San Francisco Taxi with Photoshopped Blue Angels in Sky

It’s been a long time since I’ve taxi blogged.

I drove last Saturday for the first time in a few weeks. I’ve been working dispatch phones and doing VidSF work instead of driving over the past few weeks.

Novel-length post after the break.

• I love the feeling of getting back on the road after such a long time off driving. The routine of adjusting my mirrors, seat, radio (yes, NPR), dispatch radio, logging into the VeriFone, all while driving down Selby Street on my way to the Mission to start hunting for early weekend fares (or the super late-night drunks). Paradise.
• This past weekend was so incredibly packed with events that it was tough to get a car. The cashier had vancab available. Not my favorite vehicle (that’d be the indisputable champion Toyota Camry Hybrid followed closely by the Ford Escape Hybrid), but I’ve logged so many hours with Chrysler’s Dodge Caravan that I’ve come to embrace its shortcomings, such as the notoriously frustrating sliding door handle. Businessmen and grandmothers alike scorn this poorly designed lever. Daimler surely had no say on this one.
• I drove around for at least a half-hour before finding my first fare — a radio call from a lower Pac Heights hotel. I was surprised to find a very young Asian woman waiting for me. She quickly jumped in the cab and handed me a Google Maps itinerary. She was heading out to Visitacion Valley to take her SATs.

  As we flew down Gough to the 101 I thought back to my trip to take my SATs. How did I get there? What was I thinking? What was I listening to? 1989 Honda Accord, how much I hadn’t prepared, NPR’s Weekend Edition. I had an odd satisfaction knowing my fare would also have echoes of Scott Simon while filling in bubbles.

  I was surprised at the minivan traffic congestion as we neared Phillip Burton High School. I guess parents want to drive their kids to life-changing events, not wanting to risk Muni. I wanted to tell her she’ll do great and get a 1600, but I realized that they don’t score like that anymore and I felt old.

• Many dozens of minutes later I found a gaggle of male yuppies at Union and Larkin heading to the President’s Cup at Harding Park. I started to appreciate the vancab — room for 6 with luggage.

  I over’ed the dispatcher, Larry, to see if he knew the approved drop point. Working the dispatch phones earlier in the week I remembered the SFMTA’s DPT had planned out approved drop points. Larry gave me his best guess for cross streets and I plotted a course in my head. I love the fog in the Sunset on a weekend morning.

  As we approached the park I saw an armada of tiny, blue, three-wheeled vehicles. Gosh, I thought, my DPT friends from the SFMTA will surely be glad to see me and my passengers, especially now that San Francisco taxis are regulated under the same agency. I’m diligently performing my duties as an essential part of our City’s diverse transportation infrastructure.

  To my surprise, or maybe not, my DPT friends were not friendly, nor did they successfully direct me to a designated zone for dropping off my passengers. The first DPT officer waved me forward out of annoyance as I slowed to ask where I should drop, as did the second. Unfortunately, this process continued until I was about to clear any reasonable walking distance for my passengers. I was unable to do a u-turn because of the concrete median on Lake Merced Blvd, and the street had no shoulder. As traffic flows very quickly around tight curves, I did not feel it prudent to stop in a thru-lane.

  I was thus left with no other alternative than to pull perpendicularly into an exit-only curb-cut. As my passengers paid and exited the vehicle (at a reasonably quick pace given the fast card processing magic of VeriFone Transportation Systems) DPT officers approached me from all sides and started to yell. Oh my, a “SPECIAL” Muni shuttle, with no passengers on board (is that what “SPECIAL” means?) was approaching the exit-only curb-cut at a deadly 2 miles per hour, striking fear in the hearts of parking enforcement professionals in the immediate area.

  Look, SFMTA, let’s make a deal here. If you bank the City $495,533,925 from a transferable medallion scheme, can you use a small portion of that to actually administer the entity from which that revenue is generated? Specifically, please plan for drop-off and pickup points for taxis and inform your salaried employees of these plans. It will make the lives of your residents, taxi drivers and dispatchers much easier. Thanks.

