Thoughts on Flywheel/Desoto

Desoto is changing its name to Flywheel and within two months the old blue & white Desotos will all look like the above pic. The first cabs are already on the street.

Flashier, no?

Brilliant, yes!

The new color scheme acts as an advertisement for the app and the app is advertisement for the company.

However, a bit of confusion and hostility surrounds the change.

First the Confusion

Drivers at other companies who use the Flywheel app are apparently worried about losing rides. They shouldn't be.

Part of the agreement between Flywheel management and Desoto Owner Hansu Kim is that that orders will continue to be dispatched in the same way that they always have – the ride goes to the closest cab regardless of company.

What Desoto is counting on, according to part owner Matt Gonzales, is an "upsurge of advertising" that will cut into the TNC's market share and hopefully spread the wealth to everyone.

There some evidence that this is already happening. According to former Flywheel manager Sachin Kansel, the number of Flywheel orders has gone up six times over the last year. 

Flywheel also has recently picked up several investors and a new CEO Rakesh Mathur who intends to use the money to advertise and expand the Flywheel brand across the country.

In addition, former Uber and Lyft customers are coming back to Flywheel because the TNC drivers are generally inept and don't know where they are going. The refusal of Uber and Lyft to fingerprint their applicants or train their drivers guarantees a continued flow of thugs and incompetents into the future. 

As Flywheel becomes a more widely known brand we'll be getting more and more riders back – plus new riders who can now get cabs because of Flywheel in neighborhoods where they couldn't before.

In addition, Hansu Kim says that Flywheel is working on a new version of the app that will do things that Uber and Lyft apps can't. A current example of that is the ability to make advance airport reservations.

Now the Hostility

Luxor and Yellow Cab companies don't like it. Well ... of course they don't. The idea is bold, innovative and creative. As the leading dinosaurs of the taxi industry, John Lazar of Luxor and Nate Dwiri of Yellow have been doing everything they can to help themselves, and the industry, become extinct.

They are the ones who killed Open Taxi Access over four years ago. As you might recall, the SFMTA had allocated $405,000 to set up a universal app in all the taxis and John Lazar reputedly went backdoor to his former school mate and then buddy, Major Ed Lee, causing the measure to mysteriously disappear from the MTA's agenda.

At the same time, Yellow was feverishly holding back radio orders so that they could petition for more cabs. Let me spell this out: They were deliberately giving bad service so that the City would give them more medallions.

When Uber et al attacked and the dinos finally realized that taxi apps were the future, instead of embracing Flywheel as the de facto universal app, Dwiri had a relative design a Yellow app (that works about as well as the old Yellow dispatching system – that is to say, badly), and Luxor continued to back Taxi Magic – a dinosaur in its own right.

Even to this day, when Yellow can't begin to fill its shifts, they still keep drivers waiting two or three hours to start work so that Yellow can extort more money in tips. That there might be a relationship between their treatment of their drivers and the dwindling numbers of same has apparently never occurred to Yellow management.

Whatever – If it hadn't been been for the geniuses at Luxor and Yellow, Uber and Lyft would never have taken the market-share that they have.

BTW – Uber came out with a "study" that saying they did $500 million in business in San Francisco last year while the taxi industry only took in $140 million. But Flywheel calls this bullshit (don't blame me for the crudeness. I don't use such words – in print.) The actual figure should be $400 million for the taxi business.

A Few Problems

One is that the Flywheel paint job does not make it clear that the taxi also takes flags and credit cards. In addition, the cabs I've looked at don't have the advertising space on top. That space could be used as part of a campaign for Flywheel/Desoto and against Uber – could be much effective than a bus because taxies go more places.

Another is that Flywheel has a website and blog that is slick and up to date but, as an advertising tool,  could be more effective.  The contrived pic in the blog makes it look a little too much like Lyft light.

There are also continuing problems with the driver support system such has holding drivers off the app for various minor reasons. I personally am not sure what all their rules concerning accepting orders and cancellations are.

