CPUC Lets Lyft Run Wild

The California Public Utilities Commission made a back door agreement with Lyft to suspend the CPUC's cease and desist order along with a $20,000 citation. Sidecar's reprieve from a similar order and fine can't be too far behind.

The action took place the day after the CPUC accepted comments on Rulemaking regulations for ridesharing and other online enabled transportation services. Included in these comments, were papers by me and, more importantly, the Personal Insurance Federation of California demonstrating that personal liability insurance is not adequate for the kind of services that Lyft and Sidecar provide. Their vehicles need commercial insurance and, in order to put illegal cars out more rapidly, both Lyft and Sidecar tell their drivers that they do not need commercial insurance. In other words, their vehicles are not insured at all.

It's hard to know what the CPUC is thinking. A CPUC spokesman has been quoted as saying that the main issue of their Rulemanking is public safety. Yet Lyft and Sidecar already have over 700 uninsured taxis on the streets. These ridesharing companies are cranking out new drivers like Henry Ford used to roll out Model T's. By the time the CPUC makes a decision Lyft and Sidecar likely will have more illegal, uninsured cabs in San Francisco than the 1,700 legal taxicabs that are backed with real $1,000,000 insurance policies.

A sure recipe for disaster.

CPUC Begins Rulemaking Process on Regulating Passenger Carriers, Ridesharing and New Online Enabled Transportion Services

The California Public Utilities Commission started the process of making rules covering Uber, Sidecar, Lfyt (see eyesore in photo) and other transportation app companies  by accepting comments from "Parties" who had already signed up to present information and arguments for one position or another.

These included representatives from: the International Association of Transportation Regulators (IATR), the Greater California Livery Association, the SFMTA in the persons of Deputy City Attorney Mairam Morley and Taxi and Accessible Services Director Christiane Hayashi, the City and Country of San Francisco, the Center For Accessible Technology, Hailo Cab, the Taxicab Paratransit Association of California, Uber, Sidecar, Lyft and the Personal Insurance Federation of California.

Numerous cab drivers or former cab drivers also signed up to present including Carol Osorio for Green Cab, Anne McVeigh, Mark Gruberg for the United Taxicab Workers , Robert Cesana for the Medallion Holders' Association, Barry Korengold for the San Francisco Cab Drivers' Association, Keith Raskin, Carl Macmurdo, Charles Rathbone for Luxor Cab, Tara Housman, Dan Hinds for National Cab, Dmitry Nazarov, Christopher Fulkerson, William Minikel, Peter Kirby and myself.

Many of the cab drivers have been at each others throats for years and I'm no exception. It should be interesting to see the lot of us more or less defending the same point of view for a change. Maybe we'll even get together for dinner and drinks. That hasn't happened since 2010.

Of special note is the presence of former Mayor Willie Brown, who is fronting for a Sidecar wannabe named Tickengo, with a plan to effectively deregulate the taxicab business and, incidentally, raise the cost of personal auto liability insurance for everyone in the State of California.

If anyone out there has any fresh ideas on the subject please send them to me as (short) comments to this post. If I like them, I'll see if I can include them in my presentations.

The Bay Citizen & Bedbug Journalism

"The correct perception of a matter and a misunderstanding of the  same matter do not preclude each other."          Franz Kafka

Some time ago I quoted Kafka's bit of wisdom to Zusha Elinson, the writer of the Bay Citizen's Cab complaints climb in San Francisco. It was my way of having a heart to heart with a young reporter. I was trying to subtly let him know that he lacked a firm grasp of both subject matter and context in his pieces on taxicabs. He laughed but missed my message.

Not that Elinson's posts are unique. In my twenty-eight years of cab driving I've never read a good article on taxicab drivers or the cab business in a San Francisco publication. I've come across excellent work in New York papers and magazines but not in San Francisco. Here the writer comes up with a salable idea ("bad cabbies" usually get traction), calls around to get a few quotes verifying his or her theme, throws in a counter quote for balance, and pops out the piece without so much as a thought to furrow the brow.

