Compotition

[WALTER BREWER]

San Diego's taxi service is managed by the principal mass transit agency.

 

Typically there is little true marketplace pricing.

 

Theses are the same issues involved with intoduction of automated transportation.

 

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/dec/08/taxi-drivers-gain-stronger-voice-mts-regulatory-bo/

 

Walt Brewer

[Jerry Roane]

Walt

A few votes in most situations that vote together can sway the entire group.  Most votes come up close to 50% so having two votes that will be identical is powerful.  Loading up a board with guaranteed votes is the way a slim majority can create a super-block vote to maintain control.  Since mankind in general wants power and control you have to look deeper into which slim majority is trying to hold on by adding these two guys.  

All that crap aside if they are now to be in power and they do not own a cab company, unless paid off, they can vote to allow high speed taxi service in San Diego.  If they vote their self-interest and they want to make more money, if they vote to build dual mode high speed taxi service they stand to make a killing.  Instead of being bogged down in endless traffic congestion they will be able to deliver their daily passenger load in a few minutes leaving the rest of the day to lobby for causes on the board or they could take that extra time to deliver more customers to their destination and generate more value.  In fact because their pay can now be spread across 10 times their previous efforts they could lower their taxi fare cheaper than driving a Lincoln Navigator to the grocery store.  It is high speed in the heart of the city that makes this possible for Hussein Nuur and Berhanu Lemma to improve their standard of living while taking hundreds of burdened Navigators off the road.  Not only would they take Navigators off the road but they would compete head to head with big box transit on price at the fare box.  Given some competition from high speed taxi service big box transit would die almost over night.  The others in the board would find their day job salaries hard to justify since no one would pay more to go so much slower.  Board jobs usually pay very well since they set their own compensation package.  In this scenario you wouldn't want to work in big box transit middle management.  The bus drivers can jump ship and be lease taxi drivers.  The board members just vote a bigger compensation package leaving the middle managers of big box transit to go be greeters at WalMart.   The human resources picture for the transition is not that great for the middle dudes but it is great for the ex-bus drivers and the board members.  The air pollution picture is significant;y better as 10% of Austins NOx comes belching out of Austin's bus black exhaust pipes so I would assume San Deigo has similar buses.  The energy picture is greatly improved when they park those diesel burning big box things in the bus barn.  The $8,000,000 burden of the fuel bill to the city is removed from the tax payers.  The economic impact of returning eight million dollars directly to the local economy has a multiplying effect creating much more economic activity than the direct savings.  This is the logic used to promote TOD but reversed back onto the tremendous waste for big box fuel.  The figure is extrapolated from another similar city since Google search took too long to get San Diego's figures for diesel burned up into the air.  

Jerry Roane 

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[WALTER BREWER]

It's good to have a few optimists around.

 

Here is my offer for a bet:

I'll personally pay your (economy) airfare to San Diego and back if within one year:

    You can con vince these taxi drivers to convert the rest into owners of the automated on demand high speed service company, and

   Convince MTS to stop expansion of planned bus and LRT lines now planned.

 

Remember you are taking their jobs away from all the driver's uinion, and reversong the ideoplgy of MTS which seem more to operate more mass transit lines than to provide productive cosrt-effective service.

 

BTW: San Diego bus exhaust's are getting less black. I believe about 50% have converted to CNG, and some hybrids are operating.

 

Walt Brewer

[Jerry Roane]

Walt

I can only deal with free markets.  Unions are monopolies and act like monopolies so what is left is only starting up a different union to counter the present union.  Lets say we create a discount union and double the pay of the new union drivers and halve their union dues.  Would that work in a union state?  Can you apply free enterprise to paying union dues?  If that can be done without coercion then I could present a case for getting paid twice what taxi drivers make now schlubbing for the union bosses in addition to the cab corporation.  I do not see how taxi drivers can support two management overheads the way it is now.  I understand how a union of workers could ask for fair compensation but union dues are just one more tax on their total potential income and pays the union board members who pick their own compensation package.    

I did a quick Internet fare estimate from the San Diego airport to downtown at $2 tip and a dollar a minute for a 13 minute trip that is $15.00 per customer and return trip and wait of say 60 minutes per fare.  Eight customers a day is $16 tip jar and $120 minus $50 fuel or so each day.  Income taxes on tips are zero but taxes on salary will be significant.  For the New Union instead of doing 8 customers a day you travel at 180 mph and carry 32 customers each going this 3.6 mile trip or 7.2 round trip costing the New Union driver $11.52 energy instead of $50.00 for the 8 fares earlier.  This requires the government allow TriTrack grid be built in the city with public use fees paying for the guideway.  The cars would be leased, bought, rented just like they are now probably in equal proportion to what they are now and energy would be purchased from Roane Inventions at a great price compared to gasoline and/or diesel.  