Sachin Kansal and Steve Humphrey have moved on ("happily" they say – Humphrey upped his investment in Flywheel). Therefore, it seems a good time for the new management to meet with the drivers and take a look at some of the policies that might be changed, clarified or improved.

Taxi Myopia Blues

I offer this photo as a balm to those who've taken umbrage at my comparing San Francisco taxicab company owners to dinosaurs. I think this analogy is more accurate. Besides, it also applies to many cab drivers (far too many) as well.

Let start with the owners.

One could write a fat, non-fiction novel on the short-sightedness and petty greed of the people running S.F. cab companies – especially Yellow and Luxor. But for this article, I'll restrict myself to their opposition to an universal app or Open Taxi Access (OTA).

When John Wolpert first introduced Cabulous in 2010, it should have been obvious to anyone with an entact frontal lobe that, if adapted throughout the taxicab fleet, the app had the potential to both drastically improve service to the neighborhoods and create business for the drivers.

Meter Increase??? Gate Increase??? No-Go Fee. Technology Fee. ETA.

All the above and more were discussed at a recent Town Hall meeting.

On May 31, 2013 Dan Hara will be handing in his final recommendations, which will include whether or not there should be gate and/or meter increases. There will be Town Hall meetings to discuss the issues on June 11th and the MTA Board will look at and possibly vote on the proposals on June 18, 2013.

Not to editorialize but:

 1. No businesspeople in their right minds would raise their rates when they are being successfully underpriced by their competition.

2. It's time to get rid of gate fees and replace them with a split of the meter. I've been saying this ever since I was first hired by Yellow Cab and saw the corruption and incompetence that the gates & gas system caused. And I repeated my ideas to the MTA the moment they took over. The bottom line is that a gate system makes leasing to drivers the business of cab companies - not picking up customers.

There are companies like Desoto, Luxor and Green who consciously try to give good service but they are in the minority. I won't rant about the details. I've already done this enough. The primary problem is simply that the profits and losses of the companies are not directly linked to the amount of business that they do. If the meter were split, the MTA wouldn't have to conduct arcane studies to find out which companies were good and which were bad. All that would take care of itself - and service to the public would drastically improve.

I've said this so often that I sound like a crank but the future lies with me. (See Uber. It might also be a good idea to take a Business 101 course along with a double dose of common sense.)

Electronic Taxi Access (ETA) et al.

I didn’t catch the entire meeting and Director Chris Hayashi (photo, hand) was still presenting the proposals when I left so I can’t give definitive summary. The final plan won’t be presented until May 31^st but the following covers what little I do understand of the system.

1. All available taxis will appear on the map of a customer’s smartphone.
2. The MTA itself will create no app but rather will co-ordinate hails from Flywheel, Uber's taxi app and other legal apps.

3. All the information from the individual apps will be routed through a central system in order to appear on the smartphone.

3. The exception will be calls to dispatch services and e-hails from single company apps like Luxor or Desoto’s.

     A. However, these calls and e-hails will be integrated with the ETA system so that only one cab will be sent to each order.

In other words, this will be the centralized dispatch system that drivers have spent thirty years lobbying for.

In addition:

1. The App Fees will be paid by the customer.

2. There will be a Technology Fee to be paid by the customer instead of credit card processing fees paid by the drivers.

3. A $10 No Go fee also will be automatically deducted from customers’ credit card if they aren’t there.

4. The “Response Time Fee” listed on the white board above is being renamed a “Premier Service Fee.” It will be paid to a driver if his or her taxi gets to a customer within a promised time like under ten or fifteen minutes. Yes this does mean that a driver will get a bonus picking up a ride in time.

Needless to say there are criticisms:

1. ETA won’t improve service because taxi drivers will take a flag before they will take a dispatched call. As the saying goes, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

Well, that depends upon the birds in question doesn't it? Seriously, if you think about it, you are often closer to dispatched calls - unless you spend all your time in Union Square.

