Taxi drivers to get payouts as fund plan dropped

San Francisco’s taxi drivers, who have seen their earnings plummet in recent years as Uber and Lyft have taken off, will get small windfalls and have their annual registration fees paid for two years after a vote by the Municipal Transportation Agency’s Board of Directors on Tuesday.

The board voted to disburse about $4.7 million in a taxi-driver benefit fund created before the advent of Uber and Lyft by giving it back to the drivers instead of using it to mount an advertising campaign to persuade people to take cabs.

San Francisco’s 5,190 cabdrivers will receive one-time cash payouts of $421 to $916, depending on their tenure behind the wheel. For two years, they’ll also have their registration fees, roughly $100 a year, paid.

The Taxi Driver Fund was created in 2010, when demand for licenses to operate taxis, known as medallions, was high, and the MTA decided to sell what was once a hard-to-get license for $250,000. The agency steered some of that revenue into a fund to benefit taxi drivers, raising the possibility of providing health, dental or vision benefits.

Since then, however, the taxi industry has collapsed as mobilephone-based ride-hailing services have flooded the streets of San Francisco, offering generally cheaper rides. And the agency was never able to find any insurers willing to provide affordable benefits.

So the fund sat, and for the past year or so, MTA officials, drivers and taxi-company owners have debated how to spend the accumulated $4.7 million. An advisory panel thought the best approach would be to hire a public relations or marketing consultant to create a campaign to promote taxis, which are city-regulated, over Uber and Lyft, which are not.

But drivers, surveyed by the MTA, said they preferred to get the cash. The MTA taxi staff suggested the plan the board reluctantly approved Tuesday.

“This is so disappointing,” said Director Malcolm Heinicke before he voted for the payout plan. “It was a much grander idea when it started.”

About a dozen taxi drivers spoke to the board, some supporting the driver payouts as the fairest way to dispense the money. Others argued that a marketing effort, or some other way of promoting taxi use, would benefit drivers more in the long run.

Paying out the cash, said Mary McGuire, a veteran driver, seemed like surrendering.

“What this tells me is that you don’t believe that another medallion is going to be sold, that the industry is dead,” she said. “This is a funeral.”