The amount of misinformation that the public has been fed about taxicabs by local news outlets continually boggles my mind. Until now my favorite was a radio piece on the legislation to enable the sale of taxi medallions in 2010 by KCBS personality Barbara Taylor. Ms. Taylor inaccurately stated that the legislation would allow the medallions to be bought by cab companies. This was and is not true. The medallions can only be sold (or transferred) to working cab drivers.

I called up Ms. Taylor and told her that she had it wrong.

"That's your opinion," she said. "I'm busy."

"It's not my opinion,"I retorted. "It's in the legislation. I'll send it you."

"I don't have time to read," she said. "What I do is take opinions."

"But, if you'd just take five minutes to read it, you'd see that you were wrong."

"That's your opinion," she snapped and hung up the phone.

I didn't think it would be possible to top Ms. Taylor in willful negligence but Mr. Elinson's hatchet job gives her a run for her money. For instance:

1. San Francisco cab drivers take over 30 millions rides a year

In light of this, 1,733 complaints (or .0000577 of the trips) does not have much significance at all.  (See Kafka quote.) Certainly not enough to make make sweeping statements like the opening two paragraphs of Mr. Elinson's purple prose.

Given the small number of complaints you could just as well ague the opposite. Namely that this minuscule fraction is sign of how good the taxi service is.

Of course it could be argued that many people have complaints about cab service but don't bother to do anything about it.

To which I would counter by saying that I routinely have customers tell me how enjoyable or how wonderful it's been to ride in my taxi. I get a least a hundred of such comments a year. Furthermore, I'm not the only professional driver in the city. Conventioneers and other visitors frequently tell me that San Francisco has the friendliest and most knowledgeable cab drivers in the country and it's a reason why they like to come here.

These people don't call 311.

2. Moe's Cab is an illegal taxi

A reader could not have discovered the above fact from Elinson's article where he wrote,

"One patron reported that a cab driver allegedly stole his credit card number and used it to make purchases in Brazil."  

Then he repeated the accusation in more detail later on.

"One passenger said a driver took a credit card impression “the old-fashioned way.” The next day, the customer said he got a fraud alert about the card being used to make purchases in Brazil. His taxi receipt said it was for Moe’s Cab."

Indeed, from the context said reader would naturally assume that Moe was a San Francisco cab driver.

Now a sharp investigative reporter like Mr. Elinson could have easily discovered the truth on the Moe's Cab webpage. Hint - the fact that Moe has neither an address for his cab company nor a listing of operating hours is an indication that the service is illegal.

But, if this was too challenging for our intrepid reporter, he could simply have pulled down the Taxi page from the SFMTA website. The first listing under Information for Taxi Customers is a link to Licensed San Francisco Taxi Companies. Had Elinson bothered to read this he would've noticed that Moe's Cab is not a San Francisco taxicab and could have spared us his misleading and slanderous statements.

But it gets better. Mr. Elinson interviewed me, you see, before he ran his article. I told him that I'd never heard of Moe's Cab and suggested that it might be an illegal taxi. Despite this, Elinson did not bother to check his facts.

Did Moe's theft fit so nicely into his naughty "cabbie" thesis that Elinson didn't want to know the truth?

3. A Bedbug

Elinson opens his second paragraph by stating,

"Taxis infested with bed bugs ... were among the complaints."

Later in the piece he quoted "an anonymous National Cab driver" who called 311 "to report that some of the cabs had bed bugs."

"Me and other drivers are getting tons of bites," Mr. Anonymous said. "The management has been informed but they are doing nothing about the problem."

As it turned out the city's Department of Public Health found "ONE DEAD BED BUG" in One TAXICAB and "no active infestation."

Nonetheless, Elinson still chose to use "TAXIS INFESTED WITH BED BUGS" to start his second paragraph despite the fact that his own limited research proved his lead a lie.

Mr. Elinson devoted over 10% of his article to this subject. On the principle that "the exception proves the rule," a more responsible writer would not have included the beg bug in his piece at all.

4. Missing and Dubious Sources

Elinson apparently did not talk to Director of Taxi Services Chris Hayashi. Nor does he mention talking to MTA Investigator Eric Richholt despite the fact that I gave him Richholt's phone number.

