Franz Kafka on the Waiting List

This comes to me from Carl Macmurdo who said that this passage reminds him of the plight of drivers on the waiting list.

(To read the passage click below.)

MTA Permits Town Hall meeting

A Town Hall meeting was held last Week on Monday concerning the new permits leased by the MTA to the companies. It was led by Taxi Services personal Mike Harris (photo), Jarvis Murray and Scott Leon.

I'm going to China tomorrow and I'm pressed for time so I'm just going pass on some notes.

TAC member Carl Macmurdo said the MTA gave themselves medallions. 

Former TAC member Bill Mounsey (82 on the List) and driver Naim Malik strongly objected to giving out the permits instead of giving medallions to working drivers on the list.

Mike Harris said that he had talked to Director Reiskin and that the List had not been killed, implying that more cabs would go to the List. According to Harris, the permits are different than medallions in several ways.

The permits: are leased for a three year period, are restricted to gates & gas, can drop at SFO but can't pick up, cannot be leased and will have different numbers.

People at the meeting said that the way to guarantee that the cabs will be used properly would be to: look at actual figures - who buys the cab, who pays the insurance, who gets the gate payments, who pays the gates and where the shift changes are made - must be made at the company.

Tom Stanghellini of Luxor cab said that it would give the companies the chance to reward veteran drivers with good shifts. 

Allocation of the permits to the companies ...

will be on the basis of dispatching records and other factors. such as treatment of drivers would be used to decide how many cabs would be given to what companies. The discussion centered on dispatching records on Monday.

Harris emphasized that it was a preliminary draft and that the numbers could be changed.

At this point the 155 would be put out thus:

• 50 to Luxor
• 45 to Yellow
• 35 to Desoto
• 10 to Arrow/Checker
• 5 to Comfort, Green, National
• 0 to everyone else

Hansu Kim, owner of Desoto Cab strenuously objected to the fact that the statistics were self-reported. He said that there was no way Luxor should get 15 more cabs than Desoto. He said that Desoto was being audited by the City's controller and all other companies should do the same.

Jarvis Murray said that they would stay with self-reporting until electronic waybills because the norm.

Stanghellini said that Luxor had no objection to being audited.

A point of amusement is that Yellow Cab appears to have cost themselves 20 or 30 permits by deliberately giving poor service on the theory that this would give them more cabs

Richard Hybels was upset about getting none. "All my cabs are gates and gas and there's no tipping ," he said. "Some of these companies don't even have workers comp." In addition he said that the figures were wrong. He was listed as having 29 medallions when he only had 23.

Mark Gruberg of Green said that the pick ups that Green drivers make on Cabuolus weren't recorded in the stats and should be. Hybels could make the same complaint about Metro, which also uses Cabulous..

Hansu Kim said that the $1,900 per month that the MTA will charge to lease the permits was closer to a realist figure than the $2,500 that Med. Holders are getting now. Kim thinks that the numbers have artificial been driven up by brokers and illegal subleasing.

I suggested that the MTA should poll the drivers anonymously to find out which companies engaging in illegal practices like tipping.

This was met by great enthusiasm by ordinary drivers and total silence by company owners and stockholders.

Tom Stanghellini turned toward me and said something to the effect that nobody could find any tipping money in their office. He used different words but his meaning was, if people are tipping where is the money?

I mean he was looking at me when he said that as if to disprove that I ever put  the $20,000 that I put through Luxor's "Tipping Window" just like every other good Luxor smuc driver who wanted a decent shift and was stupid enough to stick around for ten years.

Well - you have me there Tom. I don't have a clue. On the other hand, a strip search by a good proctologist would probably turn something up resembling the truth. 

Malcolm on Top

Might as well start with Jim Gillespie (photo, below). He walked up to me with a big smile as I headed across the square toward the MTA board meeting last Tuesday.

"Going to write something in your blog?" he asked with a smile.

"I just found out that Heinicke (photo left) appears to be be violating the Sunshine Ordinance. The meetings are a farce," I told Gillespie. "The proposals are decided in advance behind close doors."

"I thought that's the way it worked," Jim said.

If anybody would know about such things it would be Gillespie. He was seen making one of those back door visits with his pal John Lazar and the way he jauntily bounded up the steps to City Hall told me how the vote would go.

