TAC and Town Hall Meetings for 11-28-11 are Cancelled

From: "SFTaxi" <SFTaxi@sfmta.com>

Date: November 22, 2011 1:30:54 PM PST

Cc: "Hayashi, Christiane" <Christiane.Hayashi@sfmta.com>

Subject: TAC 11-28 meeting Canceled

The Taxi Advisory Council meeting for 11-28-11 has been canceled.  There will not be enough members attending to have a quorum.

The next TAC meeting will be December 12, 2011.

Thank you

Taxi Services

          The Town Hall Meeting from 6 pm to 8 pm on Monday 11-28-11 is also canceled.

          Happy Holiday.

November 2011 Town Hall Meetings

A new series of Town Hall Meetings began on Monday, November 14th to discuss, "Consideration of Proposals for the Future of Taxicab Sales."

I couldn't come on Monday but caught the end of the afternoon session on Tuesday, November 15th and stayed for the evening (see schedule below).

In attendance were Naim Malik, Tone Lee, Mark Gruberg, Christopher Fulkerson, MTA Investigator Mike Harris,  Deputy Director Christiane Hayashi and myself. Richie Weiner and Jim Gillespie from Yellow Cab management attended in the afternoon and Barry Korengold came by at night, followed much later by Tariq Mehmood.

Forgetting that he was talking to cab drivers and not trying to snow City Supervisors or the general public, Richie Weiner tried to convince everyone that drivers would make more money if more cabs were put on the street. However, most of the conversations generally followed the outline on Hayashi's whiteboard.

Despite the small turnout almost all the usual points of view were put forth on the question of sales:

• Taxis should continue to be sold as in the Pilot Plan.
• The age for selling should stay at 70.
• The selling age should be lowered to 65.
• All Taxis should be sold.
• No taxis should be sold.

Most people thought that the seniority should continue for the waiting list and purchasing medallions but Tone Lee thought that a few medallions should be handled though a lottery.  There was also talk about combining the A-Card list with the Waiting list in some way. Ending the Waiting List was also mentioned.

There was debate as to whether or not medallion holding drivers should continue to have a driving requirement or be able to retire and continue to hold the medallions at ages 65 or 70.

The idea behind purchasing transfer rights is to give medallion holders of selling age a chance to continue working their medallion after they agree to sell. If they paid the $50,000 transfer fee in advance, they would be able to sell anytime afterwards and the money from sales would go to their families if they died before selling it themselves.

Having exhausted these subjects for the moment we went on to a discussion of the Driver's Fund which now has $2.4 million in it.

• Some drivers wanted the fund to be used as a down payment for medical insurance.
• Since $2.4 million obviously isn't enough to cover such benefits, I thought that we should raise the percentage for the fund from sales to ten per cent in order to help it grow faster.
• Tone Lee thought that we should build a recreation center for all drivers to use. 
• Director Hayashi came up with the idea of giving money to drivers who had been robbed or in an accident so that they could have time off to relax and psychologically recover.

Tariq Mehmood himself honored us with his presence while we were talking and sat silently listening to what we were saying for fifteen or twenty minutes. I had never before seen him go without speaking for such an extended period of time and wondered if he had been reading How to Win Friends and Influence People or I'm Okay, You're Okay. Had the Mehmood become a team player and developed an interest in the thought, opinions and feelings of others?

"The Driver's Fund is not for discussion !" Tariq loudly decreed when he finally graced us with his speech. "We will now talk about the sales program!" Then, he lectured us in a loud, abrasive monotone for a half an hour, before proclaiming, "The age should be 70!"

There didn't seem to be much to add so we went back to discussing ways to grow the Driver's Fund so that it would be large enough to help with medical benefits. Christopher Fulkerson mentioned that the companies owned the drivers  millions of dollars from an agreement made with the old Taxi Commission. I thought a percentage of the meter drop could be helpful.