Elinson did get a negative quote from Jordanna Thigpen who was the deputy director of the former Taxi Commission and who replaced by Hayashi. Elinson has previously told me that Thigpen intensely dislikes Hayashi. Thigpen also clearly thinks that taxi service would be better if she was still in charge.

In addition, I thought that the Bay Citizen didn't use anonymous sources? Judging by the one Elinson chose to quote, it sounds like a good policy. Had Elinson run his bed bug tale by me, I could have told him who Anonymous was. So could any number of other people familiar with the San Francisco taxi business.

Anonymous is a former National Cab Driver who was in an accident that a better driver probably could have avoided and keeps trying to sue National on variety of pretexts including the claim that National did not have insurance despite the fact that he collected Workers' Compensation for his accident.

A while back Anonymous, who has none of the mannerisms sometimes associated with homosexuals, told me that he'd been assaulted in the National Cab lot because he was gay. This seems unlikely. National Cab was managed by a cross-dresser for many years and several openly gay people work in either the office or as drivers.

Anonymous, who has zero credibility with people in the taxi business, has send me e-mails telling me how much he hates cab drivers. He sometime gives talks on the same theme at MTA Board meetings.

Given that in all my years of cab driving I've never come across, or even heard, of a cab with a bed bug in it, I think it's entirely possible that Anonymous planted the damn thing himself.

At any rate, Elinson fans will be comforted to know that Anonymous now drives for Sidecar.

5. So what is Elinson's article? A hit piece? A hatchet Job? Or, just good old fashioned yellow journalism?

Certainly it's one of most biased pieces I've read. There are some serious problems with with the industry and with some San Francisco taxi drivers (I'll deal with credit cards etc in the next post.) but the vast majority of us do a very difficult, low paying and dangerous job at a very high level. Instead of acknowledging this, Elinson uses a laundry list of mostly trivial incidents to trash every driver in the city.

Yes, of course, there should not be anybody slammed with a racial slur. But there are 7,000 cab drivers in this city and you can't expect them all to be saints. One example doesn't mean San Francisco cab drivers are racist. In fact, most San Francisco cab drivers themselves belong to racial or ethnic minorities. I've often thought the kind of hack attack that Elinson indulged himself in is based on its own racist assumptions.

Other than the racial insult, in over 30 million rides, the worst actions that Elinson could come up with is one driver who asked two friends to kiss each other and another driver who called up a customer for a date. There can be no doubt about it. As a criminal class that "routinely flout the law" we suck.

The truth is that if you ride in a San Francisco taxicab (with 99% certainty) it will be in fairly good shape and will not have bed bugs.  You will not be charged for bringing a baby along. If the driver hits on you, all you have to do is say "no." You will not be overcharged. You will be taken to your location by the best possible route. The driver will not you ask you to kiss your friend but I'd personally like to request that you try to keep you cloths on next Friday night. The cameras do not link to HBO. And please stop doing joints in my cab. Three people in San Francisco don't like the smell. If you're lucky enough to ride with me you might be able to listen en route to Beethoven's Third Piano Concerto, Tito Puente, old school rock or Kind of Blue. The choice is up  to you. And, yes, I take credit cards and love trips to the Sunset.

Rude Cabbies & Racism

As a partial response to a recent hachet job on cab drivers in the Bay Citizen, I'm re-publishing the below post from a few years ago.

In his classic study, The Nature of Prejudice (1954), Gordon Allport described prejudice as an

"Aversive or hostile attitude toward a person who belongs to a group, simply because he belongs to that group, and is therefore presumed to have the objectionable qualities ascribed to that group."

People with these "objectionable qualities" are often described as being: ignorant, lazy and stupid but you have to watch them because they're clever and dishonest and they'll cheat you if they can. Although different groups have different stereotypes assigned to them (Blacks, Chinese and Jews for instance) they are almost all universally described as being "dirty" and "smelling bad."

One could argue that it is usually members of the "lower" classes who are looked down upon (pun intentional) and, since they do most menial labor, this stereotype might have some basis in fact. A laborer working in cotton fields or a cab driver working all day in the hot sun might not smell too good after a 10 hour shift.