Take my situation for instance. I start driving from the inner Bayview at 4 pm. It takes me five minutes to get to the area around Zynga and Adobe where I can pick up flags, and another three to five minutes to get to either Market Street or the cabstand at Cal Trans. All that time I'm within five minute or less of dozens of businesses where people might want taxis.

The unwritten rule is that a driver shouldn't take dispatched calls during rush hour because most of them will be No Go's. The reasons for this are that you don't how old the orders are and the people have probably called three or four companies.

With ETA both these problems disappear. Your cab will be the only one sent to the order and you'll get the No Go fee if the party isn't there. In addition, with all hails going through one dispatch system, you'll have at a minimum of three times more orders to choose from.

2. This will discriminate against people without smart phones or with Paratransit cards.

The orders will be dispatched in such a way that a driver can’t tell what type of order it is.

3. If so, drivers won't take the hails because they might not get a No Go fee.

This comes from the meeting. Cab drivers, man. So many of us look only at the empty side of the hourglass. Eighty per cent of the people in S.F. have smart phones and people who don't have them don't take as many taxis as people who do. Furthermore, No Go's on Paratransit rides are rare. 

The percentage of No Go's will be extremely rare on with ETA and the odds of getting the fee if the customer isn't there are better than 90%.

The Age of the Dinosaurs...

... reputedly passed over 65 million years ago but a few survivors are hanging on in the taxicab business in the personas of John Lazar and the management of Yellow Cab.

Mr. Lazar reputedly killed Open Taxi Access a few years back and is out to waste ETA as well. The problem for him is that it's not as easy to buy politicians as it was back in the day. With Lyft and Uber on the scene the price of corruption has sky rocketed.

On the other hand, maybe Lazar is getting a kickback from Uber and Lyft. The balkanization of the dispatching services in this town is what opened the floodgates for the illegal apps in the first place. The adoption of an ETA system would be the best weapon we could possibly use against them.

But the President and General Manager of Luxor Cab is still living back in the Jurassic Age when the companies with the most medallions necessarily made the biggest profit. If he succeeds, all he's likely to win today is a large cut of a dying industry.

Electronic Taxi Access

Kudos to Director Christiane Hayashi. For over thirty years cab drivers have wanted a universal dispatching system in San Francisco. Thanks to the Director, this dream is finally being realized.

Of course such a system was really impossible thirty years ago because the technology for it didn't exist. And, while said technology has existed for the last five years or so (Remember Open Taxi Access?), the political landscape was not ready for such a venture. To spell this out in plain English - the good ol' corrupt boys' network kept it from happening.

But, thanks to Hayshi's persistence in overcoming hurdles  (including the MTA Board's indifference, opposition from Luxor and Yellow cab companies, mindless personal attacks, cab driver paranoia and the Byzantine weirdness of the MTA) the idea is about to come to fruition as Electronic Taxi Access (ETA).

Under ETA, all apps would be required to show all the available cabs in San Francisco thus allowing the customers to choose the closest taxis on their smart phone apps. The benefits of this have been immediately obvious to every customer I've discussed the subject with but I'll spell them out anyway.

The customers will no longer have to guess which company (or companies) to call or hail because they will able to know what cabs are nearest to them. The taxis will be color coded by company so the customers can also select companies that they prefer. Coupled with pre-tipping or similar perks this should pretty much insure that the customers will get a ride in the shortest possible time.

The drivers will get the similar benefits. A Desoto driver will no longer have to go back downtown empty from the Richmond or the Sunset because a customer one block away from him or her called a Luxor and visa versa.

The balkanization of the cab industry into competing dispatching fiefdoms is one major reason that Uber et al have had such an easy time taking away our business. Drivers have been reticent to go into the neighborhoods because they have been afraid of no-goes caused by customers calling several taxi companies at once.

Electronic Taxi Access will help make us competitive again while improving service to the neighborhoods.

