not seen the market end of the tunnel. but i still strongly believe that we can do things to fix it. it's fixable, we still can save it. however, we all have to compromise a little bit and i use the word compromise, not sacrifice, it's not there yet but we have to do something about it. i would be willing to discuss all the small details in this regard but it can't be done possibly now, i don't have the time. however, i am supportive of this new agreement, it could do no harm, it could only do something good for the industry. we are all in it together, we have huge competitor outside here and we already have to compete with them on the technological level and central dispatch is the way to go to give better service to the community. i heard all the speakers before me, none of them had responded to the opening

statement of the gentleman from service sometimes somebody across town could take them 45 minutes to get to where the customer is while there is somebody half a block away. central dispatch is the only way to go to get out of this hole we are in. a little compromise from all of us will do a great deal. >> mission creek gone wild comes into play here and i'm thinking of joseph conrad's heart of darkness, last words of kurtz, the greed, the greed.

our fees have gone up exponentially and now $6 million more and it's going to talk from us. they can talk about $800 billion dollars in the bank account, but i don't believe it, it's going to come from us taxi drivers and it's another regulation and i'm opposing it because we're not, the government's regulatory authority is to regulate, not compete with businesses that already exist and that's exactly what they are doing here. it's they say a bridge too far in the military. i don't want my privacy invaded to the extent it clearly does. it's way too intrusive. if you want to make us employees, make us employees, give us some benefits, instead of booting us out when we become disabled did

$160,000 before capital gains and that's what's happening. i mean it's just the full employment act, they are going to have to get an in person in there too for $200,000 a year, we're going to be paying them. somebody has too keep it from being hacked, this will have information from citizens here, every address, people who can afford a cab they are going to be marketed and solicited for votes because they are confident voters and they probably do vote. there's a power structure that's interested and a monetary structure that's interested and you are not going to be able to keep the money away from them and the information away from them. >> walid followed by berry toronto. >> my name is walid, i'm here to support this measure. actually we need it for so long. if you deserve it, all cab drivers you will be in

support of this. the only reason that you find over in the street because there is no centralized dispatch system. people need service and the only way that you could provide service is with this app, thank you. >> next speaker. >> berry toronto, followed by carl mcmurdo >> carl mcmurdo followed by ed healy. >> thank you, regarding the proposed fti contract, there seems to be a hardware component involved which i believe per the san francisco administrative code would require a competitive bidding process. also the data gathering particular seem to duplicate existing requirements, as you know. i do support the electronic taxi access component in the contract. the so-called

transportation companies such as uber have captured a lot of our market. in the streets sometimes i see people outside of clubs and they are looking at their smart phones watching the vehicle they have ordered from the tnz approach while their taxi is sitting there hoping to get rides and i've interviewed these people and asked them do you really hate the taxi drivers or what's going on? and the answer i get is that these individuals want to support the people who are able to efficiently pick them up at their residences so they call them for the return trip and the people say to me, well, if you taxi drivers had apps we would take you. given that almost all the cabs have either fly wheel or taxi magic right now, there seems to be a publicity problem. the city residents don't know that the companies have apps so whether you approve this contract or do it some other way, i think you need to spend

some money on the publicity. also i think all of you do understand that the majority of service calls will still take place by regular phones and cell phones and the app system requires a credit card information on file, a $1 charge and maybe a $7 no go fee or something like that, so also we need to restrict in our industry and maybe you could publicize to people that we need applicants to drive cabs and even subsidize their start-up costs. thank you very much. >> ed healy followed by david smut. >> hi, i'm just probably driving my last shift for desoto listening to the cab companies talk here you'd think this was just wonderful cab service all over the city. basically people can't get a taxi in half the

city. the reason that the -- i'm thinking of a different word -- the nnc's have taken over is because they are actually fulfilling a service. charles rathbone wants it keep all his little calls, well, that's really nice but what we need here is one app, i don't care whether it's fly wheel or -- although that's a very good app, or taxi magic or whatever, you need to be able to see all these cabs on one platform just like they do on uber or anything else. if you do have them on this app you would be able to, you would be able to wipe most of these companies -- uber is going to be around, but you could wipe the other two out if these people want to run this in a rational manner. i'd like to remind you that the cab companies were against

