test, test, test, test, test >> welcome to the board of directo directors. >> (calling roll). mr. chairman you have a quorum and a please be advised that the ringing of cell phones or other devises person responsible for one going off maybe asked to leave the meeting. please know that cell phones that are put on a vibrating

situation can effect the sound system. please turn them off >> and now we have the approval of the minutes meeting. >> all in favor say i. thank you very much. >> item 5 communications directors there will be no closed session with respect to the m l u record department for use of the union square garage has been removed at the direct from council and staff. >> in the anticipation of more people coming in item 11 the south court will be opened downstairs in the overflow room so we'll make sure we communicate as effectively as possible to the folks who are

downstairs. >> and in terms of of the calendar today i'd like to go after this to save new and urban finished business until after the consent calendar members okay with that? >> well, after 11 we'll come to public comment and new and unfinished business. >> can we check to see if there are a few people that are available for speaker commits? >> we'll try to accumulate the most people we can who are here for particular items. thank you. with that the consent calendar we have one item removed >> in addition well, that is it

i have no indication that the member of the public who issues to address the board. >> and 10.4. >> motion approved. all in favor? so we're going good. >> item if i may call the item 11 is the discussion regarding the director to have up to 2 additional new tax permits in 2014 to offer to quality applicant or lease permit holder. establishing that all tax permits shall be used in the vehicles. and section to reduce the ma to

$225,000 and change the surround radio price there is one requested amendment to the board resolution that relates to the use of any bringdown electric or hybrid vehicles. your suggested change is as i said on your resolution and the result you cause would read that all new tax permits whether or not transferred or leased shall be operated with an electric by 1 hundred boy diesel or other fuel changes as authorized any ms ta expectation is the passenger or fuel efficiency

>> the way we'll do that is staff presentation hear from the public and then we'll go back and consider the amendment. i'd like to a welcome marilyn thank you from the city attorney's office. >> thank you, mr. chair and members of the board. so we at your direction have been working inform improve taxi service and have taken on a number of different tax roefrpdz but at the core of improving taxi services i mentioned is making sure that we have the right number of taxis on the street and making sure that people have an easy way to assess them. the latter is what we addressed at the recent meeting where in

you approved the taxi assess which is a virtual dispatch function. what we're considering today is really the other part of that equation is getting the right number of taxis on the street. i think the most efficient things we can do so strengthen the taxi industry and particularly to do it now which is the argue under a threat to create stability for companies and - but most importantly is to have the folks here be able to get around in taxis. so i'm going to ask ms. around

to come up and address this issue. we understand that the taxi market is context and the dynamics of the industry is context so we'll need help to get a recommendation and it's his recommendation we're recommending to you. the amendment is unrelated it's allowing for b one hundred which is the by diesel vehicles to be included in the list of green vehicles that we authorize. so with that i'll ask the director to come forward >> good morning chairman and directors. thank you. i would like to explain the

consent of this study. the scope of the report was intended to development the study to make sure that we had an objective professional analysis of taxi supply and demand in san francisco, however, having the opportunity to retain that consultant we also included other elements things. were pressing in our be prospective that we wanted some guidance on with respect to y what we could learn if about the best practices. so in addition to this supply and demand report we'll have additional best practices study and several prevail areas you signatures company account

inabilities ability payment system and perhaps more importantly the performances standards of taxi services. those are all thorn issues so we included those in the scope of work you, however, i want to emphasize those are not related. in future reports that address supply and demand studies in particular. certainly there are issues with the gate fees but the apply and demand study was intended to stand alone and we wanted it to get define first to get it to the board as soon as possible because it's been of some interest.

so we think that the recommendation to the board that's in the report is that includes customers who will have a better opportunity to find a taxi when they want one and a benefit to companies obviously awe because you can have more revenue. the drivers have a benefit one benefit to drivers is that the waiting list will be reduced by the number of taxis. but i think that we have to only a and probably much of what you're going to hear is they also need to be left with the tools to compete for a living.