MTA Board did indeed choose to lease 150 to 200 medallions or permits to taxi companies. The permits are supposed to go to the best run companies but "word on the street" is that Yellow will get more than its share anyway.

Jim used the incompetence of his company during the meeting as a reason for the City to give him more cabs. He especially mentioned that a high percentage of the people who call Yellow hang up before the dispatcher answers or cancel before Yellow picks them up.              

What he didn't bother to tell the Board was that Yellow often deliberately fails to answer the phone and then holds the orders for 9 to 12 minutes before dispatching them.  That way the company can use their poor service to ask for more taxis. And, the City is going to do it. Another doublethink classic.

The board will lease the taxis to the companies despite the fact that a study being done by Hara and Associates will not be finished until January.

This caused some discussion and the only dissenting vote. Chairman of the Board, Tom Nolan (photo left) thought that they should wait until the study was completed. He also wanted to revisit the decision if Hara came to the conclusion that no cabs were necessary. But, as one driver said, that's like closing the barn door after the horses are out.

There was an extended discussion by the Board members but it was one of those experiences where reality trumps satire.

Not that there is necessarily anything wrong with ignorance. But, it does take humility to learn and the Board has adamantly refused to listen to anybody - the Taxi Advisory Council, the drivers at the Town Hall meetings, the drivers at the MTA Board meetings, Director of Taxi Services Chris Hayashi, Dan Hara - who could teach them what's what.

The tone was actually set a few Board meetings ago when Director Joel Ramos (photo right) fervently thanked Director Malcolm Heinicke for helping them understand the taxi business. I have nothing to add. This is the level at which the Board functions.

Ramos thought the fact that Uber, Sidecar and other illegal Apps started in San Francisco was a priori proof that there must be a shortage of cabs. It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that this city is one of the Tech start up capitals of the world and that the businesses are being set up in such a way that it's almost impossible for them to lose money. Not to mention that these Apps are invading cities like Washington D.C. and Chicago that are flooded with taxis.

"Word on the street" has it that Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin (along with the Mayor's office) is responsible for raising the payout to medallion holders back up to $200 thousand from the $150 thousand that Heinicke wanted them to suck on. Although Reiskin is clearly being pressured from above to "show them the money," he appears to be struggling to do as best he can by the drivers and the cab riding public.

The problem is that he clearly does not understand the most basic things about the cab business. Nor does he know the characters in it.

And, why should he? He has the entire MTA under his purview. How could he know the nuts and bolts of every division? Especially one as complex as taxicabs? That's what the Director of Taxi Services is supposed to be for. But, of course, the Board has her on the top of their list of people not to listen to. (Hmm. I've just ended two perfectly good sentences in a row with prepositions. Take that Sister Pauline!)

Director Reiskin thought it was refreshing to hear from people outside the cab industry during public comment - after the usual collection of professional shills (most of them paid by Luxor or Yellow) came up calling for as many 700 more cabs. My favorites were the hotel rep and the woman from the Chamber of Commerce. They always want more cabs no matter what the situation. They wanted more after 9/11.

The hotel guy said that they couldn't find cabs at the hotels. Of course not. With all the limos lined up to grease the doorman, where would a cab park? The Commerce lady, as always, cited the expanding population of San Francisco as a reason to put out the taxis.

 She's right of course. In 1950, the population of San Francisco was 775,357. By 2010, it was 805,235. At that rate, one additional medallion a year should do the trick.

When another speaker and myself told Reiskin that, even if they started the process tomorrow, the additional cabs still wouldn't be ready for the Blue Angels, he was disconcerted. He thought about it for few moments and decided that "we have to get them out as soon as possible." He seemed to be unaware of the fact that, if the taxis were needed at all, it wouldn't be until May. Yes - there are no tourists between October and the summer.

The ideal time to add taxis would be in April. That way they wouldn't lower the incomes of current drivers and they'd be ready for the boat races next summer. There was no need to rush. Reiskin had plenty of time to read Hara's study and still add cabs if needed. Anyone in the taxi business could have told him so - if he'd been willing to listen.

On the other hand, someone else is clearly pushing Reiskin's buttons. (See the title of this post.) The only real reason to put the permits out fast is to funnel funds into the income streams of a few cab companies and the SFMTA.