• I picked up a fare from California and Polk heading to Noe Valley. White female, mid-30′s, eccentric in dress and speech. She jumped in the front seat, presumably as a silent protest against Chrysler’s sliding door handle design, and started a conversation about her friend in her late 40′s who decided against better judgment to embark on a career change to become an MD. Her friend will in her late 50′s before practicing. Wow.
• My vancab scored me a number of fares for which I’d otherwise be ineligible had I been driving my favorite sedan hybrid. Yes, the math usually works out such that despite gas savings on the hybrids, I’d make more money with a vancab, especially on the weekends because of the group fares. (And yes, I’m spelling vancab as one word. Deal with it.)
• On the way back from an airport run I scored thanks to the vancab, I picked up an RV park call. For the uninitiated, it’s near Candlestick Park on the way back from SFO. Nirvina in cab-land is scoring a 3rd and Gilman returning. (It’s called as 3rd and Gilman on the radio.)

  I arrived to find an older German couple. They had just picked up the rental RV and were heading to the Wharf to meet up with the kids. Herr Doctor and wife hadn’t realized that everyone else in the Bay Area was also trying to head up to the piers at the exact same time.

  My previous fare had a good chuckle on the way out to SFO. He had asked where all those heading north into the City would park. I joked that they were already parked on the 101. Ha! This didn’t seem nearly as funny heading inbound with my new deutschen frienden.

  I was impressed by my ability to bypass traffic. I headed inbound from Candlestick on Bayshore, jumped on 101 which flowed okay between Army and the underused 7th Street off-ramp. We headed up 7th to Leave, then Hyde. Had it been a race, I would have won.

  Herr Doctor gave me a $10 tip on a $22 fare. Danke schoen.

• Around 1pm we passed a supersaturation threshold where overall demand for taxis significantly outstripped supply.* As I’ve written before on this blog, I have a split personality on this issue. It’s bliss from the perspective of my personal earnings and fare-induced highs, but the palpable frustration from potential taxicab customers tempers my mood.

  It’s grossly irresponsible for the United State’s second most dense city to have such poor peak-time point-to-point transportation solutions. Unfortunately, SFMTA’s transferable medallion scheme will not address this service and security issue. For shame.

• *Caveat: A predictable and frustrating phenomenon occurs with geographically concentrated events such as Fleet Week. Immediately approaching (~30 min pre) and just after the beginning (~15 min post) the majority of fares are heading toward the geographically concentrated event, such as the Marina or Fish Wharf in this case, resulting in hundreds of taxis stuck in traffic as tourists circle for parking that isn’t there.

  If one was to look at raw analytics of demand vs. available taxicabs at times like these, you’d see a very odd result: perhaps 25-50% of the on-road fleet is vacant while there is demand for 125%+ of the fleet size. Taxi fleet efficiency alone is an incredibly convincing argument for a congestion charge, which the SFCTA is diligently pursuing to the best of its abilities.

  I encountered a few empty cabs who refused to take passengers to the Marina. This is, of course, de jure illegal, but very rational behavior on the part of the cab driver. I took 3 fares to the Marina in the course of two hours and spent 15+ minutes each time trying to battle traffic back to find fares. I could have earned double if I implemented this illegal policy. What would you do if you had to pay rent?

• During this supersaturation period I picked up a fare that, thank heavens, wasn’t heading toward the Marina.

  A very stressed woman in formal attire was heading back to her downtown hotel from a church in Pac Heights to pickup the ring for a wedding that was to start in 15 minutes.

  We flew inbound on California as we discussed my interest-level to wait for her to fetch the ring from her hotel and return. I was frank in explaining that it is not in my financial interest to wait for her to get her ring, but, of course, I’d be happy to do that for her.

  The City and County of San Francisco’s Department of Weights and Measures calibrates the meter on behalf of the SFMTA to register $.50 per minute = $30 per hour for wait time. However, in a period of supersaturation I can get another flag drop and earn ~$60/hr. (Keep in mind this is revenue, not profit, as it does not include my costs for the vehicle, medallion rental/lease, gasoline, etc.) Sure enough, while waiting for her return at the hotel on Nob Hill I had to fight off a European backpacker knocking on my window for a cab, frustrated at my denial to provide him with transportation solutions.

