In this city you've got to pay your bills, the city is expensive, you know, I'm not going
to keep beating my head against the wall doing the same work for less money.
I'm going to switch and do something where I can make some more money, it's not my fault
that the city decided to not regulate Uber, you know, it's not my fault that things are
the way they are, I just want to be able to make a living.
But now there is a new cheaper way to get from point A to point B.
A new smartphone app called Lyft connects people who want a taxi ride with people who
have a car and some free time.
They do it well and they do it for a good price.
It's starting to piss me off.
The city says the whole thing may be illegal.
They're operating as taxis without the regulations that taxis are required to undergo.
Humans have always struggled to get from one place to another.
In the past century, car services like taxis and limos have been federally subsidized for
the public.
More recently, transportation network companies or TNCs have gained popularity with apps that
connect drivers to passengers.
In order to separate themselves from the taxi industry, TNCs call their service ride-sharing.
We're going to come here and they're not going to have the thing I need.
So you have to buy mince for the Uber customers.
I used to buy the better tasting ones, but they would eat, oh these are spicy, you can't
eat like three or four of them before the ride is over.
My name is Jonah Deutschman.
I'm an Uber driver, a former taxi driver, and I was born and raised in San Francisco.
I've been in the transportation industry for about seven years.
Five years as a cab driver and almost two years as an Uber driver.
You can make more money for Uber.
I think my first check was like $1,700 for one week.
I think Uber is great.
I mean the other thing with Uber as well is that every time I order one, no matter the
time, I get it.
I get it within like five minutes.
So the convenience of Uber far outweighs trying to find a taxi anywhere.
People complain because you can't get a cab in San Francisco.
I was a complaint for years.
And it wasn't that there wasn't enough taxis, I feel like, they weren't being distributed
effectively, right?
So now it almost seems like kind of like a caveman thing to do, to go stand on the corner
and wave at a car that's passing you.
What I like about ride sharing is that I can call a ride when I'm inside and then go outside
and get into it immediately.
Good experiences, it's way better than taxi cabs.
Just easy to find, easy to get.
If there's not a law saying it's illegal in America, it's legal, right?
If there's not a law saying, you know, you can't do this, then you can.
And Uber took advantage of that.
It's an unfair competitive advantage to all the taxi drivers, town car and limo drivers
who do it the right way, you know, who get their licenses and pay for the insurance.
My name's John and I'm a San Francisco taxi driver.
I've been driving for Yellow Cab for about nine years.
You know, it's ups and downs and it's pros and cons.
Overall, I'd say that I like driving a cab.
Up until more lately, the reason why these apps are successful is because you do it and
then you don't tell your insurance company that you're doing it.
Like I was going to check out UberX and then I called my insurance company and they said
that they wouldn't cover my car if I'm doing it for UberX.
So I think it's a fairly well-known anecdote that the people who do lift and side car,
they don't tell their insurance companies that they're doing it.
I don't know to what degree of insurance fraud that is, but I've heard that that's insurance
fraud.
I just assume, and I might be completely wrong, that Uber has correct insurance or similar
insurance to taxis.
There's so many things I don't know about this world that should bother me that that's
just another thing that I don't really know about and hasn't bothered me yet.
So they found a legal loophole in the law and they called it ridesharing because in
California law, there's an exemption in the vehicle code.
If you're carpooling or in the law it's called ridesharing, then you don't have to have these
licenses and you don't have to have commercial insurance or anything like that.
And so that's how I believe, and a lot of people believe, they came up with the idea
that they're ridesharing.
It angers me more than it worries me because it's just such disregard for other people.
It just comes off as too much opportunism, you know?
In San Francisco, every taxi must display a medallion to certify its legality.
The California Public Utilities Commission also issues TCP numbers to limos and other
ground transportation businesses.
Other companies do not require either.
This is what makes the taxi legal.
It is worth, right now I believe $250,000, so here's what a quarter million dollars
looks like and that is what you have to have to own your own taxi.
I have no concern, anger, animosity whatsoever towards the drivers that have switched over
to UberX, but they did bother to get a TCP license from the state and they are carrying
the limousine commercial insurance.
It's the people who are bypassing those laws, those regulations.
That's what really upsets me.