One thing the Board members did right ...

was finally come out in favor of an Uber like App for taxicabs. Finally?

I wrote my first post on Cabulous and Open Taxi Access(OTA)  on January 28, 2011. The idea has been presented to the MTA Board on numerous occasions. The Taxi Advisory Council voted in favor of it. Cab drivers almost universally support it. Chairman Tom Nolan even said that the Board should look into the idea.

Cabulous started at approximately the same time as Uber in 2010. If OTA had been supported by the Board when it first came to their attention, everyone might be talking about how Uber is like Cabulous and not the other way around.

About the only people against it were the managers of Yellow and Luxor Cabs.

So what happened?

"Word on the street (dude sees all, hears all, knows all)" is that OTA died when President and General Manager of Luxor cab, John Lazar (photo), told former Executive MTA Director Nat Ford to kill it.

On the other hand, funds have recently been allocated to Taxi Services for electronic dispatch (The new name for OTA). Hopefully the Board will follow through this time.

Why $1,900 a month?

Of course this figure was not vetted (What is these days?) but the going price for medallions leased to taxi companies is currently $2,500. Yet here is the SFMTA selling permits on the cheap. To say the least, this runs contrary to their normal behavior. It also gives credence to the "word on the street" that John Lazar and Jim Gillespie worked out a back door deal after threatening to sue the SFMTA. At $1,900 a month Yellow and Luxor will make out like bandits - which isn't too far from their normal behavior.

Yellow takes in between $8,000 to $12,000 per day by encouraging its drivers to "voluntarily" tip. And, of course, John Lazar was asking for $10 per day plus $2 for the gasman at Luxor when I was there three years ago. At that time, he was also asking his cashiers to "voluntarily" tip him.  This meant that John's cashiers had to make $100 per shift in tips from drivers through Luxor's dispatching window (photo below) before they could make anything for themselves. This gives the word "voluntary" a whole new meaning.

What we have here, then, is the SFMTA getting together with two of the most dubious taxi companies in the business to divvy up money that had been headed to ease the old age of working cab drivers. This would appear to leave Director Malcolm Heinicke with a profound moral quandary:

Should the MTA take 15%, 33% or 50% from the companies' tipping jars? For the public good - as is, of course, understood.

Dostoyevsky, Orwell, the Sunshine Ordinance & the Politics of Taxis

A character in one of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's stories loved humanity but couldn't stand any individual person. The great Russian writer used this figure to satirically underline the potential distance between a noble ideal and an actual human being.

George Orwell (photo) looked into the corrupting effects that such thinking can have on action in his 1946 essay Politics and the English Language.

He thought that the writing of his time had become sloppy and decadent and that "the decline of language must ultimately have political and economic ..." effects. "In our time," Orwell wrote, "political speech and writing are largely in defense of the indefensible."

"Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties." People defending such acts can't say, "'I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so’" and instead cloak their true thoughts with euphemisms.

Bombing helpless people from the air is named "pacification." Robbing millions of peasants of their lands becomes "relocation." In Orwell's time, imprisoning and torturing people, shooting them in the back of the head was called the "elimination of unreliable elements." 

What I'm about to do is examine recent statements of the SFMTA Board using Orwell's scope. Justifying the extraction of "income streams" from taxi drivers may seem minor in comparison to the above but major corruption starts small. Hitler began by beating people up in beer halls. More to the point, cab drivers were one of the first groups to lose benefits and workers rights by being forced to sign "independent contracts." Millions of other workers have since suffered the same fate.

The simple fact is that a government agency has targeted workers in a private industry as a source of revenue and justifies its actions with the following double talk.

"The medallions are our assets and we can do what we want with them."

Director of the MTA Board Malcolm Heinicke makes this sound like an eternal principle of law or nature but in fact the statement is what Orwell would have called "doublethink."

1. The medallions became "assets" because of laws that the MTA wrote.
2. These "assets" only have value because of the cab drivers who work the medallions.
3. The idea that you can do what you want with an "asset" without regard to the effect that it would have on the people who give it value runs contrary to the moral principles that have characterized western civilization for the last one hundred and fifty years.
4. Only extremists of the left or right would agree with Heinicke's political stance on this matter (i.e. communists, fascists, dictators, tea party fanatics, etc).

