supervisor wiener: thank you. i just want to know that we of public comment cards. >> my name is chris high option. i and the deputy director of the taxi services. the presentation we have for you today goes through the elements, as director riskin indicated. the first line response to the ordinance that calls for quantitative data in a report. as of today, the it industry is very much a paper industry, and we have been trying to move into another direction.

we think this will provide a very good beginning for the quantifiable data and we have maintained and best practices consultant from ottawa, canada, from the review of the files that we have seen in the past, with the time we have been in charge since 2009, there really has not been a comprehensive survey, and as the director indicated, the voice of the director has rarely been heard. and this is not just telephone base. they are going to go with another approach.

and then they are interviewing stakeholders, which includes -- we want to make sure we are going in the right direction to improve service. as we go. we have got some specific service-related initiatives. the first one is the best practices that i mentioned. among the items in the scope of work includes surveying.

this is to see how others have solved the problems, rather than reinventing the wheel here. there will be a study to determine realistically based on the objective data. they will be helping us to develop performance standards and looking at what we need to do as taxi regulators. another thing that frequent comes up is the out of balance supply and demand during peak times, which is generally considered to be thursday, friday, saturday night and commuter hours, but can also include any time there is a high demand of taxicabs and not

enough supply. they have authorized a new class of part time. they are required to work 365 days per year. this does not help our peak times service issues because during the peak times, you will never have enough taxis. you could have too many taxicab's at a time when there is not enough demand, or at least that is a consideration. and this is where the economic incentive will naturally be for them to work during the most profitable times. another way that we are going to make them be responsive to telephone a orders -- to telephone orders is for the single operators that would be

waived if they meet a certain standard of meeting telephone orders, and that will be the first time there will be any type of performance standard with an incentive or a disincentive for a taxicab to respond to a call. supervisor mar: can you tell us how you came up with that? to meet this need >> there are 1535 taxis that have been authorized that are on the road or about to be on the road. the 50 was an arbitrary number. we wanted to have this be an experimental program, and we do not know. it could be that we offer these permits to people, and they say, i am sorry. that does not work for me. we want to keep that with a workable number, where we can

try out the system, if it works, we can add more into the system. does that answer your question? ok. we are very proud with what we have achieved in the matter of wheelchair service, and i want to give credit where credit is due. they have been working for decades on the various steps for the solution. the first was the debit card system, which put in an electronic record-keeping free more, the same kind of electronic record-keeping fremont that i am advocating for the rest of the industry, where we're able to monitor the paratransit's patterns and especially the number of wheelchair pickups, and so we have created a carrot and stick process.

those have not existed before. on the other hand, we have taken the savings from the paratransit debit card system, because we have saved so much from reducing the fraud from the paper based system, we are able to put that into the paratransit's system to an offer that as an incentive to taxicab drivers who are actually picking up wheelchair's -- wheelchairs. supervisor mar: can you explain the difference between a ramp medallion and a regular medallion? one that can have a wheelchair with and it proved a little larger >> some can fit in a sedan, but these, the people in san francisco who used a wheelchair can have some taxi service available to them.

supervisor cohen: thank you. is there an additional cost of utilizing this type of taxi? >> not for the customer. there is for the driver however. the ramp driver is the unsung hero of the taxi industry, because the good ramp driver, one that does what he is supposed to do and picks up the wheelchair, they have to take the time to help the customer into the vehicle and secure in the vehicle, have to take the time to allow the customer to exit the vehicle, and none of that is paid time, so for a ramp driver, and they are doing a good job, we really should be acknowledging their service. but the paratransit is subsidized for the customers. the next slide relates to our capital plan. in the five-year capital plan, the sf emptying -- the sfmta has

a couple of things. the first is the top light comedy element on the top of the vehicle, that tells you whether or not a taxi is available. i was surprised to learn about one year after i was in this job is that there is incredible frustration with the customer and the taxi drivers when the plight system does not work to communicate between the driver and the customer when the taxi is available. for example, the backlighting of the advertising may make it difficult to see if the light is on or off. the fact there is not an off- duty light makes it difficult to communicate that they are off duty, but there is nobody in their back seat, or they are going to answer a technical call. when the taxicab drivers by empty, it makes people angry. if we created a uniform tax the

top light, it will help the visibility of available taxicabs and help the taxi driver and the customer communicate. it will help the public recognize what is a legitimate taxicab, and it will provide other tools, such as an emergency light and a manual switch to be able to turn the top light off and on. a second project we are very excited about is taxi hailing. the buzz words back then were open taxi access. i think i issued an example at the last meeting. but basically, this would be a real time, electronic gps-based platform that would be accessible through smartphones, laptops, desktops, or ipad, where you can see every single taxicab in the city and whether they are available. rather, you would see only be

available taxis and hail them directly. we have no intention of bypassing the existing dispatching services that have already built up their telephone business. we think this would just provide sort of an overlay that would still allow customers to choose their taxi companies but would give the customers the ability to find taxis that are actually available by communicating to the drivers on more than one basis. the next slide has to do with dispatch accountability, and we also think that is critically important. we currently have no standards to measure whether a dispatch is successful or not, and we want to implement the standards and start to measure how many times a company dispatch office actually put somebody in a taxi and then reward them for that success. we do not want people posting numbers and then never answering the phone, for example.

