taxis ride share and more transportation issues with a guy who knows it all dick falk i'm very right here on public exposure dick welcome back thank you have either i know it all or i could fake it all well let's let's talk about some things that we know that you know a column in crosscut and it was memo to cab companies it's all about customer service what you mean it's real simple we're seeing a sea change in how we deliver individual rides to people on up on a random basis in the sense of a schedule rides and what happened is the cap companies for years had a virtual monopoly on that service and some people figured out how to use your smartphone apps on the one hand  people's ability to buy cars and the desire to make so little extra money if they weren't liftin exactly what they did was they simply realized that the services that the cap companies provided was so extraordinarily bad it was it was not just not good it was actually almost aggressively bad and they did it because the cab companies do a service based on the old style which is you provide a ride and and we take your you provide write take money and then they don't have any other thought to that except that and then it's a monopoly so they don't have to worry about service and just over the years the service got worse and worse and worse you know but it's  monopoly granted to them by city i r t exactly exactly because nobody knew how to do it otherwise if you we tried in the early eighty's to simply unregulated cabs we had several hundred more cabs appear and the service didn't get any better because they still had the basic service model the basic service model is not what people think as a cab driver i'm renting the cab from the physical ca from the cap company ok so let's make sure that we get right it's really very right for everybody this is out of your own experience because you're a cab driver exact time except under the old system right and this isn't under the table this is right we're pretty can see it people think that the cab company is getting a percentage of the ride not so at all what they are getting is simply the rent for the car they don't care what you do what kind of service you provide or even if you provide service we had people out there doing some very strange things with caps some of not illegal but they they didn't the cab company didn't care as long as you paid the rent for the cab so they began to be less and less they had absolutely no concern about the service they actually in the early or late seventies when i started driving they didn't want to know what you were doing so the burden of requiring service or a good ride was either upon the consumer or upon the government who was regulating know that the there were good drivers there were surprisingly good drivers i drove for a outfit called red top and we hired nothing but people that like to give good service and people would wait two hours for us so then how come there's better because most people don't here red top was a very small company with only thirty cabs i think out of the two hundred fifty or so that were operating in the city but i think the cabs right now i mean let's take the light rail for example that we're spending a bazillion dollars on whether you like it or whether  not we've got it i think it's too bizarre that but if we don't if we want to take it to the airport we still have like a healthy walk when we get there's about a thousand feet is it is it accurate to say that the cab driver lobby was the one that kept light rail from getting close enough to the airport like it is in every other airport that you know about no i think that what they did not actually want to go to the airport because they want the parking money from the cars they have to drive to the airport in other words so the airport authority seattle wanted that driving that parking concession i think that's what actually kept the light rail out of the terminal all right so my mistake my bil don't know it's just a different approach but it's still it's still very very bad call  a terrible terrible but seriously though how is it that these group of cab companies have a monopoly on this kind of service because we didn't see any other way of doing it the city didn't see it and then what happened was in the sixty's a company out called great top out in ballard realized that they were doing all this paperwork every day figuring out percentages and all that and they came up with what is called in the cabin history nationwide is called the seattle system and what they said was we don't care as long as you give us the rent for the cab we don't care what you did so there were nights when i took him several hundred dollars there were nights when i took in less than what i owed for the cabs rent that night it was just a series of really bad bad karma rides and all of a sudden you're looking at you're paying for the privilege of driving so how much as a driver pay for a source two dollars a shift when i was there so two shifts a day shift night shift one hundred twenty in  and they would let you drive as much as you wanted to get here you on the radio can they still do that now i don't know i don't think so so is it is that what it is today at sixty dollars i'm not sure it's been a while since i'm and so in the in the cab company's interest then running charge right to the cabs pay for the insurance or do the guessers they pay for the insurance to dispatch whatever advertising the phone system at things now what's happening is the better cab drivers started getting their own cell