In my opinion, however, this argument is mainly a rationalization. The real reason for the stereotype is the desire of one group of people to feel superior to another. As Allport emphasized, prejudice is "Psychologically powerful. Racism makes people feel good."

In San Francisco 2012, of course, being a racist is not PC. Putting people down for being bus drivers, waiters, janitors or cab drivers, on the other hand, is cool. In fact, the same stereotypes formerly reserved for people of color or non-gringo ethnicity are now openly applied on the basis of class. Bus drivers and cab drivers make particularly good targets for slander because most of us do belong to minorities of one kind or another.

This allows modern hipsters to feed their petty power lusts without thinking of themselves as bigots.

The racial subtext to stereotypes of cab drivers comes home to me every few weeks when a customer gets in and tells me, "It's great to have a driver who speaks English." Well, I think we all speak English - although some of us have accents. I think that what the guy really wanted to say was, "It's great to have a white cab driver."

Being "white," however, does not necessarily save me from being stereotyped.

• Despite the fact that I take at least one shower a day and am neatly dressed when I work, I've been told that it was disgusting to ride with me because I was "filthy" and "stank."
• In my 28 years of driving, I've never intentionally taken a customer "the long way" but I've had  over a hundred people complain that I did so - a few of whom called either the police or my company. Although it's hard to pick a favorite among these, I think it might be the guy who called to say that I cheated him because I drove him from California and Polk to Pine and Baker using Pine instead of California (You need to know the city to fully appreciate this).
• Oh yes - the only person I ever intentionally took "the long way" was an attractive woman who I thought was flirting with me. I wanted more time to find out. As it turned out she was. I made up for my transgression by buying her dinner.
• I've been told that I was stupid (a thing that always interests me) a couple of hundred times and both the "A" and "MF" words have been used on me more frequently than I can count.
• I've also had two women spit in my face. Four different men have punched me and several others have tried to do so. I've had three attempted or threatened robberies that I managed to stop before they really started. Once a guy on the street walked up and hit me with a beer bottle for no apparent reason. Two different people have threatened to kill me - the last one because I refused to take an illegal left from the far right lane on Broadway across four lanes of traffic onto Stockton during rush hour. Dude said he was late for work.

Perhaps you, gentle reader, are thinking, 'What did he do to cause such behavior?' I have a real simple answer. I drove a cab.

I'm working on a more direct response to the Bay Guardian article that should be finished in a day or two.

Drug Testing - A False Positive?

Was the driver of the above vehicle (photo by Corey Lamb) on a medical marijuana break?

Not coincidentally, the SFMTA's drug & Alcohol testing policy was the high point of last Tuesday's Town Hall Meeting.

The basics of the policy will be:

1. Every new A-Card holder must pass the test to become a cab driver.
2. Every driver will be given a test at random at a location yet to be determined. Rumors is that you'd have to show up within an hour.
3. Drivers would have to be tested after accidents: involving loss of life, when a citation is issued within 8 hours, when there is bodily injury or the vehicle is damaged so that it needs to be towed.
4. Drivers might also be tested for the infamous Probable Cause or Reasonable Suspicion of drug or alcohol abuse. This is to be based upon specific, contemporaneous observations by trained company (MTA?) officials.

The drugs tested for are: PCP, Opiates, Amphetamines, Cocaine, Marijuana (and alcohol?)

A driver testing Positive will be immediately removed from service,  suspended for 30 days and refereed to substance abuse professionals for follow up.

If a driver refused to be tested he or she will be considered guilty with the above consequences.

Cost

On the MTA handout it says that the cost will be $125 per driver per year. Needless to say this wasn't popular with the drivers at the Town Hall meetings.

Director Chris Hayashi said during the meeting I attended that neither the cost nor having drivers pay for it are set in stone. She said that that no - the MTA will not make a profit on the test and that she got the price from one testing service. She said that she would look into others.

She also said that both she and her boss, Director Ed Reiskin, felt that charging the drivers for the test was unfair in light of gargantuan amounts of money that the MTA is already taking away from the drivers. She said that they were seeing what they could do about it.