it is not enough to have a dispatch company. we have to have the company that puts people into taxis when they call, so we will be working on regulations to develop those standards. and speaking of regulations, for the last three years, we have been slow going over the entire body of tax-related regulations, but we think that the retention of this consultant is going to push us toward dramatically, and specifically on the service- related regulatory issues, we want them to tell us how other jurisdictions internationally deal with this problem we have in san francisco and is common in big cities where the taxis stayed in the downtown core, and it is very hard to get them to respond to telephone orders, so if there are any other solutions out there that other jurisdictions have found, we want to learn about it and improve our system as well.

second, we have had condemned look at our safety standards to make sure we are doing our best to keep the vehicles is safe and clean, and third, we asked what technology is available for improving tax and service in other locations. and finally, i am very proud of our new and improved taxi driver training. we get about 25 new tax in drivers to a class and reduced that from 50 so we would have a better educational atmosphere, and we have classes twice a month, that is 15 new taxicab drivers every month, and we are working on improving the curriculum, especially on disability sensitivity issues, because many of the service relates to disabilities and not picking up people with disabilities, so among other things, for example, we have the white house for the blind that

comes in to introduce the taxicab drivers to a service dog and tells them how to handle that if they are allergic or a brisk two dogs, how to avoid any issues with getting the dog hair on the seats, anything that they might have a concern with. they addressed the concern, and all of the taxi drivers that the dog. we are trying to bring more real, multimedia situational, useful information into the taxi driver training so that they leave with a better understanding of how to be a good driver. supervisor mar: i just had a question, chris, ms. hayashi. other issues that i guess this

curriculum would be important to build around if there are limited english-speaking drivers, for example? >> we do make an effort to keep our regulations and materials in clear english, but we do have a requirement that our taxicab drivers be able to read and write english at least on a conversational level. we have not tried to do any kind of translation of materials or a training materials. we are afraid to do that because if you take it from english to arabic, you could introduce new meanings that you may not want their. we are trying to keep the regulatory language clear, and when we meet instances, for example, where we think somebody is having a hard time on a language basis, at least for the medallion, and we want to make sure they are a taxi driver and not just to make sure that we watched the been written. when you get into a taxi, and this is an important part of tax

and service, you should be able to communicate with your driver. supervisor mar: is there any kind of study within the industry? >> yes, i am proud about this. they had asked about what is the first language. we have all different spellings. we are trying to clean up the data, but we are on the verge of having gender information, which i am fascinated to learn, some age information, and some first language information. we are so excited about the agree to new driver training and all of the new elements that we want to communicate to the new drivers, that we want to have a mandatory retraining for drivers. we are hoping to roll back out

for june so that people who have to renew their driver's permits in august will be given the opportunity to take this class, and i cannot tell you exactly what it will include because we are working on the curriculum, but sensitivities to disabilities, customer service, and traffic safety. that is the other thing critical that i think. we have the bicycle coalition come into our new driver training to talk to them about the principles of how you maneuver a car around a bicycle, and we think that will be really, really helpful, and we want that information to go back to the existing drivers, as well. supervisor wiener: to make a point on the specific issue, when i first came into office and started to really talk about this a lot, i noticed that some bike advocates were not particularly excited about increasing the number of cabs,

and the message i kept getting over and over again was their perception that cabdrivers were too aggressive and even less by friendly than other drivers, and i would argue with them and was disappointed because we want to be allies in pushing for all sorts of different types of transportation, including bicycles and cabs, so i think it is really important to address that in making sure there is communication and that we do not have any kind of official divide that should not exist. supervisor mar: i was just going to thank you for the new driver training improvements but also for the retraining that is mandatory, and it looks like it is by june 2012 for this coming june to do more updating of the

educational requirements for 7000 drivers? is that -- and one >> the idea is -- we changed the renewal cycle. it used to be every taxicab expired on december 31. that is not workable because it is hard to process that many people for a system on any certain date, so we changed the system to be around the birthday, said the renewal around a driver's birthday. the first renewals will come up in august. that is why we want to have some curriculum in june to give them at least 60 days to deal with the requirement. supervisor mar: so i do not see any other question. supervisor wiener? supervisor wiener: thank you. the purpose of this hearing is not to just slay the mta and say, "you should be doing this or that."

