From my memory of the gate fee increase legislation first offered to the BoS by Supervisor Alioto-Pier, it was originally unrelated to the fuel-efficient vehicle initiative. (Conveniently that PDF has been removed from the City website.) I remember the original legislation claimed excessive costs from paratransit services as a key reason for increasing gate fees.

The resulting legislation is a bit confusing as it appears Paul Gillespie’s well-intentioned ideas were combined with what was originally Ms. Alioto-Pier’s gate fee increase.

I have mixed feelings about the gate fee increase. It seems necessary to keep revenue of cab companies to at least match inflation (actually this increase doesn’t even match inflation, check out the chart at the bottom). But, it’s a bit irresponsible to pass gate fee increases with no contingency for drivers to increase their revenue accordingly. Add to the gate fee increase recent fuel cost increases and there is understandable grumbling among drivers.

I think the ‘alternative fuel vehicle’ fee is great for the most part. I would have no problem paying even 20 extra bucks to drive a Prius or a Honda hybrid.

The ‘alternative fuel vehicle’ fee breaks down a bit in practice: the folks writing the legislation didn’t seem to realize that ‘alternative fuel vehicles’ also includes compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles which cost drivers just as much or more than regular unleaded gas vehicles to refuel. So, unfortunately, CNG taxi drivers have to pay the extra fee on top of already oppressive fuel costs — a goofy and surely unintended consequence.

After seeing Mr. George-William’s interview I am definitely inclined to check out the UTW.

From what I can tell, she did an alright job of keeping the Taxi Commission going, but wasn’t really effective in terms of making the Commission more functional or advocating for any changes. The most controversial thing she’s done is go after medallion-holders who aren’t active drivers – an important component of the reforms put in place by Quentin Kopp. Unfortunately for her, this put her on the wrong side of a number of the Commissioners, who were most interested in maintaining the status quo and protecting the interests of absentee medallion-holders. She was fired in a late-night meeting in 2006 and only re-instated after Newsom re-engineered the Commission. I don’t imagine that such an adversarial relationship with the Commission has helped her in her job, or allowed her to effectively police the medallion-holders. To be fair, the make-up of the Commission is probably partly to blame, but given that Newsom wrote the legislation which created it and appointed the Commissioners and the Director, I’d say it is another failing of his photo-op administration.

Heidi was recently replaced as part of Newsom’s housecleaning at the beginning of his second mayoral term. Jordanna Thigpen (who was helping to rout out medallion fraud) has been appointed Acting Executive Director, but presumably she is only there to keep the lights on and the Commission out of the newspapers until the Taxi Commission is “folded into” the MTA.

The clean-fleet legislation, by the way, is a long-term project of Paul Gillespie (no relation to Jim Gillespie), who is the President of the Commission, and an active cab driver. Paul was on the Taxi Task Force with Newsom and was one of Mayor Brown’s original appointees to the Commission. (He also was one of the dissenting votes in the decision to can Heidi.) Paul is a good guy, and he is right to push for a greener cab fleet. But I think that in his desire to see this clean-fleet legislation passed before the Taxi Commission goes away, he has made too many compromises with the cab companies, resulting in an even greater squeeze on the drivers. Ultimately, drivers do benefit from more fuel-efficient vehicles, but it seems like this is lost in the higher gate fees.

I think the industry and San Francisco cab patrons would benefit from having more folks join Thomas George-Williams in the UTW. That might help balance out the power of the larger cab companies and absentee medallion-holders. The public is poorly served by having cabbies who don’t have health insurance and who can’t afford to take sick days or vacations. Incidentally, are you a member of the UTW?