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.

I wasn’t so sure that we needed another street closure, especially on a Sunday when so many tourists rely on the Embarcadero to come downtown or to the piers to spend money in our City.

So I’ll admit I was surprised to find so many people participating in the second iteration of the Mayor’s “Sunday Streets” program when I went out yesterday to shoot this quick story. I wasn’t surprised, however, to find folks in their cars a bit peeved about the closure.

As I concluded in the piece, it’s a tough balance to meet the needs of all transportation modes in a shared City.

I’m happy that the City was able to pull this off without too many problems. I’ll be interested to see what happens next year — will they do it again? Will they extend the hours? Will they perhaps have better signage warning incoming visitors and regulars to avoid the Embarcadero?

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)

What does “engagement” really mean? Some part is puffery — it’s an abstract term. Anyone can claim they have engaging content, but it’s hard to measure. But, despite my deep rooted discontentment with ad sales pitches, “engagement” does attempt to define a real need from media buyers: I want my ads in placements that demand attention from the end-user.

What if there were a way to objectively measure engagement? Here’s a simple suggestion: measure the average number of seconds displayed per impression (SPI) for a given placement. You could backdoor a site-wide SPI estimate from existing analytics data by taking ‘average length per user session’ divided by ‘average page views per session’ and expressing this in seconds/page view units. (Both session length and page views per session data are available in common analytics packages.)

SPI stats could be available for one specific placement on a particular page of a site and also aggregated site-wide to give an overall average SPI for an entire web property.

What would this do? It would provide a quick and easy measurement to validate placement bids expressed in CPM (cost per thousand impression) when comparing against other sites of a potential buy. You could even derive a cost per thousand seconds (CPMS = CPM / SPI). By using CPMS or CPM and SPI in tandem, you would get a uniquely different tool to help compare the potential value of sites competing for a buy.

Let’s say MySpace.com offers a $3 CPM for run of network ads (run of network = non-section specific, anywhere they have free space), whereas NYTimes.com offers $10 CPM for run of network. Inventing some numbers from intuition, let’s say that MySpace users spend 5 seconds per page (5 SPI) whereas NYTimes.com users have an average of 15 SPI.

NYTimes CPMS @ 15 SPI = CPM / SPI = $10 CPM / 15 SPI = $0.67 CPMS (Cost per thousand seconds)
MySpace CPMS @ 5 SPI = CPM / SPI = $3 CPM / 5 SPI = $0.6 CPMS (Cost per thousand seconds)

Wow, these numbers seem about right. We approach a $0.6 cost per thousand seconds of user-engagement for both sites, with a slight premium placed on NYTimes.com from higher quality content. In fact, when considering CPMS instead of CPM, NYTimes.com seems like a bargain: it’s just a shave more expensive than MySpace when calculated in CPMS, but its content is unquestionably a more premium placement for most brands than MySpace.

This metric has neat implications for the monetization potential of social networks vs. online video. You might disagree with my 5 SPI for MySpace, but I contend that it will not exceed 10 SPI. Compare that to YouTube, which could have a site-wide average of 60 SPI (videos can range up to 10 minutes — 600 SPI!). Let’s say YouTube prices at $10 CPM (run) (note: it’s surely cheaper than $10) whereas MySpace is still $3 CPM (run).

MySpace CPMS @ 10 SPI = CPM / SPI = $3 CPM / 10 SPI = $0.3 CPMS (Cost per thousand seconds)
YouTube CPMS @ 60 SPI = CPM / SPI = $10 CPM / 60 SPI = $0.17 CPMS (Cost per thousand seconds)

Obviously, YouTube blows MySpace out of the water. (Of course, other performance metrics should help with planning media buys too too – historical CTR, APM, CPA, etc. This would be a nice standard addition to the media planning toolbox.)

Epilogue:
“Oh no!” A social network ad salesman frets upon reading this post, “When calculated with CPMS it is now embarrassingly obvious that social networks are a bad buy for most display advertising! What ever am I to do?”

Not to worry, social network ad salesman, most clients and agencies don’t give a shit about this stuff, they just want to see their pretty ads on the pretty computer screen.

So, keep using the old ‘engagement’ pitch with the wide-eyed recent college grads munching away at free Starbucks muffins in conference rooms of their conglomerate parents, and they’ll keep throwing tens of thousands of dollars your way.

Is this a good idea? Yes, in spirit, but no in practice.

