DPT officers get a bad rap. Everyone seems to despise them, yet they are a crucial element necessary to help all of us to effectively share our City streets.
Here are a few of the ways they make our lives better:

Parking meter enforcement: You think it’s hard enough to find parking now? Without meter enforcement you [...]

San Francisco cab drivers face two recent cost pressures: a recent gate fee increase combined with the recent climb in gas prices.
Fortunately, these cost pressures come at a time when aggregate demand for taxis in the City is increasing. More tourists, outdoor City festivals, and frequent conventions bring in more and more cab passengers as [...]

The NY Times reports on the sad news that the New York State Assembly vetoed New York City Mayor Bloomberg’s proposal to charge drivers to enter Manhattan during peak times.
While I do not understand the legal wrangling between agencies such that state representatives vetoed a local city measure, I do understand the underlying strong fear [...]

I point your temporary attention to a Flash website produced by UC Berkeley j-school grad students Eric Zassenhaus and Amy Jeffries.
The video clips thumbnailed along the bottom are accurate and colorful paintings of a typical taxi shift. Well worth a view.
But wait, there’s more. The site also features insightful interviews with Heidi Machen, the SF [...]

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is a bureaucratic whale, containing, in separate stomachs, the Department of Parking and Traffic (DPT) and the San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) public transit system.
Recently, the SFMTA crunched some numbers and said, “Uh oh, we won’t have enough money to cover our costs over the next two years.” [...]

Mayor Newsom signed a bill last week that increases gate fees for most cab drivers by $5 (effectively a $.50/hr paycut) and increases the gate fee for Compressed Natural Gas and hybrid cab drivers by $13.50 (effectively a $1.35/hr paycut).
I first learned of the gate fee increase when I showed up for work this weekend. [...]

My shift starts around midnight. I usually eat ‘breakfast’ around 1 or 2am if it’s slow. I’ll sit in line at the 18/Castro unofficial taxi stand, at the 24-Divisadero bus stop, and eat a slice of pizza for my first meal. This time an Indian guy came up to my cab, completely drunk, and demanded [...]

December and January were tough months. Holidays meant many people left the City. There was very little tourism and few, if any, special events that draw large numbers into the City.
This weekend and last weekend produced relatively high earning taxi shifts. Nearly every shift was above my all-time shift take-home mean. These relatively high earning [...]

The Examiner has an update on the saga of supervisor Alioto-Pier’s original proposal to considerably increase gate fees. (A gate fee is the rental price of a taxicab charged to cab drivers.)
A much more reasonable $5 increase (compared to nearly $20) was put forward by supervisor Aaron Peskin. Supervisor Chris Daly opposed any increase, notably [...]

(Photo Credit)
On a recent episode of KQED’s Forum, Dave Iverson discusses the possibility of congestion pricing in the City with two main guests: Ken Cleaveland, director of government and public affairs with the Building Owners and Managers Association and Zabe Bent, senior transportation planner with the San Francisco Transportation Authority.
To some degree, Ms. Bent and [...]