open taxi access 2 or 3 years ago, killed it in some way or another, had that gone through 2 or 3 years ago, we had the app2 or 3 years ago, the tnc's would not have made nearly the impact they have now. i think this is a necessary thing to do, i don't know about the technical problems could perhaps be work i had out in a better way. as for being spied on, the nsa does it, google does it, why not you? i'm all for it. >> david smut, madeline savot >> david smith, i apologize for the sloppy writing. good afternoon, commissioners, i will say traditionally i've been for a centralized dispatch for a very long time but these days i am not. mostly because centralized dispatch is essentially here in the form of

fly wheel and taxi magic. we also have desoto and luxor coming out with their own apps. the public is already used to using these apps and the market has shifted in this direction whether we like it or not, so we're better off not disrupting it because it is keeping people in taxis and bringing new people into the taxi industry. it's normal for a driver now to have his dispatch from his company as well as their fly wheel app or the other app that we will not mention because i'm against it, of course, and i see why the companies don't want this, i don't blame them in any way shape or form. i would prefer personally that you use this money to enforce, for enforcement against rogue limousines and taxis at the ballpark and hotels and at nightclubs where limo vultures are aggressive to both drivers

and passengers. we need signs at the golden gate bridge letting them know what numbers they can call so they are not stranded in the cold. it's not right that tourists don't have not even one phone number at the golden gate bridge, the biggest land mark maybe in the country as well as inside golden gate park at the museums, we need more taxi stands at fisherman's wharf, we need to fix the u-turn at the caltrans station, better driving training, this is what the money needs to go to. >> madeline savot >> yeah, i can't speak to the particular platform that's been chosen, i would only hope in consideration of it due diligence has been done. i would also like to add i would like for reasons of equity that it be accessible not only by smart phones but also land lines and computer as well.

yeah, as somebody who is actually visited and lived in cities where there is a unified taxi calling service that worked seamlessly i would like to encourage san francisco and all the taxi drivers present and not for us to move forward and have this kind of service and to consider in fact that their cost savings may be huge in terms of fuel savings in future because there would be much less time wasted roving around looking for clients. i'd like to say it's very disheartening as well as somebody who has been turned down by taxi drivers for no apparent reason to see them squabbling over their piece of the pie and see us moving forward into the world class city that we say we are. >> thank you, miss savot, next speaker. >> some things that i was considering as i read this and there has been some concerns

voiced that this is hardware because this is a no bid contract. i think you really need to determine is this hardware or software or if it's, i believe if it's hardware it has to go out to bid. will the terms of this contract, will it move this body beyond your regulatory duties into operational duties? as we look into the future, will this contract pay for itself in reduced staff time and you need to look at the possible cost overruns as one expert just advised you. is it going to be more than six million? what is fti's track record, has this contractor ever built or installed an app like this? they are saying no. important to me as a the driver, how am i going to be paid for my services and i'm told that hasn't been determined yet, the details will be wrorked out. another thing is the star

rating system. will that lead to discriminatory practices for the customers and the driver? could they possibly have you willary 84 motives, will data be collected about passengers in order to sell them products, we're looking into the future like facebook and twitter. how long will it take to come into being, i've been told one year, and as i look at it, i'm really in support of the centralized dispatch but there's so much other stuff in it. i wonder will this really help us compete against these other guys or is this some kind of trojan horse that's going to lead us to be spied upon? i keep thinking of the patriot act after 9-11 when the government started spying on citizens. i'm not doing anything wrong so why do i care. i feel like i've been duped a little bit and i'm a

victim of bait and switch. i have the feeling it's bait and switch. >> yellow cab has been at the forefront of introducing technological innovations into the cab industry for those 37 years. we were among other things the first cab company in the united states to introduce credit card processing within the cabs 15 years ago. i just want to share some numbers with you in october, i just looked at the statistics this morning. in october, 600,000 people rode in the yellow cab fleet. six hundred thousand, approximately. of these, 180,000 called us in some way by telephone, by app, by web app. unfortunately of

these 180,000, only 70 percent got a cab. you could figure out why. you should know why. it's simply a matter of capacity. i don't care how good you are going to improve the technology to lick people with cabs, if you don't have the cabs to provide the service, it's not going to work. thank you very much. >> thank you, next speaker. >> jim margolis and then larry corngold, the last speaker. >> jim margolis, i'm a medallion holder, i've been with the yellow cab co-op since it began. i can see both sides of this. i think we do have a problem fighting some of these other companies that provide the innovation, they talk about innovation, the ubers of the world. they have no innovation, their innovation is they are trying to operate