Editorial Comment

I am against anybody driving under the influence of any drug including over-the-counter pills likely to make a people sleepy or slow down their reflexes.

If I have a cold severe enough to require pills I won't go to work. In fact, that's why I'm sitting here writing this on a Friday night instead of driving. In order to buy the medicine at Walgreens I had to show my I.D. I have yet to look up which substance required this law but, whatever it is, I clearly shouldn't be driving under its influence.

I don't drink any more but I have been an Irish drinker in the past.  However, in 28 years of cab driving, the only time I ever drove a taxi with alcohol in me was after a New Year's Eve party. I waited two hours before I started work so I think was under the legal limit. I still wouldn't recommend it. A killer hangover set in at around 4 am. That was over 20 years ago.

As for marijuana - as a child of the sixties I've been partaking in the pleasure since I was 19. This reminds me of a story about Louie Armstrong. When he asked if he thought marijuana was addictive, the great jazzman reportedly said,

"No man, it ain't addictive. I've been smokin' it for forty years."

I've always been an infrequent social user and now rarely smoke at all. There was a time when I would allow my customers to beguile me into having a hit or two in my taxi but I've long since concluded that this was a bad idea. (See The High Way to the Airport)

Nevertheless, I think that including a test that cannot measure intoxication levels, that cannot tell within reasonable parameters when a drug was used is worse than useless. PCP, Opiates, Amphetamines and Cocaine are all out of the system in two or three days. These are addictive and destructive drugs. In the Seventies, all the "creative" people I knew thought coke was the "hippest thing". Most of them ended up using the other stuff as well and most of them died before they reached fifty. Nobody driving a taxi should have a touch of these drugs in their  systems - for their own good if no one else's.

It's hard to ignore that marijuana is a drug of a different category. There is no such thing as medical PCP or Meth or Heroin or Cocaine. Marijuana use is socially acceptable and on its way to becoming legal everywhere. It's also common to have customers who have been using it or want to use it in the taxi.

Yes - of course you don't want people driving a cab when they are stoned but unless a test can demonstrate the difference between a person who smoked a joint thee weeks before the test and a person using it an hour before, the test is not fulfilling its purpose - to keep stoned, and only stoned, cab drivers off the road. As it is, anybody being treated with medical marijuana or who uses the drug on a regular basis or even once in a while is likely to test positive whether they used the drug driving a cab just before a random test or not.

The argument that these tests are being used everywhere else in California is not convincing. There was a time when everyone had to swear a loyalty oath in order to get keep their jobs. A bad idea doesn't become good because everybody does it. As it is, these tests are designed to turn up false positives if the question is whether or not people were driving intoxicated.

I have started researching the subject and, on one web site, there appears to be argument that you can determine the THC levels in the blood and use these to tell whether or not the marijuana was 2nd hand smoke. Another site sugggested that they could tell the difference between recent marijuana usage and residual use. I intend to investigate this further and I hope that Taxi Sevices will do the same.

Unless or until there is such a test, marijuana should be left out of the equation except in the case of accidents or probable cause.

The only time I smoke weed these days is sporadically with a friend of mine who uses it medicinally to calm her anxiety. I'd hate to have to give up a friendship I value to keep my job.

Ramp Medallions & Leased Permits

The MTA held Town Hall Meetings last week Lead by Director Chris Hayashi concerning Ramp Medallions, the MTA's leased permits (8,000 series) and leasing in general.

The chart on the left shows the options open to Ramp Medallion Holders (RMH's).

1. They can keep their Ramps which are worth about $2000 per month subject to driving requirements.
2. Depending up their positions on the List they can buy a regular Medallion;
a. If they are in the top 200 to 300, they can buy the $150,000 medallions and end up with $90,000 before taxes if they transfer the medallion immediately.
b. They can buy the $300,000 medallions which they can sell for a profit of $240,000 before taxes.
3. If they are over 60 years of age or disabled, they can trade the Ramp for a "Surrender" medallion which would give them $200,000 before taxes.