In practice, giving up the entire Embarcadero to pedestrian use at anytime is silly. The Embarcadero already has a beautiful and expansive pedestrian sidewalk on both sides. And, the bay side of the Embarcadero is unencumbered by vehicle cross traffic, making it a fully continuous pedestrian right of way from AT&T ballpark all the way up to Fisherman’s Wharf (and even beyond to the Marina).

Furthermore, the Embarcadero on weekends is a heavily used thoroughfare connecting downtown and the Fisherman’s Wharf to the three major interstates: 101, 280 and 80. Severing this connection on weekends would make it very difficult for visitors to come to our City. I’m all for congestion pricing to control use of personal vehicles, but giving up a prime vehicle thoroughfare for questionable pedestrian need is silly. Visitors bring essential revenue to the backbone of our City’s economy: tourism.

Instead, we should give up other City streets to pedestrian use — permanently.

The City’s ‘default’ practice is to pave with cement over all City territory between private real estate holdings, regardless of actual demand for that cement by personal vehicles. Embarcadero cement has an extremely high demand for vehicle use. But, out in the deep Sunset, Parkside and Richmond districts there is no need for vehicle thoroughfares at every avenue.

These cement roads are, in effect, parking lots. Vast acres of public land in which we live is dedicated to grey car storage. What if we could accommodate vehicle storage, the low demand for vehicle thoroughfares, AND add pedestrian friendly green space? I think we can.

Check out this typical Sunset street:

(24th Avenue between Kirkham and Lawton, San Francisco, CA from Google Street View)

Cement everywhere. Low traffic volume. The cement is mostly used for parking.

Here’s a better idea: we could convert every third avenue into a linear park. Yes, you lose parking for each third avenue’s park conversion, but you can gain it back by increasing parking density along the other two avenues by converting them into one way with perpendicular or slanted parking instead of existing parallel parking.

Here’s an overhead view of a slice of the existing 24th Avenue:

(24th Avenue, San Francisco, CA from Google Maps)

If 24th Avenue was converted to a linear park, 25th and 23rd Avenues would be converted to north and south bound one-way streets respectively. Parking density could be increased to account for lost street parking on 24th Avenue, like this:

Or, instead you could close off the 24th Avenue “linear park” to through traffic, but still allow parking and access to existing vehicle garages. You can cover the entire 24th Avenue with grass and trees, and pave a smaller space with “grassblocks“, concrete with over 50% of surface as holes for dirt to hold real grass, to allow for local access and limited on-street parking while maintaining a real grass surface.

Grassblock example:

Expanding on this, you could make the linear parks have beautiful bike corridors. Integrating dedicated bike corridors would provide much needed safe, sole-priority biking space.

Linear Park Overhead Example:

(Vehicles are stationary, through traffic would be prohibited and made annoying by bumpy grass concrete.)

This would be very applicable for other City neighborhoods. The Mission comes to mind first: the large area between Mission and Potrero, 16th and Cesar Chavez (Army) is especially starved for green space.

Imagine the effect this would have on quality of life! For many residents, you could step out your door right into a park. For the rest, you could go at most 1.5 blocks to find a large park.

Example of Three Sunset Avenue Arrangements:

(Click for larger version.)

Creating a usable transit system is just the first step. Next, we need to convert our streets back into the livable spaces they once were. We need to take our streets back from the personal vehicle and put them back into the hands of the people.

I imagine your response now, dear reader, “This guy is full of crap. Sure, we all would love a park right in front of our house, but this would never work.” NO! WRONG!

Too many people think this way. They see our City as a dead, unmovable structure. They see personal vehicle priority on our roadways as an absolute GIVEN, and not a CHOICE. The final product is to recreate paradise in our own City. It can be done, it just requires a bit of imagination and some balls to make it happen. These are our streets, let’s take them back.

PS: Related, here are some cool sites about “Parking Day”, converting parking spaces into parks for a day:

• OpenPlans.org
• City of Chicago

NPR’s Morning Edition recently featured an excellent two part series on the aggregate effects of our living decisions on the environment.

The stories hit hard from the angle that suburbia increases per capita carbon footprint while denser, urban living offers significantly lower per capita carbon footprint. Yes!

Here’s the underlying important point: living in denser areas can INCREASE quality of life while DECREASING our impact on the environment. Wow, a win, win?

So, what’s the problem? It takes a coordinated partnership between centralized government and private developers to create these desirable dense urban areas. It doesn’t happen by itself. As seen in Atlanta’s sprawl, if left to private developers with minimal government intrusion, suburbia will continue expanding.