"We're doing this for the public good."

Right! A "public" that does not include cab drivers or, indeed, the public that uses cabs.

What the MTA really plans to do is take millions of dollars that cab drivers have earned and use it to cover a budget shortfall. But it goes beyond that - these proposals will stay in effect whether there is a shortfall or not.

And, the percentages that the MTA intends to take from drivers in the form of "transfer fees" are three to ten times higher than 5% that is charged by New York and most other cities in the country.

In effect, the MTA intends to tax San Francisco cab drivers at a higher rate than any other group of the people in the country. Heinicke, I suppose, would call this collateral damage.

The only "public" being served by MTA's plans are the wealthy individuals and corporations that the city (and the country) are under-taxing or not taxing at all; as wall as, of course, Heinicke and his personal ambitions.

Is it Alice in Wonderland or the White Rabbit?

I don't know how else to characterize the following fantasies.

Medallion sales revenue will go to improve illegal vehicle enforcement.

The Heinicke plan projects $14 going to the MTA.  The Pilot Plan gave the city $10 million a year. Taxi Services got permission from the MTA to hire two new investigators over a two year period. Only one works regularly in the field. The other works enforcing regulations in the taxi industry. Meanwhile unregulated "car services" Sidecar, Uber and the new pink mustache cars proliferate like rabbits while the MTA does nothing.

The cost of medallion enforcement over the last two yeas has come solely from a 100% increase in medallion holder renewal fees. Of the $20 million that the MTA has taken in from the Pilot Plan in medallion sales revenue, the taxi industry has yet to see one red cent.

We intend to improve taxi service.

Right!

What better way to improve service than to turn cab driving into a dead end job that will pay even less in the future than it does now?

What better way to improve service than to ignore the reports, proposals and plans of the TAC and other driver/experts in the industry?

What better way than to show callous disregard toward several hundred professional taxi drivers (who worked and followed the City's own rules) by killing the waiting list?

What better way to attract new quality drivers than to ignore the ideas, needs and wishes of the ones who are already here?

"The great enemy of clear language is insincerity," George Orwell.

And, I might add - insincerity is the great enemy of pure action as well.

Vice Chair Cheryl Brinkman initiated the vote on Heinicke's Plan at the last Board meeting by saying,

"we've heard enough,"

when she couldn't possibly have read so much as a word of the Taxi Advisory Council report.

In a strange way, of course, she was right. There was no point in listening to anything cab drivers might say or think. Brinkman and the rest of the Board members clearly had already voted before they walked into the meeting room.

Or, as Director Malcolm Heinicke wrote in a May 17, 2012 e-mail that went to Roberta Boomer, Tom Nolan and Cheryl Brinkman with a Cc to Ed Reiskin:

"... most of all we all need to come to agreement on this (the MTA's plan) as best we can BEFORE IT IS FORMALLY PROPOSED." (my capitalization)

"If that means we need to move this piece of the overall package to a latter meeting, so be it, but we need to get our agreed plan and then sell the Mayor and the Supes."

Earlier in the same e-mail Heinicke showed sincere feeling when wrote,

"... Chris is significantly limiting the revenue to the MTA and sending more to the amorphous Drivers's fund. I understand why she is doing this but it is not good policy in my view. The MTA should get revenue. And, if we do not push for that, we are sacrificing the needs of the City to placate a few cab drivers."

What is the SFMTA Board Going to do With the List?

A few Board meetings ago Vice Chairman Cheyrl Brinkman (photo) gave a short speech saying that she really cared about doing right by cab drivers. If true, this is an indication that she and other members of the Board didn't fully understand the consequences of the vote they took on Tuesday August 21st to allow Pre-k's to sell (er, surrender) their medallions.

This became evident when the subject of continuing the List came up - after the vote.

Chairman Tom Nolan said that the Board should decide what to do with the Waiting List soon. Director of Transportation Ed Reiskin wanted to clarify the situation so that drivers should know whether or not they should wait to earn a medallion. Director Malcolm Heinicke was quoted in a paper as saying that the List was "the elephant in the room."

If so, Heinicke's been trying to shoot it down for five years. With Tuesday's vote, he succeeded. The pachyderm is laying on it's side gasping for breath. The MTA Board has already decided that few drivers will get their "earned" medallions.