vehicles without insurance or adequate insurance. that's an innovation i think they should be ashamed of. but i understand this body does not regulate them so there's really not that much you can do. i want to see people being able to be picked up by taxicabs and i know that yellow cab and most of the other cabs because of the regulation have decent vehicles, have hybrid vehicles, have better vehicles than these other companies do in terms of environmental factors. i think a problem, and i've been away from this a little bit, is this publicity. i don't think people know who have the smart phones or whatever, you know, they hear about uber, it's cool and this and that, i don't think people know about the other alternatives. some people do. let's get some advertising out there whether in cooperation with the companies or something on even the television or radio or spots or something like that so it's in people's brain, oh, yeah, this is available, i have

an alternative. i do agree with what nate drury said about not everybody uses the smart phones and there's people out there. people out in saint francis woods where they can't get a cab because cars, they need to have access to that but they should know that it's not all about uber charges too much or this company that charges but they don't have adequate insurance, they get in an accident, they have to know about the alternatives. they want to use a taxicab, get them a taxi where they can push a button. >> thank you, mr. margolis >> last speaker, berry corngold. >> hi, berry corngold, i'm with the san francisco cab driver's association. we're kind of in a quandry about this. we definitely need to have all the cabs being able to be seen on one screen and if this is the only way to do it,

then i guess we would support this. but i've also questioned the amount of information that's being collected with this stuff, if that's necessary and i'm also questioning how these apps like fly wheel, which has been very successful, they have over 1100 cabs on their system, i use it, i live out in the sunset, very good service out in the sun set, it's never more than 3 or 4 minutes to get a cab when i've used it, i'm wondering how these companies are going to compete and we haven't been informed all about that so these are my concerns. i can't weigh in real strongly one way or another on this because of these reservations. i will say that it's very irritating to see all these other cabs, these other taxicabs with pink mustaches or whatever or side car socks that are not being regulated whatsoever and now you guys want to control, see how fast we're going and take every

little bit of information, fine, do the same thing for those guys. their taxicabs are nothing else and you should be standing up to the cpuc about this because taxicabs are supposed to be regulated by cities. it's not what you call them, if they are providing taxicab service, which is what they are doing, they should be under your jurisdiction and regulation and you need to do something about it. do some advertising, maybe quit advertising for uber x on the busses and put advertising for services that dispatch legal taxicabs. okay, thanks. >> thank you, mr. cornberg. >> a second comment? >> no, i'm sorry, we can only have one public comment for speaker in the time period, otherwise it wouldn't be fair. i'm sorry. >> (inaudible). >> no, thank you, i'm sorry, we can only have one public comment per speaker. thank you.

>> the chairman had said we were going to postpone consideration of the item until after closed session. >> yes. >> would you like to move on to item 14? >> authorizing the director of transportation to execute an agreement and authorizing $9 million, madam chairman you have one person who indicated an interest in addressing you. >> do you want to explain this one or go right to public comment? >> i hope the staff report was fairly self-explanatory. we don't talk about it often but everybody in the taxi industry knows that the airport is an important part of the taxi ecosystem here in san francisco. the airport is upgrading their systems and this is essentially an mou that would authorize us to pay a

share of that upgrade because of the value that we will get for it as the city's taxi regulator. >> shall we hear public comment? ?oo ?a mark gruberg is the only person who's turned in a speaker card on this matter. >> thank you again. i'll be brief. >> i'm sorry, one second, mr. gruberg, did you have a question? >> i had a procedural question, we just had a lengthy public session and i understand we need to have a closed session to talk about litigation but i suspect there's a fair number of people here, i'm confused when we're going to have the discussion about the earlier item and i suspect a lot of people who came for the earlier item would like some clarification, as i would. >> the chairman indicate before he left wreer we are to have one closed session or two.

>> one closed session. >> i'm sorry, mr. gruberg, go ahead. >> in that case i'll be really brief. i think coordination between these two regulatory systems is great but my one concern again goes back to the amount of information, the kind of information, extent of information, and without any restrictions or restraints on the use of that information that would be coming forth from the previous item if it is approved. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker or is that the only speaker. >> han sue kim, charles rathbone, last speaker, ed healy. >> i'll be brief as well. i have to tell you, the san francisco airport has always been very supportive of the taxi industry especially of these new ride services that are coming here. i do want to

