The Phantom Cab Driver Phites Back. Ed Healy.

Fleet Taxis and Employees

The dawn of the New Year seems a good time for exercises in nostalgia and theory.

President of Desoto Cab, Jane Bolig, wants a return to the good old days when cab companies owned corporate permits. In a TaxiTownSF post,  Remembrance of Peak Times Past, she writes that San Francisco didn't need Peak Time permits back in the good old 60's because Old Yellow Cab owned its medallions and didn't have to pay the medallion holder the fees that cripple companies today.

"To pay them (the fees),"  Jane says, "they (the cab companies)  have to put out all their cabs every shift, every day of the week, every week of the year. That is why drivers fight for rides most Sunday mornings and passengers can’t find cabs any Friday night."

Old Yellow was apparently so profitable that they could "hold back unneeded cabs (sometimes equaling 40% of its fleet)" on slow days and put cabs out when it was busy. "It’s why we discuss peak time medallions in 2010," Jane says, "and why we didn’t in 1968."

The thrust of Jane's essay is that allowing cab companies to have fleet medallions would cure all our peak time problems.

Simple as that!

Unfortunately, Jane is leaving out parts of the equation.

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