Why? To understand let's look at Director of Taxi Services Chris Hayashi's proposal of May 2012.

Hayashi's Plan ....

called for the 350 Pre-K medallions to go to the Waiting List after the holders either returned them or passed on. It was based on her three year study of the cab industry and several assumptions that came from the knowledge she thereby gained:

1. Few cabs would go to the List once medallions started to be sold. Revocations would be about the only source ... 
2. ... except new issues. Hayashi proposed that 50% of them should go to the List. But, she's also a realist  and knew ...
3. ... that Heinicke wanted to Bogart the medallions.
4. Thus, the 350 Pre-K's would be the only major supplier to the List.

Another set of calculations and assumptions also came into play.

1. At a certain point it would be just as advantageous to buy a medallion as it would to wait.
2. Exactly when - would depend upon the age of the drivers and the length of time that they had been on the List.
3. For instance, I put myself on the list at 48 and got my medallion at 62.
1. If I had bought a medallion at 48, I figure that I would have been just as well off as I was from "earning" it 14 years later.
1. This is calculated for $250,000 and buying the medallion.
2. Paying for a "transfer" at $300,000 might be a whole different kettle of fish. I'd need some legal guarantees that I wouldn't be shafted before I'd sign up for this.
4. There are huge advantages to holding a medallion.
1. It's worth $10,000 to $20,000 a year in better shifts which helps balance out the loan payments.
2. You have job security.
1. Before I had my medallion John Lazar fired me for saying something he didn't like.
2. After I earned my medallion I said something that Lazar didn't like then fired him.
3. You can actually afford medical insurance.

Drivers in their 50's, 60's and 70's would be severally penalized if forced to purchase the medallions - especially after already waiting for 15 or 20 years. In most cases it would make no sense at all.

This would leave these people would have no "exit strategy" and cause them to keep driving until they dropped. Few would have been able to save any money on a $25,000 a year job. Many would die (No exaggeration or rhetorical flourish intended - just a fact.) in poverty.

Hayashi counted the number of such people at somewhere between 300 and 500 Drivers.

The Pre-K's, on the other hand, have already made around a million off of each medallion and don't have a driving requirement. Each medallion gives them from $3,000 to $4,000 per month for the rest of their lives to retire on.

Therefore, it seemed humane, rational and just to give the Pre-K medallions to the List.

But, it wasn't only a question of humanity that motivated Hayashi's plan. She has an understanding of people that seems to be totally lacking in the rest of the SFMTA. Her ultimate principle has been to serve the cab riding public.

"Happy cab drivers make happy customers," she once told me. "Bitter drivers sends Germans back to Munich telling their friends not to visit."

The only way to get more medallions to the Waiting List would be to convince the SFMTA Board that Hayashi is right.

San Francisco has the best and most knowledgeable cab drivers in the country. People from all over the world know this. It's only the locals who don't. People from all over the world tell me what a pleasure it is to take a cab in San Francisco. The reason that we are so good is that so many of us stuck around to earn the medallions. The drivers on the List helped make this city a prime tourist destination. They deserve to have the promises that were made to them kept.

Of course, the Waiting List is finished one way or other. If the SFMTA wants to attract quality drivers in the future, they will need to end the List with a legacy of justice and fair play.

Living the Farce 1

There is good news. The SFMTA Board changed the percentage for a transfer of a medallion (they are no longer to be sold) from 30% to 20% of $300,000 and raised the cut for a "surrender" of a medallion by both Pre-K and Post-K holders to $200,000 instead of $150,000.

Director Malcolm Heinicke came up to me before the meeting, told me that he read my blog and said that he had no hard feeling over what I'd written about him. We shook hands like pals in a debating society. He added that he did pay attention to my ideas.

I imagine that this was his way of telling me that my writing had influenced the changes that he'd made in the above figures. Flattering - but I doubt that I really had much to do with it.