"We are not here to talk about medical benefits!" Mehmood commanded. "$2.4 Million dollars is not enough for a medical program!" He then proceeded to spend eight and a half minutes educating us on the details of his profound insight. Then, he left.

The next sessions will be on Tuesday, November 22nd from 2 to 5 and 5 to 8 as per the below schedule. Earplugs are optional.

TAC Proposed Regulatory Legislation - An End to Pre-K Sales?

The Council Liaison introduced several proposed changes in taxicab regulations at the 10/24/11 TAC meeting attended by councilor Bill Mounsey (photo).

Highlights included:

1. Changing the current requirement for annual driver renewal (A-cards) from December 31st to the month of the driver's birthday.

2. Ending the requirement for evidence of financial responsibility for new driver permits.

3. 100 of the 156 wheel chair pick-ups per year required by Ramp Taxi must be reported through the paratransit debit card system.

But the highlights of highlights were:

Changes in the Taxi Medallion Sales Pilot Program

These include:

1. Clarifying that a medallion buyer may sell his medallion at any time.

2. A Qualified Seller shall become ineligible to sell his or her Medallion if he or she does not execute a sales agreement, in a form provided by the SFMTA, within 15 days of SFMTA's notice to the Medallion Holder that the SFMTA has offered his or her Medallion to a Qualified Purchaser.


3. Re-opening the opportunity to sell his or her medallion to any Medallion Holder who is subject to the Full-Time Driving Requirement who has attained or will attain the age of 60 as of December 31, 2012.


Number 2 is somewhat confusing - especially in light of number 3. Does this mean that a medallion holder will never get another chance to sell his or her medallion if he or she doesn't jump at the first opportunity? Or, will she or he have another opportunity come up whenever the Taxi Services runs out of medallions to sell? It's certainly not clear to me.


Number 3, on the other hand, is clear but controversial. The proposed legislation excludes Pre-K medallion holders from another opportunity to sell their medallions. All drivers over 70 had been given the change to sell when the Sales Pilot Program first went into effect.


Naturally, the measure led to a sharp division - generally between owners and medallion holders vs non-medallion holding drivers -  among both the Taxi Advisory Council and the people in attendance. 


Drivers on the Waiting List saw this as a good move for four main reasons: (1) Pre-K's have already made a million dollars off of each medallion, (2) They had a chance to sell last year and were greedy not to do so, (3) Even if they can't sell, they would still have a guaranteed income of over $2,500 a month and (4) The Pre-K medallions would ultimately end up going back to the Waiting List.


The owner/medallion holder faction argued that the legislation was: (1) Unfair because the medallion holders were not informed before they made their choice last year, (2) They should have the right to sell any time because, unlike Post-k's, they actually paid for their medallions.(3) Thus not to let them sell would be "unconscionable."


The owner faction moved to squash the legislation and the measure was put to a vote which ended in a six-six tie, meaning that the legislation goes to the SFMTA Board for public hearings and the final thumbs up or thumbs down.


You find the complete list of Revised Taxi Regulations at the SFMTA Taxi website.

TAC 10.24.11

The Monday 10/24/11 TAC meeting covered a variety of topics.

The photo shows (from left) driver and dispatcher Bill Minikel, driver and blogger John Han, medallion holder and Yellow Cab representative Tim Lapp.

In what other industry can you find councilors of such uniqueness and diversity?


Illegal Taxi & Limo Update

SFMTA Investigator Eric Richholt thanked all the drivers who have sent him photos and videos of bandit cabs and limos and said to keep the info coming.  He can be reached at: eric.richholt@sfmta.com or 510-867-4694.

Richholt stated that he and his partners have handed out over one hundred $90 white zone citations to limos and nine $5,000 tickets to illegal cabs, including three for not having A-cards.

A few of the drivers expressed impatience with what has been done. They wanted a bigger crackdown on limos and town cars acting as cabs. Eric said that it was more difficult to prove that limos were making illegal pick-ups but that he and his colleagues would be going after them in the near future.

