we will do is hear the testimony, the presentation, our discussion, then at the end of the meeting we will go into closed session and make our decision then. >> thank you, directors, it's been a long meeting and there are still many items to go and i will try to be braef and leave a more detailed discussion to answer your questions or respond to comment. as director riskin indicated the path to this contract began with our attempt to implement what's been called the eta system which is a method of getting all taxis to hail through smart phone platform as many of their competitive transportation services are available. this contract actually provides two principal benefits. one is we think it will give us a method to use pleat -- fleet management

software, this provides a software platform that would really revolutionize my staff's ability to be effective in the functions that it has to do every day as the staff report referenced, it would eliminate a lot of the paper-based work we do including faxes and data entry. it would make our multiple spreadsheets and data bases with permit holder information actually talk to each other in a useful way, create online reporting opportunities for companies and i think relieve the administrative burden for what a lot of companies go through in order to provide weekly reports to us. it would also give us some tremendous analytical capacity with respect to the taxi fleet and it would make our field enforcement more effective so we hope to enjoy many of the benefits of this software. as you are likely to hear during comment on this item, the on board devices may not be

required for the purpose of implementing the eta system, which is why we have structured the agreement to make the on board devices an option with the hope the data can be provided through the existing in-taxi equipment as was the original intention. as you are likely to glean from the discussion today this contract is somewhat controversial and in developing it i want to make sure the board is aware we have listened to the industry's comments on the issues and done our best to accommodate those concerns which i think you are about to hear so if you have particular questions i'm happy to answer them or --. >> i suggest we hear from the public at this point then go to the closed session after the next item then come back. thank you. >> charles rotter, tim santos,

steven humphries. >> good afternoon. >> board members, commissioners, directors, i'm a luxor driver and not a week goes by that one of my passengers doesn't tell me luxor is the only brand they call. brand identity is important. john lazar has made a big point in making sure his drivers take care of his customers. one of the things i fear the most is being called into john's office because of a customer complaint which thankfully has never happened. the concept of taking away brand identity and giving away the goodwill we have built up to other companies is of course a big problem. another problem i have with this system is that we are not employees but this allows a regulatory body to collect so much personal data on us, it is

so intrusive that while the intentions may be good, the potential for abuse is something that needs to be considered. and we may have the best people, the most honorable people in place today, but we don't know what happens tomorrow. and this system, i don't know of any other system where people who are not employees are monitored to this degree in any other system in the world. and it's frightening, actually. that's all i have to say. >> thank you, sir. >> jim santos, steven humphries. >> good afternoon, mr. santos. >> thanks, good afternoon, my name is jim santos and i work for a company called taxi magic. we provide the nation's largest e-hailing system for booking a taxi via smart phone. i just wanted to touch on the e-hailing factor here. what i wanted to speak mostly about is

the cost factor and the complexity of doing what the proposal has. i think that the cost is grossly underestimated in terms of the effort needed to build such a system. i wanted to touch on a few facts. no city has ever created a system remotely similar to this mainly because the private market is already offering data for free and e-hailing systems from companies like ours for free. the vendor you have chosen has never built a system like the one you have in this proposal so they have zero experience building a system that is being proposed. they have one city that they have employee drivers in las vegas where they have attempted to build some software. the private markets raised over half a billion dollars creating software similar to

this. much of that has been focused on the unregulated market which are sort of our competition. so i think there's a handful of questions to ask. is this fiscally responsible, meaning is the $6 million really going to end up being $6 million when the private market spent hundreds of millions of dollars to do this? is the private market already offering the software? do taxis really need more regulation in light of the new entrants? why has no city ever done this before? what are the chances that 6 million becomes 60 million and lastly, for a company like ours, why would we want to participate in anything like this? >> steven humphreys. >> good afternoon, mr. humphreys. >> good afternoon, members of the board, director riskin, thank you for your

consideration, i'm steve humphreys, the ceo of fly wheel. some of you might know fly wheel is the app with nearly 2/3 of san francisco's taxis on our system. together wree and taxi magic provide access to virtually every taxi in san francisco, even here now you can see on a rainy rush hour in san francisco the nearest cab is two minutes away, easily accessible. realtime geolocated, very usable for the customers, and the legal fleets and drivers in san francisco are working very hard to compete with all the illegal and new services that are coming out and they are making lots of headway. our rides through fly wheel are rated 4 and 5 stars 95 percent of the time by our passengers here in san francisco. 95 percent 4 and 5 star ratings, 70 percent straight up 5 stars. driver reliability, when a driver accepts a hail through

fly wheel, more than 99 percent of the time they show up to pick up that passenger so quality and reliability are being delivered by your fleets here in san francisco. so despite the good intent of this proposal it's the wrong action, it's a static platform being proposed from a company as tim mentioned not active in the standards based industry we are active in. our apps are revved every two weeks, our entire cloud platform is updated every week. six million is substantial but even then it will be impossible to keep up. it's going to either drag down san francisco or cost more than proposed. to be clear we'd like to help. the industry is working very hard. we'd like to provide all our data with driver and mta permission, i know i'm out of

