The plan to lure more taxis onto its platform could soon take another big step.
A video presentation by the city's transportation agency was viewed as four people familiar with the matter said that the company is close to completing an agreement with a San Francisco partner.
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency's board of directors will vote on changes to the pilot program on April 5. The city's director of transportation would need to authorize it, paving the way for Flywheel, which operates an app used by hundreds of taxi drivers in San Francisco across several taxi companies to accept rides.
The agreement would mark a departure from years of fighting between the two groups, after a similar partnership between the two groups in New York City was announced last week. The partnership in San Francisco could begin as soon as May if approved by regulators.
The taxi industry has been called corrupt and greedy, and a San Francisco taxi company once sued the company in federal court for predatory pricing practices. Some taxi drivers are against a partnership because they think it will make it harder for customers to get affordable rides.
San Francisco, the hometown of the ride-sharing company, has resisted its business at times. California's proposition 22, which gave gig workers some limited benefits but prohibited them from being considered full employees, was supported by the companies that use them. San Francisco was one of the few counties where a majority of voters opposed the measure.
In the last few years, the company has struck partnerships with taxi firms outside the United States. The company said in February that it had added 122,000 taxis.
The taxi industry lost customers to ride-sharing services before the Pandemic. The number of taxis in operation fell from 1,300 to 400 during the H1N1, but recovered to 600 by the end of the year. Taxi drivers would have access to a larger pool of riders if they team up with the ride-sharing service.
San Francisco approved a test program last year that would allow passengers who ordered a taxi using an app to receive a guaranteed upfront cost. The goal was to help taxi drivers earn more money, in part by counteracting a phenomenon called meter anxiety, the idea that the unease of watching a ride's cost increase in real time on a taxi meter causes riders to cancel a trip or avoid calling a taxi. The upfront cost had to be the same as the trip's cost.
If San Francisco approves third-party dispatch services, the upfront cost of getting a taxi through the app will not be required. That means they could charge the same price as a typical car ride, which is often cheaper than a taxi ride.
Some taxi drivers in San Francisco are worried that they will be offered cheap rides that will only earn them a few dollars. Some worry that surge pricing could make it harder for low-income taxi customers to get rides.
Evelyn Engel is an executive board member at the San Francisco Taxi Workers Alliance. She said that she and other taxi drivers had heard about the pilot program.
Taxi drivers are not going to even get paid a per-ride fare that allows for a dignified living because they are not on the platform.
Muwaffaq Mustafa, who has been a taxi driver for decades and now runs operations for Flywheel Taxi, said he thought the partnership between the two companies would benefit taxi drivers and help save the industry. He said that the slightly cheaper rides would be offset by greater demand.
If this deal goes through, we will make up for all the years that have been down.
George Lama, a taxi driver in San Francisco for 20 years, said the partnership was needed because passengers now completely ignore taxis. He waits outside hotels in a line of cab drivers to pick up passengers, but they order ride-sharing services instead.
Mr. Lama said that no one was looking at them because they were conditioned to think that Uber was quicker.
In December, Hansu Kim, the president and a co-owner of Flywheel, told a panel at a transportation regulators conference that the taxi industry's approach to technology was likedinosaurs.
Mr. Kim said in the video that if we don't co-opt this technology as a standard, we will be marginalized.
Although it said it had seen driver numbers rebound in recent months after many left during the height of the epidemic, many drivers still complain of low earnings and some have quit the platform.
The Municipal Transportation Agency says taxi drivers will benefit.
If taxi drivers see more money through the partnership, that could encourage them to operate taxis instead. Some taxi drivers are against the merger.
He said that his morals, ethics and principles wouldn't allow him to be part of that.
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