phones pretty soon they didn't need them there were  cab drivers who used to keep a list of every call and after a few months you could figure out a route where you'd pick up from this company you would pick up their books they take them over the c p a every morning and they would go to him and say listen i'm going to do it my private car and because i'm not paying five thousand dollars a year in insurance i'm not paying for the dispatcher and all that stuff i can give i can cut my rates in half because what's the amount of money what's the difference in the right share services for the wives or service is first thing it's you calling the dispatcher who calls the closest car available and that's very key they don't call the the car that became available first in that area which is what the they had to be fair to their drivers exactly i thought but the but what they've decided is there's going to be enough business that we're simply going to go with the closest person to that to that call and then the second thing they do is  they charge more so they can demand better service from there or better better behavior from there that are on regulated they're unregulated and the problem is mostly insurance  you hear various stories but a lot of them are under insured so if they get into a very bad accident it can be bad you can you can you can suffer a lot yeah but you know what there's an article from a few months ago and we're going to get it up on the screen that talked about i think it's the company this is not a small company no no temple hundred fifty seven million dollars is what they raised and i think several of them are based from car companies i know that this car to go which is a different matter but that's that's mercedes so what's the issue here then i mean why is it though other picture let me tell you what it is it's real simple it's what we're seeing in a lot of different industries suddenly you have the computerisation of the business so you have both the streamlining you you have you have fewer people involved quicker and everything else so like bookstores i mean should the city council come in and subsidize bookstores or say no no amazon no no e bay books you know we've got to protect these little booksellers  or the grocery stores from amazon fresh or any thing else you want to talk about and it's kind of interesting that all our nordstrom from amazon yeah yeah and what course some of these people are realizing is of the marry the two together they have a brick and mortar and they have a online selling system and it seems to work there's are called a paper about that so does the right business the bigger question is should the city council be deciding winners and losers on this on this brave new world of the city council does have a an obligation to protect these the safety you know of the citizens absolutely and so by it seems to me by regulating from a safety programs was driving in san francisco and hit somebody while he was not actually carrying anybody he hit a pedestrian and he was not insured he was insured if he was carrying somebody but he was not insured if he was not why can't they just put a q r code that in the that windshield of the car that shows what the insurance is that see that anyone's heart that's one simple search and even simpler system is simply to raise the gas prices by twenty five cents and you automatically buy insurance when you buy gas day or three hundred sixty five dollars and largely dip doesn't matter on how many miles you drive and so what are your biggest cost in transportation you cannot alter by by cutting back your transportation by walking to work or home whatever it might do well there's there's going to be an issue on the ballot here in seattle and it looks like in august over put up what two hundred and two hundred thousand dollars overnight yeah i mean just wrote a check they  your right this is not a mom and pop operation and this is not taxes because taxes never do they provide better service absolutely no question about it so then isn't it and city councils interest to have again its citizens have the best service possible no because there are people who also want cheap service so there might be somebody who says listen i don't care that i have to wait a half hour for a cab i want i can't afford to birth rates so i think what you know again it's a question is whether you play winner or loser or referee in the in the marketplace of the commentators here saying the city council should not choose nordstrom over walmart or wal mart over nordstrom essentially  and more i mean i would like to see but for example we have a rule that your cab can't be older than about seven years old really down i mean i don't know that i've seen one recently that was that was that was that young but so is the issue that's going to be on the ballot customer service no i think it's going to be the question of whether you whether you play referee or not ok so i tell you what let's let's hold that issue for now because it seems like the public are going to be able to  i don't hear a single word about it is light rail helping our transportation modes here an area that all well hardly at all i mean there it's pretty good if you're a businessperson going down to the airport with a single briefcase in your hand and other than that and then young people but other than that it is a really not a very efficient system you can only put sixty people in those cars at a time and so  cars if you have more and more demand for the service no but your station is a certain size and