time but i would like to respectfully request reconsideration of the proposal. >> good afternoon, directors, han sue kim, president of (inaudible) cab. our livelihoods are depending on us becoming a reliable high quality service just to survive in the current environment that we have so it troubles me quite a bit to come up here and ask you to not support this contract or table it. this is absolutely the wrong contract for us to get to where we need. i want to make it clear, i just don't understand how a company that has never put in hardware or built an app before gets a no bid contract to put in hardware and software to build a system that the private industry has already done. 1100 of the cabs i think are on fly wheel, i have fly wheel in my

fleet along with my desoto orders and you are going to build the system after, by the way, you have mandated equipment, electronic waybills, computerized dispatch, that has all been mandated. there is nothing in our equipment that you cannot access that will give you the data that you need to regulate this industry. chris ioshi and you need that information and you have it. why would you create a contract to duplicate this system to a company that's never done it before? you have that technology now. secondly, why would you want to put me in a position where you are going to take my data, give it to your agency and then you give it to any company without my consent that would put my cabs under a network? don't you think that's outrageous that you would take my data and give it to some

for-profit third party company without my consent? and that's what's in this plan. finally, $6 million would not even cover this cost. not spending a fraction of what we need, pr, driver recruitment, that's what we need to do. please don't waste the sfmta's money. >> good afternoon, mr. lazar >> good afternoon, commissioners, board members, how are you? my name is john lazar, president of luxor company. sorry to say, we oppose this contract, either you reject the contract or table the item for future consideration. staff has proposed a $6 million contract that is both unnecessary and unwise. this would not provide sfmta the tools to better regulate the industry. the contract will give a las vegas

transportation company a virtual monopoly over taxi operations in the city, cannibalize existing taxi brands and cause companies like luxor to consider legal remedies. we at luxor have cooperated at every level, every step to advance the goal and purpose of the sfmta, including this attempt to create the eta, in fact we provided our data to fti in early may and signed a letter sent to the sfmta that gave permission to the sfmta and sei work with our vendors. we have acted with good faith and yet we face another expenditure of public funds that would be insbrues intrusive of our business prrp fti has never provided to us or our vendors precisely what date

of data is required in what format or every attempt to work with us. we have never seen a demonstration of the right integrity software or an example of the on board devices. sfmta is about to enter a contract for something unproven and untested from a contract that has failed to demonstrate any achievable milestones during the first phase of this contract, sorry to say we urge you to reject staff's proposal. >> jim gillespie, tom rathbone and greg cochran. >> good afternoon, mr. gillespie. president, directors, jim gillespie, president, general director of yellow cab. i wrote down things i think i'm going to change a little bit so i don't repeat everything that's been said because i support everything that's been said so far. when i say we, i mean the cab companies, we have been on

board with providing the mta with information from the very beginning. that has never changed. our opposition all of a sudden is to changes to what we originally agreed to. we signed contracts even to say, yes, we will provide information to you and to fti and this will help you better regulate the industry because that's what the mta is supposed to do, it's supposed to regulate. the proposal here today i think sounds like there's, i read there is a couple changes made and it was mentioned here a minute ago that, hey, maybe the on board equipment won't be required if we get everything from you. i think we're being set up it fail for this reason. if you look through the contract it's not just to provide information so we can regulate, there's also things in there to, hey, we can turn off the car's engines remotely if in fact we feel there's some violations going on. we want to regulate your green house gasses. that's not going to be

able to be done from the equipment we have, it would require installing additional equipment in our cabs which we oppose. so i think you need to table this, you need to review this so everybody can be on the same page because what's being said isn't really what's in the proposal. we want to cooperate but we will not be subjected to overregulation overreaching by things that haven't even been discussed or proposed. thank you. >> charles rathbone, greg cochran. >> good afternoon again, directors, charles rathbone with luxor cab. luxor cab wants you to have good information for the purposes of regulation. if you had had good data a few years ago you would have known to put out more cabs then and i

think we would have had a lot fewer problems than we have now. regulation, yes. but it is not your role to reach into operations. please do not insert sfmta into the process of dispatching taxicabs. we have been performing that function of dispatching taxis ourselves for over 80 years including by app since 2008. we have built up a brand and reputation and we see a big threat to our brand in this proposal. we worked hard for a long time to win our customers and we do not want to share them with our competitors. please give us an assurance on the record today that luxor will not be required to share a service request that originates in our dispatch

system with other operators. thank you very much. >> thank you, sir. next speaker. >> greg cochran.

