general update reflecting a number of requests we've gotten from the board from the board in recent months for the state of the industry as well as some as some of the dynamics that we've already heard about today and in most of these meetings and one specific item that we'll seek your approval for as well so we'll ask kate to come up and provide the presentation for item 11 and kate stepped in as an interim for a few months and a few weeks ago i appointed her and happy to have her in this capacity and hopefully she will cover all the issues you have been asking about and i'm sure we'll have good public, comment as well.

>> thank you for taking the job. >> i couldn't think of a better job to work with and interesting dynamic. >> is that microphone on? >> yes. >> that one is not. you will have to speak from one of the big ones. sorry. >> did you load the powerpoint? >> no. >> okay. >> do you have paper slides? >> this is my first presentation before the board. >> i'm sure it will get better as we go on. >> thank you. it's on the the -- my apologies i thought it was preloaded. i'm learning as i go here. >> absolutely. >> i'm kate toran director of

taxis and accessible services and we're the we're the real crossroads here and we're committed to what we do and how we do it. our mission statement values are critically important to us and these are the lenses through which we do our work so this helps to keep us grounded. accessible services also has a very strong mission statement and we are proud of the work we do in the accessible services team to make this system not only accessible but a real focus on universal design and we feel that that as we champion design principals that benefits the system for all users and 2 distinct functions linked through the accident the -- taxi companies and para transit

and that's the bridge or the link and together we feel like we make a difference in san francisco so that's what keeps us grounded. the importance of regulation this is a very important topic for us we feel it's a public good to have a regulated accident, taxi industry and our taxi services mission statement and articulating it's particularly important now given the new landscape in the 4 hire transportation in the 4 hire transportation industry and public safety is our concern and we have a comprehensive set of requirements insurance etc. the 2-way cameras all very important to public safety. the customer service experience

is also critically important to the industry and there's a lot of room for improvement here but we do have regulations that stipulate that the outlining neighbors must be served no discrimination can happen based on protected classes very important for us again room for improvement there but this is what we're gowned test there

are opportunities for the drivers to become medallion holders and there's pride of ownership and more players with the value distributed a bit more evenly, more broadly. we

also have a structured administrative process and that's important as well. okay here we go. this is the big slide that was all distribution and now this is the big elephant in the room it's already been aired but the elephant in the room or on or streets the arrival of the tmc's have dramatically changed the landscape in the transportation industry i won't go into the details i think you have heard over and over through public comment and you are aware of the challenges. there are -- they provide very similar services to accident at to taxis and the -- let me go back. so basically three

distinctions here that tnt's are not supposed to pick up street hills or currently serve the the airport not without a permit and regulated by the california public utilities commission that's important to know. the regulatory framework is currently quite misaligned as you have been hearing there's very structured regulations transportation code

full of regulations and the cpuc regulates the tmc's a service very similar to our taxis and very different regulations and framework. i'm going to give one example -- here on the insurance which has been a hot topic of conversation and for example taxis are required to provide liability insurance and recently in sacramento a bill has been passed we're expecting it will be signed by the governor that requires a very different set of insurance standards for the tmc's starting july 1st during period one when there's no passenger on board a tmc the insurance requirement is fifty $50,000 for death and injury per person and a hundred thousand dollars per incident and 30 $30,000 for property damage and 200 thousand excess coverage and again that's period 1, no passenger on board and period 2 a million dollars coverage that's when a passenger is on board. so the -- thereof been a lot of impacts on the taxi

industry related to the tmc's and some of them are hard to quantify i've if i've picked a snapshot here this is productivity per vehicle per taxi so this is average trips per vehicle and it's a sample i think it really illustrates the decline in productivity. the next slide -- our taxi trips are the hardest to serve and the most expensive require a more expensive vehicle costs are hire and gas costs are higher and they are kind of the first to go and they have responded by putting in a more robust set of incentives we're kind of working any angle we can to improve the services we do have

and these very important services so the impacts of the tmc's i think we can discuss for a very long time believe me i have it's an ongoing topic of conversation but at this point i would say that we don't have good data to assess the impacts on air quality congestion and public safety. the the economic relief provided again as the mta is working all angles to try to address the situations that have come up in the taxi industry related to the new competitors and again the the competition is seen as unfair competition so fee reductions, fee waivers and