  We flew back even faster on Pine and scored all greens from Pine/Mason to Pine/Steiner. Passing thru Van Ness, Franklin and Gough on a green is rare enough, and then to jump on the outbound Pine green wave starting at Octavia is a very improbable occurrence. (Ask my transportation planning friends at the SFCTA.) Luck was on her side.

  She gave me $30 for a $14 fare. Generous, yes, and also a prime example of price variance during fixed supply. While not “fair” per se, it’d sure be market efficient if there was an easier way of determining the price premium a potential fare was willing to pay during periods of supersaturation.

  If only there was a way to know one’s desire to pay a premium before engaging in the transaction. Hint, hint.

San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency absorbs the Taxi Commission in March, but SFMTA Chief Nathaniel Ford says progress will be slow.

One of Russ’ academia friends, economist Michael Munger, speaks at length on the program about the public transportation system quality in Santiago, Chile before and after nationalization of their bus network.

Prior to 2007 Santiago’s surface transit was made up of a patchwork of thousands of independent, private bus operators. Operators specialized in niches ranging from neighborhood local busses which stopped at every block in a town to luxury express busses providing direct to city center service.

Since nationalization circa February 2007 the masses have expressed widespread complaints about the poor quality of the system. Wikipedia’s article on Transantiago sums up these complaints well:

The major complaints are the lack of buses and their inconsistent frequencies, missing or poor infrastructure (such as segregated corridors, prepaid areas and bus stops), the network’s coverage, and the number of transfers needed for longer trips.

I agreed in spirit that market based solutions can offer better outcomes than public, centralized planning in some situations. But, we shouldn’t get rid of public transit and city planning.

• I do agree that in controlled situations, a market solution is better. San Francisco’s publicly owned and operated transit system is largely a failure, spurring reactions identical to those of Santiago’s newly nationalized bus system. Here, Munger and Roberts are spot on in their complaints of the stupidity of nationalizing a once private resource. (Remember, SF had a patchwork of completely privately owned transit lines until around the 1910′s. Everything I’ve read says these competing systems provided excellent service, especially given available technologies.)
• But, I do not share Munger and Roberts’ idyllic view that free markets are the holy grail of public transport policy. Two reasons:
  • Just look at our suburban car-based communities. These communities are real life experiments in market based, unplanned transport and city zoning policies. These communities are a dismal failure.
  • While bus systems can arguably run with no government intervention, most other high-capacity transit systems need exclusive, government granted corridor rights-of-way, whether that be below ground subways, above ground rail corridors, or even fantastical elevated monorails. Like utilities, physical constraints necessitate government involvement to some degree.

Like many EconTalk podcasts, even if you don’t agree with everything, the discussion points a great alternative spotlight on conventional public policy views.

My favorite viewpoint: the entire concept of central transportation planning is communist at its core — an odd anomaly in a nation proud of its free-market ideology. Why should transportation “planners” dictate the best transportation routes? Our publicly owned and operated Muni is blind to the most powerful natural “planner” in the world: market feedback.

This viewpoint strikes me especially hard in the context of the impending Transit Effectiveness and the Geary BRT projects in the planning faces. With the TEP, the City is spending millions of dollars and years of research to accomplish what free market forces could do everyday, instantly, for free.

Link to podcast page (direct mp3 link)

This time the culprit was an articulated standard coach (non-trolleybus) 71-Haight/Noriega heading inbound on Market at 6th. A 77 year old female pedestrian was struck and later died at SF General.

6th and Market is a zoo of an intersection at best, made worse by Tenderloin-style pedestrians who seem to get personal satisfaction by running in front of traffic.

However, at this point in the route, the 71-Haight/Noriega has a purely straight trajectory — a path easy for both the driver and daredevil pedestrians to anticipate. Thanks to the mid-lane bus-stop islands the busses don’t even have to pull into a standard Muni bus stop. Given this simple trajectory, this vehicle should not have been turning, leaving little obvious clues as to how it managed to smush the elderly lady.

More data would be nice to enable the community to put pressure on Muni to prevent further similar incidents. Unfortunately, more data we will not have.