their local residents who support their families and we care about them. i want to emphasize that the f f mta is working to increase the efficiency of those as well. i've learned from a conversation that in many jurisdictions 40 percent of taxis is normal. and it's normal according to what i learned there will be slack and peak times. during the flat times there's not enough business and the other way around there's not enough to meet the demand. we're trying to a increase the efficiency as soon as possible. all taxation's taxis can appear

on smart phones that dispatch taxis so drivers will have more business opportunities. also in a couple of weeks an outreach campaign to encourage people to take legal taxis. different things like this we're going to find every opportunity to increase the demand door to door service. so i want to say in anticipation of what i know will be a legitimate certain about increased competition. i want to introduce this doctor he has more than 20 years in practice advising for vehicle registration and it includes internation internationally research.

he's also advised saudi arabia and his clients are in los angeles. he practices thank you federal level in canada. so i'd like to introduce doctor dan >> good afternoon thank you. i would like to mention that i'm in a company by our san francisco partners in this work. we have a slide presentation i hope that it's assessable. it doesn't have expect for feedback on a township meeting it summarizes the report but i'd like to put it together as an easier to a grasp story swipg the evidence in a way that might

make sense. so as you heard it's the first of a series of reports if someone wants to know why are not i talking about enforcement. we'll be talking about that but you need those taxes the enforcements is a strategy to get to the process. the way i hope to approach this is to ask how many taxis and then a little bit of a side issue why is the sighed car not the solution. we ask ourselves that question, too, and we have an answer for you. then as the port structure there's a good solution we think are important and from there

recommendations. as you know this is based 3 documents. i should review this is our general approach is to rely on multiple lines of studies. this is to get the local story and history it's difficult to get user voices so we use tourism hospitality and all the folks we talked to have their story. to reach out further we says drivers individualsly. in fact, a large sample was results by neighborhood.

it was an informative reach. as economists we look at how it's structured. we look at other cities we have our model of taxi demand and we go out on the street so we did some extensive street observations. and you yourself have been looking at this for quite a while. we should start by defining what we mean by taxi shortage you can't what does that mean? there's slack period as taxis will be relatively inaccompanied. but in many cities where the bars close at the same time it

is impossible. we hope to meet the afternoon peak. there will be a fair degree of empty taxis because of the distribution of demand. so whatever you do wherever you do it even at peak demand there's some emptiness in the taxis. but you want a regular peak time where the taxis are waiting for the customers not the other way around >> the conclusion is that san francisco has a shortage and we take that evidence from multiple sources. first of all, we see it on the street in that our diagrams don't fully capture. those bars there a taxi gets a

customer is the time involved. this is one example of a large number that we did at different times of day on the thunders afternoon peak not friday. now, it's true most of the taxis got a customer in the time of two minutes. if you can get a customer in two minutes downtown and it's consistent across any time why would i drive out and preposition yourself in the suburbia's to get to a call. this right away would be the evidence. but our chart didn't capture this. in this observation there were

stance of no taxis. this was not a unique observation. we also see it in the under arrest of your dispatch markets. you have many records in the past about no shows we asked people in the surveys different questions. how long does it take to depreciate a taxi to our home. we did that by neighborhood. overall one of the persons said their service was terrible and it gets worse in the southern parts. in terms of what we should expect we should have service win 15 minutes most of the time. in los angeles they achieve service in 15 minutes.

here only 56 percent experienced long times during the day and friday and saturday night much, much worse and here's the number of folks who expect thirty minutes or no shows over time. pretty poor service. when we look at getting our economist hat and look at the year 2000. that green line as you see it slowly rising and a skipping some of the detail the central line starts at the regular basis and says what happened to taxi demand given the meter rate and a number of factors and

commuters coming into town. you put those together and the line dips below after the expansion. then there's another dip there and the most recently recession then a it across the green line and if you train forward to the current year then if i look at it you say last year the demand was up 23 percent but we only have 14.9 percent more taxis but you authorized more. you put 0 those together it looks like you've got just enough. and we believe that you have at this moment once they're all out

on the street you'd be able to restore that balance in the year 2000. that just means you'd have the same poor dispatch service there was 38 percent no-show service on people calling taxis to their home. so you would have the major problem still out there plus it's not the year 2000 anymore. and consumers choices are under attack. the limos are eating away at the share. the share rides are assaulting taxi shares. there's a potential risk that if the taxis don't fill the gap that you could