The probability of the Ramps only going to a few companies like Luxor and Desoto was put forward as a possibility because they are the companies that fill most ramp orders anyway. I wasn't at the afternoon session but Marty Smith of Luxor reportedly offered to take all the Ramps off the City's hands for nothing. Desoto countered by offering to buy them all.

Director Hayashi discussed various ways to motivate the Ramp drivers to pick up more rides including paying the drivers extra for pickups or making them employees thus giving them benefits.

I mentioned that being employees would enable companies to send the Ramp drivers on orders insuring that most of the customers would be picked up. Desoto manager Athan Rebelos countered by saying that Las Vegas drivers are all employees and they don't pick up all the calls. But he and I have been having this discussion for years. Hint: I'm right.

The MTA's Leased Permits

They are a numbers of rumors going around about these permits. Having processed similar rumors for the 3 year life of my blog, I think you could get a better handle on what's going on in the taxi business by randomly asking the first 12 year old you see walking down the street.

Of course Jim Gillespie of Yellow Cab should know what he's talking about, and I'm sure he does, but that doesn't necessarily mean that he's going to tell us. Nor does it mean that he necessarily understands what's happening.

At the TH meeting, Gillespie said the he no trouble filling his night shifts but he couldn't fill the day shifts because day drivers need the airport to make a living. His solution would be to the allow the 8,000 series to pick up at SFO.

Greg Cochran, who does the hiring at Desoto Cab, seems to have a better take on the situation. Contrary to rumor, by the way, Desoto has been filling its shifts with the 8,000's and otherwise. In fact, I couldn't get out last night.

 Desoto still has a large number of the new permits on the way and Mr. Cochran does think that it will take some time before all the shifts will be filled. He pointed out to me that over 600 new shifts have been created and thinks it will probably take until late spring or early summer before the companies are flush.

There are possible influences as well:

1. Many drivers have gone to Uber because they have been able to get better situations over there then they were getting at companies like Yellow.
2. If you include the S series around 800 new shifts have been created.
3. There will soon be over be over 1,700 taxis on the street when we are already into winter with the seasonal drop off of business.
4. Drivers now have real choices for the first time in years and will naturally gravitate toward the companies that treat the them best. There is a good possibility that Yellow Cab won't act as a magnet for many of these drivers.

One hot rumor on the mail sites is that Royal Cab couldn't fill its shifts and had turned the 8,000 series permits back to the MTA.

I called Chris Sweis of Royal this morning and he said that he'd been filling his 8,000 shifts for two months. The rumor he'd heard was that Desoto and Luxor couldn't fill their shifts and didn't want the permits.

You can check out Luxor for yourself.

The 200: What Are They Really Getting?

The top 200 on the Waiting List will be eligible to buy (or whatever arcane verbiage the SFMTA uses) a medallion for $150,000. These drivers will then be able to turn around and sell (or other abstruse verbiage) it for $300,000. This would leave them with $150,000 minus $60,000 for a 20% transfer fee on the $300,000 or $90,000.  ($300,000 - $150,000 = $90,000)

The San Francisco Federal Credit Union will wave the usual 20% downpayment fee and the terms of the loan can be for as long as 30 years. This would work out to payments of about $850 per month. At the moment most companies are paying $2,500 for leasing a medallion from a medallion holder. This would give the (we need a new name - "Last of the List"?) holders a profit $1,650 per month or $19,800 per year. And, this doesn't include the pluses like getting the best shifts and not having to worry about being fired.


On the negative side: In the unlikely event that they actually kept the medallion for 30 years, they'd double the cost of the loan. On the other hand, they'd also have made about $600,000 during the same period.

Is this good deal? As my uncle Victor might say, "It's better than a slap in the belly with a wet fish." It's certainly better than being number 201 on the List.

My poster boys William Mounsey #82 (top photo) and Brian Rosen #50 were breathing big sighs of relief when I spoke to them. The both had been sure that they would get nothing. Rosen calculated that that he could pay off the loan in five years and he'd have $240,000 to retire on.

I also spoke with number 300 on the List. I told him that he might be able to get one because about one-third of the people in front of him would be ineligible. He responded by saying,

"I'm so disgusted by the whole thing that I don't even want one."