Reviving SF’s taxi industry: The city is looking at solutions

By Michael Cabanatuan : sfchronicle – excerpt

San Francisco’s taxi industry, bludgeoned in recent years by Uber and Lyft, needs to catch up with the changing times to survive.

That’s the assessment of a pair of consultants whose report, released Wednesday, recommends that the Municipal Transportation Agency, which regulates the city’s taxi industry, work with cab companies to improve their service and reduce the number of taxis on the streets to match reduced demand but increase the number of cabs capable of carrying persons with disabilities.

What it doesn’t recommend, despite the wishes of taxi drivers, is what the city and the agency are not allowed to do: Regulate the transportation network companies, specifically Uber and Lyft, that have nearly decimated the taxi industry since their drivers arrived in San Francisco over the past decade.

That oversight falls to the state Public Utilities Commission, not the city…

“the MTA is really looking to get the right regulations in place so that the taxi industry can compete,” Toran said.

To accomplish that, the report recommends taxi companies become more customer-friendly by offering mobile-phone apps…

Those companies should also be released from current restraints that prohibit them from offering special or discounted rates …

To help boost interest in operating taxi vans to carry wheelchairs, an often time-consuming effort, the report recommends that drivers be offered up to $300 a month to help buy a van and the same amount per month to cover maintenance and operating costs… (more)

 

 

Stop Privatization of our Streets

No Corporate Bike rentals in the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District

Petitioning Hillary Ronen

Please protect the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District. The District and Mission as a whole has been experiencing extreme pressures Please protect the Calle 24 Latino Cultural District. The District and Mission as a whole has been experiencing extreme pressures of gentrification causing forced displacement, creating undue hardships, family separation, loss of jobs, privatization of our public spaces, forced crowding, cultural erasure and high rents…. (sign the petition)

Uber Teams Up With Real Estate Developer To Replace Car Ownership

By Brian Solomon : forbes – excerpt

About 90% of U.S. households own a car–but Uber wants to change that.

On Wednesday, Uber announced what it hopes will be the start of many local real estate partnerships designed to encourage residents to ditch their cars for ride-sharing and public transportation. This first partnership brings Parkmerced, a real estate development in San Francisco with over 3,000 rental apartments, into the fold.

The details: new residents will receive a $100 monthly transportation subsidy from Parkmerced to use on Uber and public transit ($30 must be used on Uber, the rest can be put on a Clipper Card). In return, Uber will cap the fares of any UberPool shared ride between Parkmerced and the nearby BART and MUNI stations to a maximum of $5…

“Five years ago we didn’t know who Uber was and now they rule the world,” said Rob Rosania, CEO of Maximus Real Estate, the developer of Parkmerced. “They were the first ones to raise their hands and the most aggressive when coming up with a solution that worked for a long term partnership toward multi-modal transportation.”… (more)

What San Francisco taught BMW Group about car-sharing

by  Kirsten Korosec : fortune – excerpt

DriveNow CEO Rich Steinberg still sees potential in the U.S. market despite challenges—namely parking—in San Francisco.

There are 900 parking spaces for car-sharing vehicles in San Francisco. And DriveNow, a car-sharing joint venture between BMW Group and Sixt SE, can’t use any of them.

So perhaps it’s no surprise the company decided recently to suspend service effective Nov. 2 in San Francisco, the only U.S. city it was operating in.

“We came to market here because San Francisco makes a lot of sense in terms of car-sharing—in general,” DriveNow USA CEO Rich Steinberg told Fortune. “At the time, we were hoping to work with the city on a parking solution similar to what we have in existence in our European cities.”…

In San Francisco, car-sharing companies must compete with a large variety of transportation options as well as fit within the confines of the city’s parking regulations.

Every organization that participates in San Francisco’s on-street car-sharing parking program is eligible for 150 parking spaces—or about 0.05% of the city’s total on-street parking supply, according to Shaheen… (more)

One more instance of SFMTA picking “sharing” winners and losers. SFMTA creates policies that limit their competition. Is this legal?

Fixed, The App That Fixes Your Parking Tickets, Gets Blocked In San Francisco, Oakland & L.A.

by Sarah Perez : techcrunch – excerpt

Fixed, a mobile app that fights parking tickets and other traffic citations on users’ behalf, has had its parking ticket operations blocked in three of its top cities, San Francisco, Oakland and L.A. after the cities increased the measures they were taking to block Fixed from accessing their parking ticket websites.

The company confirms it has suspended parking ticket operations in all three cities as of three weeks ago – a move impacting around 100,000 users. Going forward, Fixed will focus on its Traffic Ticket business instead, we’re told.

The startup has had issues with the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) for some time.

The agency was never all that receptive to the service, and the way it automated the ticket contesting process for locals. Using its app, Fixed customers could snap a photo of their parking ticket using their phone’s camera, and then Fixed would check against a variety of common errors before writing a customized letter to the city on the user’s behalf. The app also cleverly tapped into Google Street View to check to see if the city had the proper signage in place in the area a ticket was received… (more)

See the next story for a luck at how “fair” SFMTA is in its business dealings. They are very selective when it comes to picking winners and losers in their “sharing” game.