President Hansu Kim of Desoto Cab, on the other hand, is concerned that his company might lose its distinct brand with this system. While he agrees that all electronic hailing should be linked, Desoto is developing an app of its own which he thinks will give the public better service than anybody else in the business. He does not think that his app should be required to show taxis from cab companies that have invested nothing to improve service.

I wonder if this is as serious problem as he thinks it is? The color coding should distinguish Desoto from the other companies and, if his drivers continue to give superior service, customers will select them over the opposition and they should continue to make more money and want to stay with Desoto. If his app is really good customers will go to it to choose his cabs first. In addition, Desoto drivers will have the benefit of getting rides from other apps.

A Request for Information was put out a few months ago and the bid to create ETA was won by Frias Transportation Infrastructure (FTI) of Las Vegas.  FTI was chosen over CMT,  Digital Dispatch, Electronic Connect, Flywheel and Veriphone.

Tariq - Or Actions Speak Louder Than Words.

Note the irony. Tariq Mehmood, who proclaims himself to be the "powerful and great leader of the drivers" siding with Yellow Cab in trying to remove Deputy Director Christiane Hayashi.


Of course Yellow, Luxor, Town and Checker, not the drivers, would be the major winners of a successful Hayashi coupé.


There are several reasons for this.

• These cab companies coerce their drivers to tip and Hayashi has made this practice a $5,000 misdemeanor. She recently started busting limos. Enforced tipping and other illegal company activities are also on her hit list.
• The recent meter increase did not include a gate increase. The companies, especially Luxor, blame Hayashi who drafted the legislation.
• Hayashi helped create and has promoted Open Taxi Access (OTA) which Luxor and Yellow hate.
• Yellow and Luxor want 500 taxis to go to them - now. Hayashi doesn't want to put cabs out without public hearings.
• John Lazar of Luxor wants himself and his two sons to be given medallions without following the rules. Hayashi thinks medallions should only be given to working cab drivers.

I could go on and on but the bottom line is that Yellow and Luxor are used to running the taxicab industry through backdoor politics and Hayashi has created a culture of transparency through her Town Hall Meetings. For the first time, medallion holders and regular taxi drivers (not just the owners) have a say in how their business works.


So, why is Tariq Mehmood, "the driver's advocate," lining himself up with guys like these?

Well, fact is - he's done it before. Awhile back, when Yellow Cab was trying to force their drivers to pay $2,000 or $3,000 in gates a month in advance, Tariq attacked the UTW which was fighting to stop the pre-payments. Mehmood later backed legislation at the Board of Supervisors raising gates and ratifying gate overcharges. This did Yellow a tremendous service.

Why he did this? I can't say.

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.

TAC Proposes: 25 Single Operator, 25 to the List, Restart OTA

On Monday, June 13, 2011 the Taxi Advisory Council held its most productive meeting so far.

It started with the introduction a new councilor, Timothy Lapp (Photo front), who replaces Jim Gillespie as the Yellow Cab delegate. Tim and I started driving taxi on the same day almost 28 years ago. I know him as a creative person who has travelled widely in Europe and Asia with a definite mind of his own. I'm sure that he'll make great contributions to the council when he's not parroting his firm's propaganda - maybe even when he is.

Then, a ghost proposal popped up. At the Town Hall meetings (of which TAC was supposed to be an extension) Peak Time Permits had been given the thumbs down and left for dead by everyone. Yet, there they were back on the agenda under the new name of "Part Time Company Permits." They certainly couldn't be peak time because they could be operated up to 80 hours a week.

Veteran MTA watchers recognized this as the handiwork of Director Malcom Heinicke. Heinicke has occasionally spoken about "transparency" but appears to have only the vaguest idea of what the word means. For the director's elucidation allow me to include a few definitions from Wikipedia:


Transparency, as used in the humanities and in a social context more generally, implies openness, communication, and accountability. It is a metaphorical extension of the meaning a "transparent" object is one that can be seen through. Transparent procedures include open meetings ....