These drivers appeared to forget that this is the first systematic attack on illegal vehicles in memory (mine anyway) and is just getting underway. It wouldn't exist at all if Deputy Director of Taxi Services Christiane Hayashi hadn't written legislation to allow MTA investigators to give these citations and hadn't gotten the law passed by a hostile Board of Supervisors that thinks illegal taxis and limos serve the public. She also had to hire and train the investigators. Taxi Services needs a few more of them in order to maintain a presence on the streets both night and day.

Richholt said that they were prioritizing illegal taxis because they often have substandard equipment, rarely have insurance and thus are a danger to the public.

We Can Finally Use the Bike Lanes - Sometimes

After over a year of discussions, Hayashi has finally talked the powers that be into allowing cabs restricted use of bike lanes for picking up and dropping off customers.

Taxicabs will be issued bumper stickers indicating that the cabs have the right to be in the bike lanes for the above purposes. Taxis are supposed to use the lanes only as a last resort if there are no other safe locations nearby. We can only use separated bike lanes to drop off disabled or elderly customers. (Click photo for more detail.)

We are only supposed to pick customers up in a separated bike lane if the dispatcher tells us that the customer is disabled. Does this mean that we have to blow off disabled customers who try to flag us down from these areas? I think this item needs a bit more thought and discussion.

At any rate, we are only supposed to enter a separated bike lane at the beginning of the block and exit at the end.

For more information contact the SFMTA.

TAC Will Finally Be Able to Present Proposals to the SFMTA Board

After an exchange of letters between Taxi Advisory Council Chair Chris Sweis and SFMTA Chief Financial Officer Sonali Bose, it has been decided that Sweis will be able to present TAC's recommendations directly to the SFMTA Board at the their bi-weekly meetings.

This should put an end to a period when no recommendations were acted upon by the Board.

For background see TAC: or, Whatever Happened to Our Recommendations?...


New Town Hall Meeting Schedule

On Supervisors and the 5% Credit Card Fee

Conspicuously absent from the credit card discussions at the recent Government Audit and Oversight Committee chaired by Supervisor David Campos (photo) was the simple fact that San Francisco's taxi drivers have been given a 24% meter increase  WITHOUT A GATE INCREASE.

This is what you might call the missing context for the debates. There are several things to be said about this.

1. In my 28 year cab driving memory, this is the first time that a gate increase did not accompany a meter increase. They have usually been raised simultaneous. One company I worked for inflated the gates before the meter went up.

2. If you assume that half the cab rides are paid by credit cards (way high) this means the 5% credit card fees = 2.5% of a taxi driver's gross (it's really more like 1% or 2%).

3. This means that the actual gain for drivers with the meter increase of 24% minus the gross credit card fee of 2.5% = 21.5%.

4. I once knew a cab driver who had a $200 ride and did nothing but bitch about how much money he spent for gas on the trip ... Hmmm. This seems like a non sequitur. Why do I think of it now?

Quid Pro Quo

John Lazar, President and General Manager of Luxor Cab, was telling people that not including a gate increase with the meter increase was an oversight and a sign of the incompetence of Deputy Director of Taxi Services Christiane Hayashi.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The cab companies had been crying about their credit charges to Hayashi so she finally agreed to pass on the charges (at the same percentage as they were passed by most other cities in the country) on the condition that there would be NO GATE INCREASE going along with a meter increase. This was talked about at length and in detail at the Town Hall meetings last spring.

Furthermore, it was clear (to me at least) that the only reason the SFMTA Board did not to include a gate increase was because of the quid pro quo that Hayashi wrote into the legislation. In other words, there would have been a gate increase if credit card charges had not been passed on to drivers.

Let's do a litte more arithmetic.

1. John Lazar wanted an 8% gate increase - on top of the 5%. If this had been granted (and the main reasons that it wasn't were Hayashi's legislation and negotiation skills) 10.5% would have been taken from the 24% making the net raise 13.5%.