>> what you will have is authorization for on board devices. this contract is unnecessary, we have the data, we've had it for a long time, we just need to know where and how you want that data. thank you very much. >> lori ann delchrist. >> good afternoon, my name is lori ann delchrist and i'm here speaking on behalf of desoto cab, luxor cab and the yellow cab cooperative. thank you for the opportunity to speak today. my clients understand that mta needs data to do its job and are willing to work to provide the data using the existing systems already required by your regulations. however, there's no justification for moving forward from a modest

software contract to a $6 million contract for inintrusive on board hardware. there are a lot of red flags here. the fact there's been no real effort to use existing systems is very troubling. the new contract goes to fti without reopening the process, even though the amount is much bigger, it moving into hardware and fti did not produce its deliverables. existing technology and applications make much of it redundant and duplicative. there's an obvious bias in here in favor of the intrusive and costly fti on board devices. given the past action there's no reason to believe fti will work with the industry to use existing data sources going forward and this is a waste. i'd like to turn your

attention. >> i had prepared some remarks but i perceive that the question is really who is going to get the contract or whether the contract is going to be issued. unless you do something the cab companies will continue to fail to resolve the issue. each one wants to be on the top. the companies's criticisms are correct against an untried company. that makes a lot of

sense. they are making the argument that is best for them to make. fly wheel's representative revealed fly wheel's problem. they make sure they don't have any drivers who don't reflect well on them and they are completely wrong about who their customers are. the drivers are their customers and unless fly wheel behaves accordingly they are just like a military committee trying to take over one more cia poetry magazine. rather than reinvent the wheel i suggest you hire taxi magic. they really are the closest thing to implementable -- they are implementable, they are working. that's why people like luxor cab. i want to support your effort to consolidate the efforts, that's very important. but the particular thing that's on the table doesn't seem right

to me. i sure hope i don't regret saying this because if you decide not to do what she is asking and the deviciveness continues, that won't be good. taxi magic is the best. >> thank you, senior. mr. lamb ?oo ?a good afternoon again. my concern has to do with, i'm all for regulation and i think if there's a problem with regulation then the hammer needs to be thrown upon those companies that aren't following those regulations. as a person who is monitored on everything i do including stretching in the cab and drinking in the cab or whatever else i do in the cab, more regulation is not (inaudible) i don't want another one, another piece of technology that i have no idea who fti is. they have a bunch of employees in nevada but i'm

not one of their employees and i don't think there's ever been a time that sfmta has contacted me anyway but they can't get that result. if someone doesn't respond to them, they can put them out of service. who accepts the call, who denies the call, this kind of minutia, if you don't like the way fly wheel works, don't use fly wheel. i know we're trying to get this thing going but really what we're trying to do the thing going. whether you like coke or pepsi really doesn't matter, people are going to drink it. some people like yellow, some people like luxor, some people don't care, they just want a guy rolling around with a meter, unfortunately. one thing that's indicated is

fti wants it use gps for meter and that's not acceptable for weights and measures so look at that more closely but we -- it goes into delineation and deficiencies of this time and space of travel. we should look into that because there's lots of conditions here in san francisco for traffic and construction. >> next speaker. >> mark gruberg. >> thank you, mark gruberg, i'm speaking here for myself, not for any cab company or taxi organization. i'm very much in support of an eta system. i think some of us, you know, have been crying in the wilderness for many years for not even a centralized dispatch system per se but just an integrated system so that if you call a company and they couldn't provide you with a cab and there was another company that could and you were willing

to take it you could get that cab and that has never happened because cab companies have blocked it down the line. now we have a system that doesn't even require company participation, it's a combination between the prospective passenger and the driver. i think companies have a role in this but i don't think that they are the prime actors in this. and there's just too many balkanization. one is availability and the other is the efficiency of delivering that service and that's where things have fallen down. the ability to get a cab, any cab in the city potentially through a taxi app is essential, an essential tool

now in terms of competition. but i do have to say that i do have problems with this contract and it has to do with the extent and the scope of the information that would be collected and gathered by the government, you know, very, very detailed information on every taxi ride, every tax trip, every taxi shift, and i just think that this information is not something that should be residing in government hands but can be gotten from cab companies for the purposes that it's needed. thank you. >> mariana fotio >> thank you for pronouncing my name correctly. forgive me. actually i'm an independent cab driver for over 20 years. and everything i heard actually i am surprised. you consider

philly, look at what happened, you don't have to hear anybody, just look at the city. it's a total mess. and they are trying to fix it. we actually ask them to fix it. now, for this specific application is well needed. we have competition that is illegal, we are fighting other applications that are organized and they are really taking our business, people do use the smart phone. we are not servicing the city, i don't care what anybody says, we are not servicing the city correctly. i don't know where the passenger is. passenger does not know where the cab is. and if everything works so fantastic before, why then uber is there, why everybody else is there? they wouldn't be there if the system was not broken. so we do have to fix it. this

application, you know, i hear all these arguments about the privacy put it back into our hands, into the hands of the cab drivers, by all means go for it p we have to do it, we have to fix it. really the service is substandard and this will make a huge headway. thank you. >> rashid alatrak >> my name is rashid alatrak, i have been driving for san francisco for 15 years. i support the application to mta that is failure by cab company for dispatch is a game by the

big cab company. one is uber is illegal, lift is illegal, side car is illegal, you have china cab is also illegal, anderson illegal, fly wheel illegal, it approved failure of dispatch by largest company in san francisco. what they need, they need to complain, the driver, they are on the list of the mfa, they going to complain to the mta, they going to push them to add like new medallion and who is going to hit the number, the company that collect $86,000 a year from the driver and they pay the driver like some money and the problem is the failure of dispatch and is also uber cab company, a violation of license, transportation