In politics, transparency is introduced as a means of holding public officials accountable and fighting corruption. When government meetings are open to the press and the public ... when laws, rules and decisions are open to discussion, they are seen as transparent and there is less opportunity for the authorities to abuse the system in their own interest.


In short, what's the point of putting us through 3 days of Town Hall meetings and then going back door to whimsically change what the drivers had decided upon? Did the director think we wouldn't notice?

Heinicke is in danger of turning all these meetings into the farce that Brad Newsham, Tariq Mehmood and others claim they are.

Whatever - the TAC didn't like the Heinicke Corporate Cabs any better than drivers liked Peak Time Permits at the Town Hall Meetings. Thumbs down once again!

Under the firm direction of Chair Chris Sweiss, the Taxi Advisory Council voted for:

• 25 Single Operator Permits.
• 2 Electric Vehicle (EV) permits.
• 25 Medallions to the top of the Waiting List.

The council also decided to urge the MTA Board to work out various ways to improve service before arbitrarily adding cabs to the fleet

TAC then voted to advise the Board to re-issue a Request For Proposal (RFP) for Open Taxi Access (OTA). This would invite bidding from tech companies to build the Open Taxi Access Platform. This would be the first step to making OTA a reality.

TAC also voted to encourage all companies to take dispatched calls.

Speaking of Tariq Mehmood (And how can one not?) ... he showed up at TAC to tell everyone that he was going on strike because, at the last Town Hall meeting, he took 9 of his friends into another room where they agreed that the Single Operator Permits should be operated at fixed times.

Most of the people at that meeting appeared to prefer a more flexible schedule.

But Mehmood, the self-proclaimed "powerful and great" leader, declared that he was in the majority, that 80% of the drivers were behind him and that, if the permits were not operated at fixed times, he would strike.

There you have it! Talk about motivation! A "powerful and great" man's gotta do what he's gotta do.

The rest of the drivers at the Town Hall Meetings had pretty much agreed with TAC's recommendations.

The upshot is that the drivers should get a meter increase and (quid pro quo) 25 Single Operator cabs should be put out to work at peak times, 25 more taxis should be added to the fleet and a high-tec dispatching solution should link all the taxis in the city in one big network.

Hopefully this will help both the drivers and the public.

We'll see.

Supervisors Lack a Resolution

The Board of Supervisors failed to pass a resolution "opposing proposed taxi fare increase under consideration by the Municipal Transportation Agency in the absence of improved taxi service" yesterday because it did not have unanimous support.

Sponsored by Supervisors Scott Weiner, Malia Cohen and Mark Farrell, the measure required a unanamous vote because it had not been discussed in a committee.

We didn't realize that the public would be able to address the subject until the Board was already in session so only Mark Gruberg of the United Taxicab Workers, Barry Korengold of the San Francisco Cab Drivers Association and myself argued against the resolution.

Gruberg said that we needed a raise because we hadn't had one in eight years; Korengold mentioned that the SFMTA Board had failed to implement Open Taxi Access which would immediately improve service to the neighborhoods; and I commented on the weirdness of Democratic politicians, the party of labor, refusing to back a cost-of-living raise to working people. We all expressed a sense of unfairness at being punished for problems beyond our control.

The Board, however, had already decided the issue behind closed doors - this time to our advantage. Supervisor Weiner said that the resolution did not have the necessary support so no vote was taken and the measure was tabled until the Board's next meeting.

Weiner went on to say that the resolution was not intended as a criticism of cab drivers but that we needed more taxis on the street. He just thought that any meter increase should be coupled with peak time cabs.

Supervisor John Avalos, from my District 11, true to his labor roots, spoke against the measure saying that taxi drivers needed a fare increase.

Supervisor Malia Cohen, from District 10, remained adamant in her belief that there should be no meter increase until cab drivers start picking up in the Bayview.

Cabulous and Open Taxi Access: Overview

Cabulous is an App that allows direct communication between a cab driver and a cab user via an iPhone or a Droid. Taxi Magic, which works exclusively with Luxor Cab, and the infamous Ubercab offer similar services.