elimination of some fees 3.5 $3.5 million in that category so the mta, again is working to be responsive. in terms of of diss passionate analysis the mta would like to partner with the cpuc on a joint study of the transportation industry and that's something we have received preliminary positive response from the cpuc staff so we hope to pursue that. there is some economic relief >> and i want to point out i

believe -- who mentioned the 20 percent medallion retransfer fee? so that is on our list of items to discuss so we have some other proposals -- or contemplated waiving the medallion fee lowering the medallion fee and possibly allowing taxi advertising that was the item that i received feedback on again there there will be a robust discussion on on each of those. there's been a lot of resilience in response to the conditions out on the street there's been a flurry of aps some companies have put in place their own e hail aps and a lot have gone with fly wheels they have 80 percent of the

market share now and the curve is at about 60 percent and according to fly wheel they are saying they are picked up in 3.5 minutes and the taxi industry is working to step up their game and to unify a mission and we heard earlier about the new union that's a piece of it the color schemes are working to align their missions and have fewer internal conflicts. had robust discussions but then present the unified public face. so what are we doing over at taxi services? we are working to really live out our mission to make it real we're really focusing on intelligent regulation and enforcement and increasing our partnerships. intelligent regulation -- as i

said earlier, we are really articulating why we regulate and the importance of regulation given that we have these two systems that are so differently regulated so we want to put everything on the table and assess are these regulations having the required response given this new landscape we're in -- are they old news, have they gone by the wayside and so we'll go through a process on this. this will be through a taxi task force and i'll get to that a little bit later but again we want to have a public process related to reviewing regulations of the -- we're working on improving our transparency as well as a division we want to be very clear in what we're doing and how we do it. the ride integrity system is ready to

go. we're linking in all the vendors so we have -- we're excited to get this system up and running. this is the program that all the payment plan vendors will link in and we'll have standard reports and this will save staff time so medallion user reports driver reports and eventually looking toward linking with the system out at at the airport the btm system the brown transportation management system so again the two systems will be talking to each other again trying to improve how we do business. we have a lot of pretty screen shots we'll go through quickly this is the front dashboard so when we log on, staff will be able to configure what pops up on that dashboard and each enforcement team member can focus on the items that they

are responsible for. this is a weigh bill what the weigh bill information will look like and we can just flip through. we're having a phased roll out and so we're going to have each module module by module be phased in so what we'll do is we're working on setting up our staff training for each particular module. and then this is at the end the driver details so again, that will be very important to track complaints and how our driver is doing. intelligent enforcement -- we're working to align existing enforcement efforts of the mta and broaden them. we're calling quarterly meetings with sfo and taxi enforcement team and sfpd we

really want to beef up our enforcement and we want to do it smarter so we want to get everybody talking to each other and there was one enforcement effort and the -- just want to read i thought it was very interesting. the cpuc went out with our taxi enforcement staff one night of enforcement yielded 7 total inspections and 6 violations and one no worker's comp insurance and vehicle not on the equipment list and five charter party carriers soliciting clients so again very interesting and this is data sent to us from cpuc enforcement staff. we also want to better integrate the taxi industry with the larger work of the mta and have had very good success we had

recently pointed a better market street cac and vision zero so really integrating taxis into what we do and our mission will help both partners and taxis are also taking the pledge for safe streets and supervisor tang we've reached out to her as well and want to integrate taxis into that blue print even stronger. working on developing the plan for a taxi task force. this is would be a standing committee and will report regularly to the mta board on what's going on in the taxi industry and there there will be a broader base and there's been similar taxi advisory committees in the past and that was probably needed at that time to go through the

medallion reform we're in a different situation now so looking to broaden the participation so we have a set of stakeholders that we want to ask to participate and working on developing the plan for moving that forward so we're excited about that and increase the process by which we do things in the taxi services. we're also increasing our again increasing transparency and increasing communication a a lot of enforcement happens at the mta level but it doesn't get out to the street there's 9000 drivers and 18 hundred medallion holders so we're working on a newsletter that we're going to send out calling it changing the narrative feeling we want to put a positive face forward and again let the industry know what's

happening at the sfmta level and quarterly out outreach and we've done one at sfo to hear directly from the drivers who may not want to come to a taxi town hall meeting and we're going out to them spending a few hours out there very interesting and helpful another setup on october 1st and also targeting the medallion holders and have an outreach with the medallion holders on october 29th working on driver recruitment and retention and partnering with workforce development they are guiding us through this process and mta taking the lead with their guidance and a full insulate a full slate of industry experts and we'll be moving that forward shortly and also partnering with city college to

