, the service in the neighborhoods would badly deteriorate.

More later.

A Breathe of Fresh Air

At a Taxi Town Hall meeting on 3/10/09, Chris Hayashi, the new Director of San Francisco's Taxis and Available Services showed herself to be a refreshing change from her predecessor on the Taxi Commission, Heidi Machen. Whereas Machen had treated the drivers with overbearing arrogance and privately referred to them as "either criminals or people who soon would be,"  Ms. Hayashi clearly regarded a room full of owners and drivers as respected equals.

She discussed and listened to their opinions concerning the various plans to change how the taxi industry operates in San Francisco.  After a general conversation about possible scenarios, she led an examination of  proposed taxicab rules in the San Francisco Transportation Code.

Ms. Hayashi either changed or eliminated several provisions that drivers objected to including an obscene "snitch" rule that would have taken away the medallion of any owner who had failed to turn in another owner whom he or she knew to have been arrested or convicted of a crime. Such rules have a long, inglorious history and have been used by people as diverse as the commie dictator Joseph Stalin, the anti-commie witch-hunter Joe McCarthy and the Christian Brothers of Cretin High as techniques to humiliate and destroy their enemies. Heidi would have loved it. 

However, the subject that aroused the most passion among the drivers, limousines, wasn't even supposed to be on the agenda. Ms. Hayashi kept telling drivers that it would be discussed at a future date but, they kept bringing the subject up, so she finally promised that the Taxi Detail was going to hunt down, punish and eliminate illegal limos in San Francisco. Among other ideas, she proposed impounding their cars for 30 days when limo drivers were caught violating a law. "That should put a stop to them," she said with a smile.

Hayashi's attitude and approach stands in such sharp contrast to the Mayor's arrogance and indifference toward cab drivers' fates that I can't help wondering what's really happening. 

Historically, Mayors like Diane Feinstein and Willie Brown have used commissions and hearings as way to rubber stamp their own plans while giving them the veneer of democratic processes.

This does not appear to be what is going on here. Or is it? No one I've met has a bad word to say about Chris Hayashi, but it's unclear as to how much power she actually has. It may be that she's an unwitting pawn in an elaborate good cop/bad cop scheme designed by Newsom.