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In the meantime, the David Smiths who used to ferry people around town in Crown Victorias and other cars with ample back seats are caught in the middle. The SFMTA declined to enforce taxi-related laws on rideshare apps until state regulators took over, while the fractured nature of the taxi industry failed to respond to customers desires, like tracking the car on a smartphone. While some veteran cabbies, the quintessential seen-it-all types, seem to be waiting out what they imagine to be Uber and Lyft’s inevitable implosion - neither company makes a consistent profit - it just seems to be a terrible time to make a living from behind the wheel.īut the rideshare revolution didn’t just happen to the city.
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The San Francisco Federal Credit Union has sued them over the devalued medallions, while on the other end, a group of drivers calling themselves the Taxi Coalition have filed suit over the agency’s allegedly botched attempt at medallion reform. Consequently, some 170 medallions have been foreclosed on - out of today’s total of 625 - and the SFMTA faces two major lawsuits. In 2019, taxis compete with roughly 6,000 additional ride-share vehicles clogging San Francisco’s streets during peak periods. “We suffer, and our families suffer, and people are having bad health issues,” Smith says. But even drivers without a medallion loan - those who obtained it from that now-defunct waiting list, or those who lease it from owners - say they’re working 10-plus hour days, six or seven times a week, to make up for low pay. Since 2010, medallions have plummeted in value, netting hundreds of dollars in fares per month when they once brought in thousands. Smith doesn’t have children, as many other drivers do, nor can he imagine supporting any. He’s considered defaulting on the loan, accepting the hit to his credit, and finding a minimum-wage job - which might be an improvement for the 44-year-old living with his father, also a cab driver. Smith often borrows money from friends and family to get through bad months with fewer customers, using the better months to pay it back. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency hasn’t sold a medallion since April 2016. Within a decade, taxis went from a vehicular near-monopoly to accounting for just one-twelfth of all trips generated by rideshare vehicles from companies like Uber and Lyft. Uber launched in San Francisco the same year the medallion sales program was piloted. However, that proved to be an unwise decision. At the behest of then-Mayor Gavin Newsom, San Francisco sold hundreds of medallions, conveniently bringing in about $64 million amid a recession and subsequent budget shortfall.
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Starting in 1978, drivers were awarded medallions at no cost - but only after sometimes waiting more than a decade for one to free up - until 2010, when the city started selling them at high prices, New York City-style. San Francisco didn’t always charge taxi drivers a quarter million dollars for an operating license, leased out to drivers by cab companies or by other individual drivers. “Do I just take the $100,000 loss and walk away, and let the credit union and MTA fight over it? Or do I hang in there and hope something happens?” “At best, it’s death by a thousand paper cuts,” says Smith, who still owes $150,000 to the San Francisco Federal Credit Union. As an independent cab driver of more than 20 years, he has to make $4,000 a month just to operate his cab and pay off a $250,000 medallion, the metal plate that signifies a taxi operates in the city legally. Average rents for a studio in San Francisco go for upward of $3,000, but that’s the least of David Smith’s worries.