offer free classes specifically targeted to taxi drivers so this is exciting for us and we're meeting with city college currently and there's a driver vision and dental benefits that's out on the street now in process and this is something we feel would be another benefit and mechanism to retain our drivers and the driver fund is that 3.8 million $3.8 million and and it grows by about 10 thousand per month so that's good, too. i realize this is a long presentation thank you for your patience and the para transit program has been a strong partner with us as i mentioned in in 2002 we had a freeze and i won't get into the details but that was recently lifted so all new para

transit eligible riders are offered, taxis and help shift some of the some some of the trips from the from the para transit site to the taxi site and so that's had some effect and we're also conducting targeted outreach for the para transit taxi riders and then our partner, the para the para the para transit broker recently took over the sf

access van program it was being run through a subcontract by mv transportation mv requested to pull out and they stepped up so we're looking for even more partnership and more ability and i worked under chris for many years and she had a really fun going away

>> which i think several here you presented in regular public comment. i do have a few questions which maybe will lead to discussion after we hear from the public but according to your presentation 60 percent of the fleet obviously some overlap what percentage of the fleet is not on an ap? and at the risk of showing where i'm coming from, why aren't they all on one of those aps and if they are not all on those aps mandated that they be on a similarly widespread ap we're in a situation of catch up here unfortunately and i think the public needs to know that there are these aps out there and the

public needs to know these response rates exist that's the way the cab industry is going to keep pace and serve san francisco i san franciscans and my first question why not unless it's a really good reason why aren't we mandated they all be on an ap or sufficiently large radio network back in the last generation of taxi service. >> thank you. >> well i think that's a great question and i have to say i don't know the answer to that right now i'm not sure we track it and maybe it's information i would get from the information clearly we we should be tracking it i think it's a smart idea to require it, mandate it, and as i said earlier everything is on the on the table we really want to move forward in a smart way and to the extent possible want regulations to reflect the new

reality and the ap is the new reality. >> i agree with that i thought it was the reality a long time ago i will politely express some frustration here i thought we had the same conversation i thought today we were going to get some proposal on how to shift the entire fleet or hear from leaders as to why that wouldn't work and i'm pleased because the numbers are higher than they were and we have all of these cabs at our service we have the biggest fleet we need to let the public the public know that we're not just fighting uber but trying to build a better cab service i realize i'm not asking a question anymore but i'd either like an explanation as to why

it's a bad idea to mandate everyone beyond an an ap preferable ly or come back in the very near future not wait another 6 months with some sort of regulation that will do that and maybe the answer is the the aps won't take certain cabs and maybe we should look if they should be cabs at all in the system i don't want to get too deep into this i will say i thought we were going to have a presentation today or discussion as to why it's a bad idea i understand you are new new to the position i don't fault you for the fact there has been transition i'll start with that question and preview it to the public and that's question number 1. question number 2, which we can save for later -- what degree are we doing as an agency to advertise

the increasing success of these aps and increasing response rates and we are making money off of these medallions i think we have a duty to promote and we just talked about the wonderful things you are doing for pedestrian safety maybe we can use our financial resources or advertising resources or both to let the public know that the taxi industry is catching up with these tmc's and i'm glad to hear about enforcement i'm a little disappointment that -- i would like to hear back on things that we could do about enforcement particularly traffic enforcement. as i've personally have discussed the idea of closing market street

to cars one of the things i've envisioned it would be open to licensed taxis and non licensed taxis. we have spear headed this project project and that's something i'd like to hear a little bit more about in detail. two more sets of questions. >> go ahead i think it's important for the public to know kind of where you are headed before we have public comment. >> financially am i correct that there have been no defaults on medallions? that's correct. and we have people that want to buy the medallions that we're selling? that's good news and keeps us in perspective and the final question i have -- we're

hearing from people with whom we've worked for years me personally, many people with whom i've worked for years that this is the number 1 threat to the industry and could cause the industry to either increase or fade not only be sad to the to the people that work in the industry but a disservice to the city and i don't see anything in the plan or presentation where by we're going to look and try to figure out why our residents prefer tmc's over taxi cabs and i think there's reasonable answers people think there's greater certainty or come faster or people think their cars are cleaner and so playing catch up is harder especially in the technology game but the reality is i don't know i know what people in