Link

I am so fond of ragging on San Francisco’s poorly managed Municipal Railway that I often overlook Muni’s remarkable, world-class achievements. (Yes, they really do have some remarkable, world-class achievements.) This post is a first attempt at fixing my glaring oversight.

Muni’s extensive trolleybus system is a modern treasure. Muni claims to hold the largest trolley-bus fleet in the US and Canada. Trolleybusses are efficient, consume little fuel, recharge via regenerative braking, require little maintenance, are quiet, and produce zero localized pollution.

• Electric motors are more efficient than diesel motors, especially climbing steep grades.
• Trolleybusses offer ZERO local emissions. Diesel fuel engines on the other hand, the most common local locomotive for municipal transit busses nationwide, produce a fine particulate matter byproduct that may be a health risk.
• Trolleybusses are not tied to any particular energy generation source. The local transit agency can purchase power from private generators, government-owned generators, create their own local power plant, use solely green power, etc.
  • San Francisco Muni’s trolley busses are powered exclusively by the City controlled Hetch Hetchy Reservoir O’Shaughnessy Dam. (Source)

Keep up the good work, Muni. Maybe the 38-Geary, the highest ridership bus line east of the Mississippi, can convert to a trolleybus when it hatches from its BRT cocoon.

Links

• Trolleybus Wikipedia entry
• SFMTA/Muni trolleybus information page
• This crazy electric bus page has more than you could ever want to know about electric busses.
• Check out this YouTube video of Chinese super-capacitor bus that charges at each stop instead of requiring trolley power lines all along route.

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.” Fair enough. Next step, “We need more money.”

Ideas? The Examiner and the Chronicle report the SFMTA has publicly discussed two classes of options: increasing transit fees and increasing parking fees.

Are these ideas justified? Most definitely yes — these fee increases are justified and necessary.

But, I believe the SFMTA needs to increase some fees significantly MORE than has been suggested. If we’re smart and look at the dirty details (below) we can find some fees that we can significantly increase. This has a multiple benefits — controlling traffic congestion, reducing total personal vehicle miles driven and rationing limited road real estate while ALSO generating significant revenue for the cash-strapped SFMTA. Win, win, win?

• Increasing transit fees: Monthly Fast Pass (unlimited bus pass) cards cost $45 per month and are priced below market. $1.50 each way to work plus 2 weekend trips per day makes a frequent Muni rider pay $90 per month if they pay per trip. The SFMTA’s analysis of neighboring communities’ monthly pass prices is wise and on par. An increase to $60 per month is more than reasonable given the value offered by the pass. At $60, the Fast Pass is still a bargain for regular transit users.
• Increasing parking fees:
  • Parking meters are priced at $.25/10 minutes = $1.25/hour = $12.50/day. This is below market value compared to garages. This could be increased.

    Idea: Why is Sunday meter collection or extended metered hours not discussed? Meters are not collected on Sundays. Meters are not collected after 6pm. Not only is this lost revenue but it causes inconvenience for City residents struggling to find spaces in highly trafficked commercial corridors at peak times. (This is the reason we have meters in the first place — to ration limited spaces. These spaces are still in high demand after 6pm and on Sundays in many metered commercial corridors. Just look at the Mission on Sunday afternoons; it’s a zoo.)

    Idea: Why aren’t meters priced based on demand? If meters had variable pricing, the City could collect significantly more revenue on Friday and Saturday nights, in addition to busy Saturday and Sunday shopping times on commercial corridors. This is a significant revenue opportunity lost that also serves City residents and visitors who are more than willing to pay market price for convenient parking.

  • Yearly residential permits are priced at $60/year = $5/month. Residential City parking permits are SEVERELY undervalued and could easily be doubled without approaching the true market cost of parking. Yearly residential permits should be priced $120/year immediately, with a yearly increase after that.

    At $120/year this is still an amazing bargain: I can park in my neighborhood ALL YEAR LONG for only $120? Remember, monthly private spaces cost as much as $250 per MONTH.

    People may complain, but even at $120/year this would result in no fewer permits purchased. Not until we pass $200/year will quantity demanded of yearly permits even begin to see a dent. Assuming about half of SF has a residential parking permit, just doubling this permit results in about $30 million incremental revenue per year.