2. On the other hand, if the credit card charges had not been passed to the drivers, Lazar and his pals would have been pushing for 10% or 12 % of the gate. This would have worked out to net raises of 12% or 14%.

3. In other words, drivers are between 7% and 10% better off paying 5% credit card charges and having the gates controlled than they are under any other realistic scenario.

Note that I used the word "realistic." Some drivers will say the companies should eat the credit card charges and the drivers should continue with the same (or even lower) gates. Anybody can say anything but, in the world of real politics, that isn't going to happen.

It seems to me that the important factor is the bottom line - how much the drivers take home. And,  in my opinion, we're better off with controlled gates.

Is the 5% Written in Stone?

Of course not.

Hayashi has been trying to find ways to lower that figure almost from the start. The board on the left is from a Town Hall meeting last May when lowering or eliminating credit cards fees was discussed.

 Furthermore, Hayashi is one of the first persons to popularize the use of the Square (with a 2.75% fee) and other similar devices (although there has turned out to be problems with charge backs with some of these apps). And, as she pointed out to the Supervisors, there have been many legal and other changes in the last year that need to be studied that could result in lowered credit card fees.

There also are all kinds of legal, technical and social issues involved. Off the top my head, for instance, allowing cabs not to take credit cards might end up chasing business to Uber and other limo services. In fact, it already has. Having customers pick up the charges could have the same effect. Putting, say, a three dollar surcharge for credit card use might stimulate customers to stiff cab drivers on the tip - and so on.

Sounds like food for some more Town Hall Meetings.

Oh yes - I almost forgot. John Lazar inadvertently tipped his hand when he told the supervisors that he took in $1 million worth of credit card charges and paid out $40,000 every month. That = 4%, not 5%.

Sounds like 1% of wiggle room for Hayashi.

What I don't want people to know I said about Ed Lee

The Government Audit and Oversight Committee

I didn't go to the meeting but I did watch much of it on video.

I have to say that I've witnessed few things more absurd, more ludicrous than watching Supervisor David Campos sternly lecturing Hayshi for not doing her job properly after she's negotiated the biggest net pay raise for cab drivers since the taxi unions were busted 35 years ago.

I also found Supervisor David Chiu's assertion that the cab industry should look at the overall business including ways to improve service entertaining. What does he think we've been going for the last two years? I'm one of a couple a dozen drivers and industry people who've devoted at least 300 hours to the task under the leadership of Deputy Director Christiane Hayashi.

This a complicated problem but there have been a few good ideas including Open Taxi Access - a plan that originated from a discussion between Ms. Hayashi and John Wolper of Cabulous.  If the SFMTA Board ever gets around to passing the plan, cab service in the neighborhoods will drastically improve and taxi drivers will make more money.

Maybe the Board of Supervisors can urge the SFMTA Board to pass the legislation.

Finally, thanks to Supervisor Mark Farrell for taking Dirty Harry's advice to heart and knowing his limitations. Supervisor Farrell voted not to continue with these meaningless hearings because he doesn't fully understand the issues and the MTA is already dealing with them.

Kudos to Ed Lee

For being the first Major during the 28 years that I've been in the taxi business not to try to pick up easy votes by blindly calling for more cabs. Unlike Supervisor Scott Weiner and his intuitive insights (Does he gaze at his navel? Does he talk to God?), Mayor Lee wants to place questions of cab need and service, etc on a more scientific basis and has put out a bid for experts to do PC&N studies - an idea, naturally, that originated with Deputy Director Chrisiane Hayashi during a Town Hall Meeting a few years ago.

Go Ed! You've got my vote.

On the Hunt with Eric and Charles

Last Friday night I tagged along again with SFMTA investigators Eric Richholt and Charles Castillo. Instead of busting limos like they did last August, they were after illegal taxis which is more complex.

The  investigators can't ticket the vehicles simply because they look like taxicabs. Fake cab drivers have to be caught in the act of picking a customer up before a citation can be handed out.