On the bet I doubt that the old union would want the New Union so I should not risk the plane ride cost.  It is an opportunity for all of San Diego to drastically reduce their mobility costs and give the children of San Deigo healthy air but taxi unions are certainly more important than either of these things.  ;-)

I did notice San Diego buses are more natural gas than diesel and my guessing I was half the cost of fuel in my post.  The problem is CNG is half the NOx of diesel before blue urine I mean blue fluid is sprayed into the exhaust stream.  Half of horrible is still pretty bad but it is a step in the correct direction.  Diesel still emits chunks of petrochemicals that are dangerous and have been documented to cause cancer in humans.  PV solar grid of course would have no carcinogens, no NOx and no particulate matter filling everyone's lungs with crap.  The hybrids are a joke for cost versus air pollution because instead of buying the gasoline hybrid they buy diesel hybrids countering any gains from hybridization.  The hybrids were sold with a lie in fuel usage and when you run the numbers the hybrids are a bust sadly.  Just because the Prius is a great car does not make a bus diesel hybrid clean or efficient.  Somehow in the San Diego transit budget they really missed the price of natural gas.  I contend that the gas owners shoot themselves in the foot by not keeping prices more stable.  The seller sets the price not the market counter to the belief.  Sellers need to be much smarter and they would sell more product and thus make more money total.  The budget surplus on natural gas for San Diego buses illustrates this strongly.  It would have reduced the air pollution more had the sellers been smarter in previous years.  

The MTS is just left out in the cold if you can take a full service limousine ride for less than their bus or choo choo.  They would never see it coming before it was too late when the agency is dissolved and those taxes returned to the city.  

Jerry Roane 

[WALTER BREWER]

My bet offer applies for your New Union.

 

But do I read it right th members are driving Tri-Tracks?

 

Despite its name, I'd think New Union to be a company owning a PRT system that demonstrated cutting cost per tip drastically, thus yielding great benefit to owners.

 

Like Henry Ford about in 1915 found the assembly line so much more eddicient he doubled worker's wages.

 

BTW: You probably noted there is an airpot bus that circulaes downtown, including LRT and Amtrak, and bus centers.

Fare is about$2 and is about as fast as a cab; one you have worked through its 15 min  spacing.

 

Apparently you have found an MTS financil report I may have been seeking. Does [t show at least ooverall operating costs?

[Jerry Roane]

Walt

I found the over all budget in the following:

"Paul Jablonski, who signed a five-and-a-half-year contract in 2008 and is promised annual 5 percent raises, will receive a $414,000 compensation package this calendar year, records show.

The pay package starts with a $279,300 base salary, but includes a series of retirement and other benefits that push him past the city manager of San Marcos, Paul Malone, who topped The Watchdog’s list for municipal administrator compensation at just over $408,000 a year.

The Metropolitan Transit System operates the San Diego Trolley and the city bus system. It also contracts to provide freight-train service in San Diego and Imperial counties.

Jablonski oversees a 2,300-member workforce and a budget of nearly $220 million. In addition to his salary and benefits, he gets 41 paid days off a year, which is among the lowest in the latest survey."

It would appear that it is great to be king.  King of transit that is.  

My competing union would be formed by drivers as they abandon their present union bosses.  They would drive TriTrack high speed dual mode cars.  My single data point of airport to downtown was purely a shot in the dark and it appears that the bus covers that route competing with a taxi ride.  I could have picked any other random route in the city but I assumed travelers might need to go downtown from the airport.   It would be a real union with dues that are half the price of the current union.  I made up the name New Union as a generic placeholder for whatever this new union wants to name itself.  It would not be a company but a registered legally protected union.  If the old union tries to force its way with legal action or government sanctioned strikes this union can fight that battle on a level playing field with the old union.  A company would just be shut down with a picket line and a strike with the usual intimidation.  

I found the actual budget PDF but now I can't find it again but I found the $220 million overall from above.  For one year's operating budget I can build the entire city with dual mode guideway and fire the guy with 41 paid days off each year.  That would be 1,200 miles of new guideway each year till the area is saturated with grid.  

I would be glad to come visit and pitch the idea but high level corruption at this outrageous salary out in the open is near impossible to beat down.  Imagine the hourly wage of the taxi driver and compare it to Mr. Jablonski's salary.  

Jerry Roane