As such, they are in direct competition with each other: Cabulous and Taxi Magic, legally, and Uber, to the extent that it goes after taxi business, illegally.

 Open Taxi Access (OTA) is a system or a network that potentially can graphically represent all available taxis in San Francisco on a map of the city. This map would show the approximate locations of all the cabs.

Taxi Magic and Cabulous (but not Uber) could be linked in this network so that, although they would still be in competition, they would also compliment each other. If, say, a customer used Taxi Magic, he or she would be unable to also use Cabulous to hail a cab. The problem of customer contacting multiple taxi companies could disappear.

Thus the cab driver's nightmare of spending five minutes riding to an order only to see the customer driving away in another taxi would be greatly reduced by OTA.

In addition, the customer living at 36th and Santiago would no longer feel the need to contact multiple companies when he or she could look at the map of the city and simply choose the closest taxi.

Thus the customer's fears of never getting a taxi might gradually wither away.

Next: Cabulous and OTA in more detail.

Cabulous and Open Taxi Access

John Wolpert (photo) and Don Carmel of Upstart Mobile Corporation gave a presentation on Cabulous and Open Taxi Access at the Jan 24th Taxi Advisory Council. Simply put, their goal is to give open access to every taxi driver and fleet in the City.

Although most drivers are somewhat familiar with Cabulous, Upstart Mobile's plan goes beyond smart phones to include:

• PSAs (Not to be confused with PSAS.)
• City web sites
• Hospitals, public facilities, smaller hotels etc.

The app can be used either by individual drivers or by taxi fleets.

Open Taxi Access (OTA) is also called "Cabs on a Map" because it shows available taxis located at various points on a map of San Francisco. If a customer wants a taxi, he or she can contact a specific one by smart phone, computer of other online device and send out a call to said cab. Then, the driver can accept or reject the request. If the driver accepts, the customer can watch the taxi on the map as it progresses toward his or her location.


Mr. Wolpert said that this visual aid helps to greatly reduce no-gos. Cabulous also will have a feature that will allow drivers to call and make voice contact with the customers without giving out the drivers' phone numbers - this should also help keep the fare waiting until the cab shows up.

Cabulous has built in protections against illegal drivers hacking into it. Cabulous will only recognize drivers by their A-Card number with a password and they will be linked to the appropriate color scheme. Thus a cab drivers can't take out their own cars and use the system either.


During an e-mail exchange, John wanted to make it "... very clear ... that OTA is not anything remotely similar to centralized dispatch. Centralized dispatch means one dispatch operation takes over and removes control from fleets and drivers. OTA leaves control in the hands of fleets and drivers but gives them a simple way to work together on certain websites.

Wolpert added that using "technical openness actually (maybe ironically) results in" fewer no-gos. "Because we run 'openly' across all fleets platforms, our system can know when two or more separate fleets are being" contacted "from the same location, phone number or address with the system.

I think the advantages of Cabulous and Open Taxi Access should be obvious to veteran drivers:

• Customers in outlying areas should have even more taxis to choose from than the 3 or 4 cab companies they usually call - and with a much greater chance of having one show up.
• Non "radio playing" drivers might start taking orders when they find that they don't have to be lonely in the Sunset thus giving the city better coverage.
• And of course drivers in these outlying areas should find themselves getting many more rides out there than they do now since dispatched orders would be available to drivers from all companies instead of just a few.
• Etc.

The no-gos caused by people using "dumb" phones to call several companies won't disappear nor will people stop stepping outside to flag taxis but both of these activities should be greatly reduced if the system is implemented.

Green Cab and Citywide dispatch are already using Cabulous as of course are numerous individuals. Wolpert says that drivers using the app are averaging five to ten extra rides a week.

You can check out Cabulous and Upstar Mobile at htttp://cabulous.com/tag/upstart-mobile/page/2/