Here’s a dose of crazy: what if suburban housing prices didn’t properly take these cost of living issues into account? (That is, what if the value of suburban real estate didn’t take into account the cost of living decrease caused by significant commute time and energy costs?) What if, in addition to our current short-term housing pricing adjustment, suburban real estate will have a long-term trend downward (or, at least, not upward) relative to urban real estate? This downward pressure will only increase as energy prices continue to rise.

Links

• Part 1 – “Life in the ‘Burbs: Heavy Costs for Families, Climate”
• Part 2 – “Atlanta Family Slashes Carbon Footprint”

BONUS: Related, check out this NYTimes story about New York’s continuing love affair with cars despite increasing energy costs and an impending congestion fee near city center.

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

Here’s a great interview with Columbia University professor of management William Dugan about why brainstorming doesn’t always serve our needs as well as it could. I echo some of his thoughts from my personal experience below.

Surely you’ve had these thoughts in meetings. I’ve been guilty of it, both in the Vader role (above) and in the audience when I wished I had a light saber to end the pointless meeting abruptly.

Here are the two main problems with brainstorming:

1. As a followup to analysis: So, you’ve spent x days, weeks or months doing a lot of work to figure out how your company, unit, brand, department, competitors, etc are doing at a particular endeavor. Your analysis is top notch. But, the implementation (what’s next) step lands on the shoulders of the boss or another operating unit and is sorely lacking. This happens all the time. ALL THE TIME. ALL THE TIME. Especially in government. AS MUCH OR MORE THOUGHT SHOULD BE PUT INTO IMPLEMENTATION!
2. As a time for generating creative thoughts: Prof. Dugan put this very well in the podcast: you have your creative thoughts in the shower, in bed, drinking beer, jogging, etc. The 3:30 pm ‘brainstorm’ should be a 3:30 pm idea sharing session, not limited to one topic, but instead open to all to share ideas, thoughts, progress that has naturally occurred over the past few days.

Link (Direct MP3 Link)

PS. It appears as though I’m becoming an EconTalk fanboy on this blog, so I’ve resolved to stop posting EconTalk related entries for a minimum of 2 weeks.

I went to the library this evening to check out a great book about the history of Muni. Unfortunately, it is out of print and is now reference material. I couldn’t take it with me.

I consumed the first 30 pages to the infrequent din of library staff repeatedly announcing imminent closing. 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 10 minutes, five.

While reading, I found a moving quote by San Francisco’s longest serving mayor, James “Sunny Jim” Rolph. He spearheaded the initial development of Muni during the years immediately after the great 1906 earthquake and fire.

He attended the opening of the first City operated (Muni) line — what is now more or less served by the 38-Geary line.

It is in reality the people’s road, built by the people and with the people’s money. The first cable road in the country was built in San Francisco, and now the first Municipal railway of the country is built in San Francisco. Our operation of this road will be closely watched by the whole country. It must prove a success! We must run it by proper methods. When we have built from the Ferry to the Ocean, it will be the best single route in the city, and we must extend it wherever possible, until it becomes a great Municipal system. I want everyone to feel that it is but the nucleus of a mighty system of streetcar lines which will one day encompass the entire city.

What passion! What vision! Where is that passion now? What has our City become?

It is a sad time for transit in our City.

Do you like watching bloody transit carnage unfold? You’re in luck, here’s a doozy.

Check out these fantastic series of posts on the proposed Central Subway in San Francisco.

(Primer for the uninitiated: a proposal is on deck to extend the T-Third MUNI Metro line from the Cal Train station at 4th and King underground via 4th and Stockton Streets to Chinatown, ending somewhere around Clay Street. This is a map of the route.)

This is my favorite post of the series. Eric takes exceptional detail in explaining why the Central Subway wouldn’t work as proposed, especially under MUNI’s watch.

I agree wholeheartedly: the Central Subway is an unmitigated disaster in process. MUNI’s antiquated metro system is a relic of the ancient past, recently brought to its knees when the T-Third line began service despite nearly a billion dollars of capital investment into the system during that project. The last thing the City needs is to spend a billion dollars more on this piece of crap excuse for a light rail system.

Let’s stop writing these ridiculous capital checks to a city agency that can’t handle its current responsibilities. Sure, let’s give a loaded gun to a trigger happy convicted murderer in a crowded stadium! They’re gonna strike again, folks.

How about spending this gigantic chunk of change on immediately implementing smart transit options for the City? (Read: Geary + Van Ness BRT to start with.) Is this too much to ask? What do we pay (rather well) all these city planners for anyway? Why can transit novices like me realize the stupidity of these projects while our Supervisors think a Central Subway is the best thing we can do for the City? Hogwash.