I mean, truthfully, I don't think you should be driving around picking people up for profit
if you don't have commercial insurance.
I just don't see how that's legal.
The rideshare company Uber says it has deactivated the account of a man now facing charges in
the death of a young girl.
That driver, 57-year-old Syed Musafar of Union City, is now charged with vehicular manslaughter
and gross negligence.
People are dying.
A little girl died.
People are being injured while they are fiddling.
And their rules do not protect the public.
This is unconscionable, unconscionable.
What can the city do?
The city can do it all for life.
Barry Cornville, I'm president of the San Francisco Cab Drivers Association.
All these cars have personal plates, their personal vehicles, and they're relying on
their personal insurance in between the rides.
The TNC companies are saying that they'll provide coverage, wall, and drivers on a call
when they're going to get somebody a wall they have the passenger in the car.
What about the rest of the time?
Part of providing this service is making yourself available and driving around.
But these TNC companies are not ensuring the vehicles while they're between calls.
The taxicab is insured 100% of the time.
We're highly regulated.
We have to follow these rules.
They're servicing the same customers we do.
And this is a violation of the Equal Protections Amendments in the U.S. and the California
Constitution.
It's two groups of people providing the same service to the same people and under different
rules.
Cab companies, they play games with giving you a shift.
They don't want to just give you a week, a five-day shift.
They don't care if you get your cab, they really don't.
Uber is making 20%, right?
So they care if you get your car, they want you to get your car because they're making
a percentage.
The cab companies are leasing you a taxi and that's it.
They're making their money off the cab drivers.
I feel like it's kind of like, you know, in a way I'm selling out because I went to Uber
instead of kept driving a taxi.
In this city, you've got to pay your bills.
The city's expensive, you know, I'm not going to keep beating my head against the wall doing
the same work for less money.
I'm going to switch and do something where I can make some more money.
It's not my fault that the city decided to not regulate Uber.
You know, it's not my fault that things are the way they are.
I just want to be able to make a living.
There are definitely shortcomings in the taxi industry.
There are problems that affect the service.
I mean, there have been past studies saying that there's only a 50% success ratio in picking
up and servicing dispatch calls.
That's pretty bad.
So there definitely was a service gap and a need that had to be addressed.
I've never seen technology go backwards.
When technology is actually getting better, but the yellow cab computers have moved backwards.
I feel like they created the market for Uber.
You know, if they would have innovated a little bit or just basically done things to make
service a little bit better, then I don't think things would have turned out the same.
Transportation is just one example that shows peer-to-peer technology growth over the past
decade.
Unfortunately, these businesses often expand financial class order.
By allowing it to operate, we've created a two-tier system.
We have the people that have the money to take these TNCs, and the cabs of these are
quite picking up the rest of the fee.
It's one of those things that people don't realize what they got until it's gone.
When taxis are gone, there's going to be nobody to take people who don't have credit cards,
who don't have smartphones, aren't members of Facebook, the elderly, the disabled.
The TNCs don't serve any of these people.
The taxi industry carries hundreds of thousands of people every year under the power transit
program.
Every single business is responsible to serve every single resident.
Uber's taken all the gravy, basically.
Who's picking up the old lady at the grocery store?
When the cab companies go bankrupt, who's going to service the paratransit people?
Who's going to service the people in wheelchairs?
They're going to bankrupt an industry that serves a lower-end population, people that
really need, you know, people that don't have a car in San Francisco and need a ride from
the grocery store to the house.
Who's going to do that?
It's true that there are problems in the taxi industry that, as far as I can tell, they're
probably not going to go away.
So there is a need for some kind of other service to step in.
Well, they would have to be regulated the same way we are, and there would be no difference.
They would be taxed just like we are.
They'd be painted like we are.
They'd have the same rules, so there'd be no difference.
As of now, TNCs are so largely unregulated, but have been making their way in the cities
worldwide.
In the future, will urban transportation become class-segregated with fine cars for the well-off
and buses for the poor?
The answer may lie in the hands of the legislators.
Safe, prompt transportation should be everyone's right.
Something's got to change, though, you know, because sooner or later it's going to escalate
into something, you know, I don't want it to go tragic on anybody, but, you know, from
what I hear from other guys, you know, they're getting pretty hostile.