talk about when we spend money from the sfmta this is an opportunity for me to say with the new medallion sale system and the revenues generated from the taxi industry, there must at some time be some investment back into the industry not just going forward with different types of subsidies or agreements into new programs but i ask you to really redirect some resources back to the industry as you mentioned about pr, driver training, there's so much that can be done with very little and with the medallion sales and income as they are, i really hope you would look at that as you go forward with new contracts and put money toward these things. >> thank you, mr. kim, next speaker. >> charles rathbone, followed by ed healy. >> hiagain, commissioners, just very briefly, this would be money well spent, this proposal. if nothing else it will help put an end to the dangerous system of time-based

shorts out of the airport and instead go to a gps based, they important to do that to cut down on speeding on the freeways. thank you. >> next speaker. >> ed healy and then rashid. >> i think this is very necessary to coordinate, i understand there's a bunch of new investigators out at the sfo that will be cracking down on the lists and the side cars and the illegal taxis. it's a very necessary thing and i'd also like to second han sue kim, we can definitely use the money for advertising and things like that. you've taken enough in to probably run half the city, you can give some of it back to us. thank you. >> thank you, mr. healy. >> last speaker, rashid. >> i support everything going to be allowed by san francisco mta and also i ask the san francisco mta, we have 7,000 driver, we need to do election

and there's going to be responsibility for the mta, it's going to be responsibility for the driver, the driver is the victim and we need to have a driver. >> thank you, mr. rashid. berry corngold. >> if there's anyone else who wants to speak on this item, please come frd and provide a speaker card now. >> berry corngold, i think definitely the mta should be working in conjunction with the sfo, there's a lot of illegal taxi activity there that i see all the time and they need more investigators cracking down on that and i also think with the gps, you know, the global defense system if the parameters are made correctly it can be a good system to prevent unnecessary speeding. so that's it, i think i also agree that more money should be spent on things like advertising and enforcement,

there is absolutely no enforcement, it's a wild wild west atmosphere out there. i'm seeing cabs that have a top light and it says taxi on it and they are being allowed to pull up in front of all the sfo or san francisco taxis that pay and wait sometimes hours in line and these guys just pull right up and pick up people right in front of us and they have their schemes going on where they have wranglers inside soliciting and they go out and take this taxi, tell them this is your name or they exchange the information by cell phone and then have them come pick up the people in front of all the san francisco cabs and that needs to be addressed. thanks. >> thank you. >> last speaker, david smith. >> hello again, i would just like to say i'm totally in support of anything that has to do with curbing the situation at the airport. the problem is

really bad. on a friday night when i drop off at the airport there's 3 lots full of cabs, cabs deadheading to the airport is just horrible. you can go on a monday night, on a sunday night, on a tuesday night and go watch 101 south from let's say cesar chavez and see how many cabs are in the far left lane flying back to the airport trying to make the short. this is very unsafe, they tail each other, they tail me, they tail me when i have a customer going to the airport. please support this, that's all i can say. the situation is horrible. >> thank you, mr. smith. directors, any questions or discussion on this? >> move the item. >> second. >> i have a motion and a second. all in favor, aye. ayes have it, motion passes. >> motion approving new

notification requirements for operational local neighborhood and white management products proposing the installation of new parking meters. you have one member of the public who may still be here who wishes to address you. >> do we have a staff presentation on this? >> we can provide one if you like. >> has everyone read this fully? do you need a staff presentation? can we please hear from the public. >> martin mcintire. >> martin mcintire, i guess i'm representing the public. >> you are. >> i was the founder of the coalition for san francisco neighborhoods, second neighborhood of park association of richmond, et cetera. i was the past president of the university association and our association fought against parking meeters being put on golden gate avenue across from our homes by sf

park. you probably should need going back to the beginning of this session, i hope my wife hasn't called the police. the bus should say stop discussion. that's what this is all about. you heard how long the description of this thing is, it means we can put in 50 parking meters without asking anybody. they can do what we fought against, they can do it now, just put in 50 at a time. that's not fair. that's not the way it's supposed to be done. it got shot down, sf park got shot down in our neighborhood and this is an end run. they will put an end run on the bus. or put in sf park strikes back. this is revenge of sf park. they didn't like being told

that the neighborhood doesn't want parking meters and now they have come up with this proposal to get around that and that's not the way it should be done. so i guess i'm speaking for everybody who didn't even know there was a meeting and the sfmta didn't even provide somebody to explain it to you like laura mattern, a lot of -- it's like let's see what we can do to put in parking meters. >> thank you, mr. mack intire, i know all the directors carefully read that report, mr. riskin, i know you responded to a report saying this is increasing the amount of notification that will go out before meters. >> perhaps some people misunderstood what this item is. right now the law prescribes public notification process