you can't you just can't have it hanging on actually it's not the station it's the stations on the ground when you're a fellow if there are too long then they hang into the intersection light rail is called that not because it is ways like those cars weigh a hundred thousand pounds apiece it is because they have a light capacity that's where the word light rail comes from so it's a light capacity rail so in other words it can literally by definition never solve your problem and it probably causes as many problems as it solves by stopping people in rainier balli from crossing the valley it has more stop lights and all that just like the south lake union street car makes a stop twice as often on merger and that can only hold about thirty people what we've got now we've got more issues coming up yeah well we've got more issues coming up because it's all about transportation we've got this ballot issue that's that's going to be on in august that we've already talked about that's the one with regard to right share right we have another ballot issue that is before us as we speak right and that's about more funding for metro for a metro their own analysis shows that their sales taxes revenues are going to go up substantially in the next few years so if their revenues are going to go up substantially is that because more people are taking the bus now the recession is simply not of the sales tax revenue not know either i say see the fair the problem is the fares are only collecting about twenty five percent of cost so actually as they get more riders it actually costs them more tax money to operate the busses will run amok i mean again help me understand it ok if you're only if your two dollars and fifty cents is only covering actually a ten dollar ride and you get more people even as you get more fare revenue you actually generate more demand for more spending to supply the the ride so you have to go out and hire new bus busses you have to buy new buses you have to hire new drivers you have to get more supervisors you have to have another dispatcher from a financial standpoint we're better off shutting it down no from a financial standpoint you have better keeping it just right at capacity you you actually don't want to go beyond capacity and that's one reason why for example they are starting  the the ride the rapid ride part of that is to force people to transfer and ballard to downtown they come down to the bridge and they have to transfer every study shows that you lose sixty percent of your  ridership when you force them to transfer that metro has had for twenty five or thirty years one one seat per ride and the words you get on the bus here and you're going here and you're going to stay on that bus the whole way that's actually a good plan because when you do the transfer people go i hate this i don't like standing in the rain the second time i missed the bus occasionally i i did this in the university i rode the bus to campus parkway which is i know it's not you and so way this are set up they don't have communications between the buses you're going to ask us for more money you think i'm going to vote for you after you laughed at me for missing the bus what are you thinking what in the world are you think well that's the that's my question can this bus system be saved has to be and not for the reason everybody thinks why does it have to reason why it is i've recently been doing some shifts at safeco field i've paid ten bucks an hour now if i paid the entire fare from my house down to the on the bus i would work two hours to be paid for for eight other words my bus ride to work would cost me two of my eight hours where you think i would come down to work if i was being paid if i was having to cost twenty dollars to come to work there's no way so what the what happens is d s a and other big employers tell the government you must subsidize and keep low transit cost and this has been going on since one thousand nine hundred miss prall the cars that's why we're willing to subsidize the reason why we subsidize is so that you're willing to keep your wages low work for low wages so or i should this pass or should it not it's a definite up past the metro you're talking about metros and chris first thing they don't need it secondly several years ago when we put on the twenty dollar tab they told us where they were going to increase the number of of ours they did not increase the number of hours by as much as they said they would not even close about fifty percent so if we keep voting for the levees that turned out not deliver what they promise we're just suckers and not only that but it's also your i know you know your hundred fifty thousand dollar for ari is going to pay the same sixty dollar car tab that i am with my thousand dollar car care of that and sales tax it's again another sales tax increase is just more income in inequity how can we demand fifteen dollars an hour minimum wage when we're going after the poor with the most progressive and they say well it's because we bust there is no other way of doing it the legislature says but at some point we should just say no we simply cannot tax the poor anymore it doesn't work for one thing i'm hearing you all right let's go on to another issue waterfront wishing an architect has come up with a really interesting swimming pool and things down i mean you know you're laughing but it's a really nice picture and we're going to get this up on the screen and my my question is is that from a transportation standpoint is there a possibility of being enough people