is to assure that there is good work being done within the agency to improve service. i appreciate the detailed presentation. i hope it is helpful to the public. in terms of the process of a more significant potential expansion, the number of taxicabs beyond, i think 85 potential medallions that were authorized, what is the timetable looking like? i know we have some ceqa issues. could you just flush out what the timeline looks like? >> we are already talking to planning. i would expect -- our consultant is coming to town this week for our kickoff meeting, so i will have more detailed information later, but i would suspect that by summer or fall we would have

a determination at the latest of what the consultant considers the appropriate numbers of taxis or san francisco. supervisor wiener: we want to make sure we comply. thank you very much. colleagues, questions? comments? ok, we will open it up. we have some comment cards. supervisor mar: 3 minutes per person. supervisor wiener: 3 minutes per person, and when you hear the bell, your time is up. [reading names] and i think alen. go ahead. >> i wanted to start out with -- let me start out, first of all,

some of you know that i drove a taxi for seven years. and it was a pretty interesting experience. but i wanted to state that i lived in hayes valley, and i heard you say that was typical to get a taxicab in some areas. it is difficult in the valley. and i agree with you. i just wanted to mention something about improvements. it was a great system. a and b you're able to pick up a lot more calls and make more money. i also liked the ability of

electronic waybills. electronic waybills for people who have vision problems, being able to sit there and write, you know, as you drive on these waybills is absolutely ridiculous. you have to stop and right, which takes away from your time. but there are so much more needed improvements that i would like to state, and i am sorry i am going fast, but i only have 1.5 minutes. one of the of the things is with the sensitivity training. to expand that just passed people with sensibilities. people with different ethnic backgrounds, people with a different sexual orientation. i can tell you firsthand as

driving a taxi in san francisco, when i came out at work, i experienced some very, very tough harassment, including damage to my suv, assaulting at work. i brought it to the attention of the sfmta. not much was done because that seems to be outside of their jurisdiction. and another thing i would like to see them step up to the plate on his insurance is. make sure if you have drivers on the street that they are protected. please have uninsured motorist coverage. please make sure workers compensation is in place, at center, etc.. supervisor wiener: next speaker. >> i have been a driver for about 10 years. i can tell him in the

presentation as my experience with say, what passengers want the most is they want a reliable cab. and they would like a nice clean taxicab. those are the things that they want without having to have a steady. a study is good, but without that, that is what passengers generally want, and these days, they want to pay with a credit card. there is reliability, availability, and courteous, knowledgeable cabdrivers who know what they are doing. i am very much for a single operator taxing. i have dropped off single operator leaflets and while back, asking you guys to support that, and the reason why i support that is because i feel very much like an outsourced

workers. what a single operator tax and get will do is for the drivers who want it, and line deputy director hayashi said, it will not be for everyone. it will be for those who are career minded, who see this as an opportunity. it would allow them to have their own cabs and operate them like a real business, and these taxicab's can function when it is busy, on friday, saturday nights, in a marathon or something like that, so i very much support these taxicabs. i can tell you that at 5:00 a.m. this morning, we did not need an extra to wonder taxicabs to compete out there, and we did not need another 75 extra ones. as far as the dispatches, centralized dispatching is no greater but is also controversial. the only thing that has not prevented central dispatching is the politics, because from a

transportation policy perspective, it is a no-brainer. they cannot even rightfully be called cab companies because they are not in the business of providing taxicab service to the passengers. that is what drivers do. there is a big difference between the taxi leasing industry and the providers. they are leasing industry's, and they have no direct financial stake in providing service to the passenger. dispatch service as it currently is is marketed to cabdrivers, and that is not the way it should be, so in my opinion, dispatching an san francisco should be a public service, and i have ways where you can actually subsidize its own that it is free, and it should be a public service. thank you very much. supervisor wiener: thank you. >> good afternoon, supervisors. my name is charles rathbone.

i am with a cab company in am an assistant manager there. the current service is inadequate, and the dispatch is inadequate. i say that as one of the companies that provides some of the best dispatch in the city, and i believe that we provide the best service to the neighborhoods. having said that, i am the first to acknowledge that we have a long way to go. unlike many of the people in the industry and say that it is your job to fix things, we believe it is our job to fix things. in accordance with that, my company within the last year has put about $150,000 into a service that we offer our customers. it is a hand-held application that people used to completely bypass the hold and get right into the dispatch system. this week, i looked over the numbers.

i think on the slowest day, we had about 500 customers use the tax in magic, on the busiest day approximately 800. we also in the last few months have initiated a system called udi, which is a dispatch enhancement, which allows many customers -- most customers are calling from the same address that they called from the last time, so this system gives the caller an automated response option to say, yes, i want the taxicab from the same place, and the order gets into the same system extremely fast. i would like to commend the mta staff, the incentive program for the ramp taxis is a superb think. it is tremendously appreciated by the drivers. the ramp taxis do more difficult the ramp taxis do more difficult and more demanding work than any