I think it was more like the old scare-the-be-Jesus-out-of-them-and-they'll-be-happy-with-what-we-give-them gambit. There are a few reasons for my thoughts:

1. Contrary to Heinicke, the financiers clearly did not "bless" the 30% loan. Rebecca Lytle of the San Francisco Federal Credit Union, who loves her work and has enthusiastically answered every question I've asked her in the past, politely declined to comment on the 30% figure; and her boss Stephen Ho spoke with relief about the drop to 20%.
2. Nobody else on the SFMTA Board discussed, debated or questioned the amendments that Heinicke introduced, giving the impression that the subject had been vetted and agreed upon behind closed doors.
3. Driver Tariq Mehmood claimed during public comment that he knew about the changes the Saturday before the meeting.
4. If true, this would be a clear violation of the Sunshine Ordinance. But, the existence of a rule has rarely stopped people in power from abusing it.
5. In any case, it shows that something other than the force of my prose motivated the amendments.

There was another theory going down on "The Street." Depending upon who you talked to, either John Lazar of Luxor and Jim Gillespie of Yellow or Lazar, Gillespie, Chris Sweis of Royal and Dan Hinds of National had either threatened to sue the MTA or had worked out a back door deal with them.

I asked Jim Gillespie about the rumors. He told me that he was "a Christian" and "wouldn't lie" to me. He assured me that no such events had taken place.

Gillespie reminds me of Ronald Reagan. He has the same ability to believe everything he says while he's saying it. I always believe him when I'm listening to him. Later in the meeting, Gillespie told God and the MTA Board that there was no enforced tipping at Yellow Cab. I'll leave it to the drivers at Jim's company to judge the relationship between his religious beliefs and his conception of truth.

But, do the amendments make the Heinicke plan a good deal?

My mother might have said that the changes were better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick. $50,000 is $50,000 and 10% is 10%.

But, Heinicke is once again being misleading when he says that his amendments are "in line" with the Pilot Plan:

1. In the Pilot Plan - there were no separate categories of medallions. Whether Pre-K, Post-K or re-sold, they all gave the same 15% to the MTA and 5% to the Drivers Fund.
2. Under the Pilot Plan - any increase would apply to all medallions being sold. Therefore, capping the profit at $200,000 for a "surrender" has nothing to do with the plan that was worked out with the consensus of most people in the industry in 2010. If the price went up to $300,000 under the Pilot Plan, the medallion holder would get $240,000; at $400,00 the holder would get $320,000.
3. This makes the cut to the MTA either 33% or 50% for a transfer. The national average is 5%.
4. Under the Pilot Plan - an increase in sale price was to be based the Consumer Price Index (CPI), not Director Heinicke's thoughts.
5. The CPI that I just ran calculates that $250,000 in 2010 is worth $262,666.47 today.
6. As driver Tariq Mehmood and others pointed out at the board meeting, the combination of a slack tourist season and run-a-muck competition from illegal taxis and limos has greatly reduced the money coming into the taxi industry. 
7. This challenges the very idea of raising the price of the medallions.

In addition, "surrendering" the medallions instead of selling them would also apparently take the 5% away from the Driver's Fund.

There is neither a policy reason for the increase in the sale price nor for the creation of "surrendered" medallions except to give the SFMTA more money from the labor of the drivers who have worked to earn it. The MTA would gain $18 million over time from the Driver's Fund and $72 million from $300,000 sales.

Is it worthwhile to get a medallion "transferred" to you for $300,000 with 20% to the MTA?

Depends.

The $250,000 figure was chosen because it was doable without too much pressure on the new medallion holder. The down payment on $300,000 would be $10,000 more or $60,000 and payments would increase about $400 per month. Balance that against making an additional $40,000.

More important might be the difference between a "sale" and a "transfer." The 300 or so drivers who bought medallions under the Pilot Plan actually own or owned them. In a transfer, the city owns the medallions as an "asset." And, as we've repeatedly been told, the city can do anything it wants with one of its assets ... for the public good as is, of course, understood.

Another way to put the question might be to ask, "Would you buy a used car from Director Heinicke?"

More tomorrow.

SFMTA Board Meeting on Tuesday August 21, 2012

 Come One! Come all! See the SFMTA Plan to sell us out!

The drivers on the Waiting List should go because the SFMTA intends to stop giving you medallions worth $30,000 a year in revenue or $250,000 in a sale and take the profits for themselves.

The 300 Pre-K's and 900 Post-K's should go because the SFMTA plans to take $50,000 away from the sale of your medallions to give themselves a nifty $60,000,000.

But, wait! The SFMTA has something for everybody!

To read more click "Read more" below.