that can go there to be able to make this work  for one thing as somebody pointed out all the pictures are taken on a nice sunny day with people walking around in the nice sunny broad sunshine and things like that i would also like to see us reconnect with the waterfront at a more working class way rather than an entertainment  what i would like to see at pier sixty which is the one pier north of the queer where we used to have the concerts on the pier i would like to see us have a huge fresh seafood market there where you would buy directly from the boats and no other way then we would not bring in fish from alaska we would not bring in lobsters from maine these would be local fishermen working in puget sound working maybe out on the coast and we would have restaurants starting with simple fish and chips to great sushi to really fine elegant white tablecloth who already have it not in one place and not directly off the boats there is no way they could justify eight our fish and chips if they're buying it fishermen are getting less than a dollar a pound for their fish and are selling it wholesale and yet we're at the market it's five and six dollars a pound we could go down or you can go down underneath the first avenue south bridge for the native americans in july and august and buy salmon for as little as a dollar a pound and most of time two or three dollars a pound we can have a thing where you have a nitrogen freezer you freeze it it's as fresh as when you tak home and thought we could have a special shop there to teach you how to cook fish better we can have a spice shop i imagine an entire huge like the fulton street fish market used to be and in new york city well we have all sorts of other transportation issues but it really comes down to this the viaduct cracks signal a state race against time bertha to get moving again let's talk about that the viaduct is coming down one way or another according to this article and bertha is the thing that's going to get us there right know it stuck it's stuck and it appears to be a major sort of significant inbred problem and in the sense that this is not a tooth that fell off or something of that sort this is a design in the seal that less than a tenth of the way in started to accept dirt and grit and other things into that seal and cause it to cease what we should do but here's the question i have the drills this is bertha's deep trouble started in japan it started from the design stage apparently they didn't even test the the thing when they found out there was a problem they fixed fixed it and then they didn't it this is this this is a cultural thing and whoever's building this but but it's worse than that what they're going to do is they're going to dig a huge pit and they're going to pull a machine out and fixing the problem is  first thing why didn't they design it so that you could fix the thing from both sides in a very small area secondly what are you going to do when you're underneath a building and this machine is stuck the third thing is your headline there divide a crack so we're not even underneath the viaduct and we're settling it's settling only four tenths of an inch the problem is this viaduct can settle because all you're doing is running a car over  but what are you going to do when you're underneath a major building and it's all and finally we're going to go within two hundred feet or so of the federal building they have already sent us a letter saying we are very nervous about this you got to remember when they built the railroad tunnel it by nine hundred five they had to read jet really do build the foundations on the library which is where the current library is they had to jack up the building and rebuild the foundations and it was three hundred sixty feet above the tunnel build due diligence they were going to dig this tunnel no matter what the good news is that if we stop this project right now we're still under warranty we virtually have to pay nothing i mean relatively speaking we have to pay nothing we should do this so do we have those for those in your audience who are too young to remember this in the late sixty's we were going to build five simultaneously build five nuclear power plants and when we decided to pull the plug we had the largest bond default in the history of the united states maybe in the world and they told us oh my god this will ruin our rating we can never go back in the state of washington or any entity within the state five years later washington power supply goes back to wall street and they had not to pay one penalty on their interest rates this will be viewed as the wise thing to do once it's done who's going to do it it should be admiral ed murray could declare that one of the most interesting things is we have a lot of power to do things in the name of public health ron sims on executive fee it ordered us to have a bicycle helmet law because the kids that were crashing on their bikes with out a helmet created a public health hazard and he ordered them to put a thing on the you think that's going to happen no no is there anybody else the governor could but he won't do it we've got fifteen seconds left the traffic and the major traffic solution here is what smart cars smart cars smart cars that don't get into actions accidents and breakdowns because sixty percent of your congestion when they don't get into accidents you're going to see a lot of the school all right so the next time they focus areas on public exposure we're going to be talking smart cars we'll see you next time right here take care