 This means that Charles and Eric do a lot of basic police work like compiling records, checking addresses and looking for patterns. They now have a listing of 25 illegal taxis with vehicle licenses.
They have tracked down locations where the bogus cabs are parked and know where some of the phony cab drivers live.     (To read complete posts click on the photos).

Taxi Services will soon have the ability to look up the addresses where the cars are registered which will make the job much easier.  In the meantime, the duo spend a lot of time following bandit cabs and staking out places where they know fake taxis are usually parked.

If this seems like mucho work, there is a reward. Thanks to legislation drawn up by Deputy Director of Taxi Services Christiane Hayashi, there is an administrative fine of $5,000. So far eight tickets have been given out (although three of those were for driving a legal cab without an A-card). Furthermore, these administrative fines cannot be lowered but in one case a Hearing Officer took pity on the bandit driver and gave him a 24-month payment plan.

Eric and Charles have a goal of wiping out fake taxis in San Francisco. "If there were fifteen illegal cabs in the Mission," Eric said, "and we only got five, we wouldn't be satisfied."

We started out in the Excelsior and Outer Mission checking out known places and hoping that the drivers would take the pseudo cabs out so we could bust them. Below are a few of the illegal cabs that are part of Charles' and Eric's 25.

Eric spotted 712 driving on Mission and we followed hoping that the driver'd pick up a flag but he only went home for a break. We drove back to Mission searching for more illegals.

Eric spent several years policing drug gangs in Oakland. I asked him if that was what made him such a polite person. He gave me a wry smile and said, "No - that was just a lot of fun" in a way that made me think I'd rather have him with me than against me in a fight.

He soon spotted a bandit that they'd been looking for carrying passengers on Mission Street. Eric whipped a wild u-turn that was worth at least two points on a DMV printout (I wanna be a cop in my next life) and followed the fake cab to a house in the Excelsior. We waited a half block away while the driver dropped off a family and drove back onto the street. The hunt was on.

Eric pulled the classic maneuver of passing the bogus taxi and letting it pass us a bit later.
   

Charles and Eric recognized the driver from a photograph that had been sent to them by a real cab driver. The real driver had confronted the fraud and threatened to call the cops. The guy jumped out of his vehicle, said that he was a cop and expressed his feelings about the threat. Eric now calls him Public Enemy #1.

It's not a good idea, by the way, to confront these guys. Nothing good can come of it. Just get the car's phony name and number, license and phone numbers as well as any photos or videos and send them to Eric at eric.richholt@sfmta.com.

We followed P.E.1 from Ocean and Mission to Valencia and Ceasar Chavez where he lost us at a red light. I think he made us and took evasive maneuvers but Eric didn't agree. Whatever - the dude was gone.

We went downtown, spent a couple of hours without finding much and were about to head home when we turned down Polk and spotted Day Cab parked across from McTeague's.

Charles got out, did his trout fishing thing "can't spook the fish" and flushed the bandit driver out by desperately flagging down full cabs. He used to be an actor and played the role beautifully.

Charles got into the bogus cab, went up Sutter to Gough and had the man pull over. Eric blocked off the car and politely busted him.

The fake cab driver turned off his meter and told Charles to say that he was only being given a ride. Charles stayed in character and just said, "Hey mon, what's happening?"

The man has gone to a great deal of trouble to make his car look like a cab. The meter even works though it starts at under $3 and goes up faster than a regular meter. After just two blocks it read $4.50.

When the word starts getting out about the $5,000 fines, my guess is that a lot of these guys are going to decide against using their cars to pick up a little extra cash.

Once again, Eric's e-mail address is eric.richholt@sfmta.com.  Send all the names, license and phone numbers of illegal taxis that you might have his way along with any photos or videos.

Charles and Eric would also like you to call them to report any illegal vehicles you see. During most of the week they work the day shift but they are going to be hunting bandit taxis most Friday or Saturday nights from now on. Eric's cell phone number is 510-867-4694.