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It's not just owners of private vehicles that are affected -- the Next Bus prediction system for the San Francisco MTA is now completely broken: https://www.sfmta.com/about-sf...

I've never seen that. Taxi cabs aren't some guy's Toyota with a Taxi sign; they always have custom paint jobs, branding painted right in, and integral electronics (the Taxi sign on top is wired in like police emergency lights, complete with a purpose-built instrument panel).

Look at Arrow Cab, the Yellow Cab Company, Yellow Cab's Prius variant, Union Cab, Nellis Cab Company (selling point: their Prius fleet), National Cab and Town Taxi, and so forth. This is common across Canada, Singapore, and Japan as well, and much of the rest of the world follows suit. Many of these are state or national brands.

I would never have guessed you had to *buy* a car tied to a certain brand of taxi to be a taxi driver. What do you do if you change taxi companies?

>> Taxi drivers do not currently need to be fingerprinted

Yes they do, at least in SF.

https://www.sfmta.com/services...

This is about Austin, not San Francisco.

>> Taxi drivers do not currently need to be fingerprinted

Yes they do, at least in SF.

https://www.sfmta.com/services...

Let's turn that back on you - is Uber violating the law where you live but no action has been taken against them? What does that make where you live by your own (very stupid) definition?

No, Uber, the B2C *ride sharing* negotiation service, which takes a cut from the *contractor* offering to *share* their car for $$$ via the Uber *negotiation service* is /NOT/ breaking the law in San Francisco.

Or San Francisco would be collecting $100 a pop for any Uber logo'ed car with passengers other than the driver, because that the fine for operating a gypsy cab in San Francisco.

Therefore, the city of San Francisco is /tacitly stating/ that Uber is /NOT/ a Taxi service.

And believe me, the traffic and parking enforcement people in San Francisco are greedy bastards; if they felt they could legally collect those fines -- they'd do it. An expired parking meter costs you $76 + fees (which are not cheap): https://www.sfmta.com/sites/de...

Google's bus system works better because it runs on a monster budget compared to public transit. Not because it's more clever or efficient. They're just willing to dump healthy sums of money into giving their employees a ride to work, because they have so much money they don't really know what to do with it (which is why they came up with Google X labs way back when - to find new things to do with the money).

Nice theory. Except SF Muni is funded to the tune of almost $1B, less than 25% of which comes from fares; the rest of what they consider "revenue" comes from (in order):

- 32.7% Parking & Traffic fees and fines
- 26.0% General Fund
- 13.6% Operating grants (this includes the one from Google)
- 2.6% Advertising, interest, and service fees
- 1.2% Charges for taxi services (medalians, maintaining the Taxi monopoly, etc.)

Source: http://www.sfmta.com/sites/def...

So let me call BS right there. There's no way in hell Google is dropping $1B worldwide for all their transit to and from Google, even if you include worldwide, all of them.

Technically, if they could be ~23% more efficient, then Muni would not have to charge fares at all, and they'd still have adequate "revenue" to cover their operating costs.

For public stop usage the SFMTA was aware of and already working toward a solution since late 2011:
    https://www.sfmta.com/projects-planning/projects/shuttle-partners-program/detail
It's all laid out pretty reasonably without having to get into a ticketing war or protests. These protesters are late to this issue, yet will probably claim credit when the mutli-year regulation update goes in place next year.

Of course, this is just a side issue for the bus protesters, it is more about the evictions. There are a lot of things driving that from zoning regulations to economics, so they pick a visible if somewhat poorly representative target.

In your case, it does seems like quite a traffic growth problem, but replacing the each bus with 30+ cars doesn't seem like a good solution.

I also follow a couple of other local government things and that's about it.

I have never seen a US city consider making public services free on a holiday

Maybe you should look harder?

http://totaltrafficla.com/2011/12/31/free-bus-train-rides-for-new-years-eve/21231

http://www.sfmta.com/cms/malerts/SFMuniNewYearsEve.htm

https://www.google.com/search?q=free+new+years+taxi

While true that San Francisco has cable cars pulled from underground, they also have DC electric traction streetcars, too. People likely think of either of these modes of transportation when hearing the word “trolley,” plus of course even old horse-drawn carriages.