• Congestion fees: Why is this not discussed as a revenue source? (Answer: The City can’t implement fast enough to be included as a revenue source for this 2-year projected shortfall.)

  Let’s change this. The City should implement congestion pricing within the next year.

  Variable City congestion pricing serves double duty as a significant revenue generator for the SFMTA AND as a traffic and transit speed increaser. It increases the speed of its public surface street-shared transit system and increases the convenience and utility of currently congested streets for frequent City street ‘power-users’ like delivery vehicles, taxis and persons with an absolute need for personal vehicle use.

So, SFMTA, go along with your plan, but let’s instead double yearly residential parking permits and let’s introduce congestion pricing immediately.

A week ago the Chronicle reported on some promising preliminary recommendations based on findings from the Transit Effectiveness Project (TEP).

These recommendations are great. In many ways they are in line with common sense: improve highly used lines using BRT, ditch under-used lines.

Aside from the frustrating fact that it took Muni 40 years to figure this out, let’s focus on the positive: at least someone realizes what to do next.

But, I have a hard time being excited about these proposals. I cannot hide my fear that Muni is barely capable of managing its own operations, let alone managing a system-wide overhaul. They just can’t do things right.

This is an agency that claims multiple times in press releases and at public information events that they can’t seem to hire enough bus drivers. Yet, they don’t post bus operators as an available job on their website. (I would know too — I’ve looked many times, pushed by a perverse desire to drive a bus in the City.)

This is an agency that spent nearly a billion dollars to replace a bus line (the 15) with a light rail system (T-Third) that offered barely any noticeable improvement in service quality, or, by many accounts, a decrease in service quality.

This is an agency that has virtually zero accountability over its ground-level workforce due to extremely onerous union negotiated contracts. They can’t even immediately fire operators after they’ve killed innocent pedestrians.

This is an agency that, to operate most efficiently and implement changes suggested by the TEP, needs absolute access priority over roadway design and right-of-way for its transit vehicles. So far, no evidence has been shown that Muni’s merger with DPT has provided this level of absolute priority. Nor have the actions of the Mayor nor the Board of Supervisors shown that they have the interest or even the ability to offer such priority for our dear Municipal Railway.

So, rock on TEP. Just don’t write checks you can’t cash.

Link

Wow, it looks like Nat Ford might actually know how to run a municipal transit agency.

Let’s hope the Board of Supervisors gets off his back and lets him do it right.

Link

On my ‘to write’ list is a manifesto of how to fix Muni. Lay out what’s wrong. Lay out what we need to do to fix it.

Dave Snyder of SPUR beat me to the punch. I met Dave last spring when I served under his leadership with a group of volunteers to pitch for approval from the Board of Supervisors to pass the 38-Geary BRT project into the next stage, environmental review.

This article is SPOT ON.

Link

Dear Mayor Newsom

You didn’t have to spend City taxpayer money on private consultants. Anyone could have told you: Just like any other shared and limited public resource, public transit needs user fees.

Offering ‘free’ Muni is a destructive proposal. Muni rolling stock is not unlimited. Removing user fees distorts a natural and effective form of limiting the number of people that use Muni resources.

Muni needs to increase its quality of service. Removing user fees would decrease the quality of service. It would result in more crowded buses, leading to lower frequency and lower average system speeds.

Here’s the real Muni solution: increase quality (frequency, speed, reliability, cleanliness) on critical lines such as 38-Geary, N-Judah, or 14-Mission. Enforce real transit-only lanes that enable high speeds with true signal pre-emption. Prepare Muni to operate faster than a personal vehicle for trips on these ‘primary’ lines. Then, the City can increase user fees to $2 or even $2.50 for these primary lines.

Our residents don’t want free Muni. City residents are more than willing to pay for an effective transit system. It’s up to the City to provide an effective transit system and price it properly, not make a crappy transit system free.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m happy you’ve figured this out by now. It’s just silly that this advice cost tax payers $20,000+. I would have been glad to provide this advice for a bit less. Let’s say $10,000.

Let’s look on the bright side. At least you’re open to new ideas. Just talk to me next time and I’ll charge you half the rate of the consultants, and I’ll give you better ideas faster.

kfarr