How does a struggling local taxicab company compete with the cheap and unregulated competition of Uber and Lyft? Apparently, the same way that people these days pay unexpected medical bills, bail their own asses out of legal trouble, or finance their oontz-oontz Burning Man orgy carousels — with a crowdfunding campaign. We’ve already seen Yellow Cab declare Chapter 11 bankruptcy, but employee-owned taxi company Green Cab hopes to avoid that fate by cobbling together your donations of anywhere from $10 to $250.

The GoFundMe campaign Keep Green Cab Rolling was established Monday, it and it’s raised — well, a pretty modest $250 of its $30,000 goal in the two days since. The top rewards include some kind of tell-all book by taxi driver Brad Newsham, various amounts of coffee from Cafe Trieste, and “a package of fine organic green tea from SF's Japantown.”

“It’s pretty dire,” Green Cab co-founder Mark Gruberg told the Examiner, stating the obvious. Green Cab has had financial problems for years, with another significant loan payment coming due October 1. Their fleet of active Toyota Prius vehicles has dwindled down to seven, but still provides an important safety net transportation option for individuals without smartphones or credit cards, the disabled community, and people who ride at peak hours and can’t afford the scourge of surge pricing.

Subsidies, handouts, and bonuses may be the only way to prop the taxi industry through this transitional phase, which is why the SF Municipal Transit Agency voted Tuesday to disburse $4.7 million in direct cash payments to taxi drivers. That money had been sitting in a fund intended to give drivers health insurance and to mount a marketing campaign to compete Uber and Lyft, but drivers lobbied the SFMTA to simply write them checks. The some 5,200 San Francisco taxi drivers will get a check anywhere from $421 to $916 depending on their tenure, according to the Chronicle, and their registration fees will be waived for two years.

It’s a nice little windfall for taxi drivers, but it’s also a white flag of surrender for the notion that the city-regulated taxi industry can compete with its relatively unregulated rideshare competitors. “What this tells me is that you don’t believe that another medallion is going to be sold, that the industry is dead,” taxi driver Mary McGuire said at the meeting.

While she’s probably correct, you can’t help but wonder if the legacy taxi industry might receive another form of unexpected bailout — the total and complete collapse of Uber in an avalanche of bribery and corrupt practices charges, criminal charges, and getting sued into oblivion by Google.

Related: SF Cab Driver Releases Documentary On What It's Like To Compete With Uber And Lyft

Welcome to 2016, San Francisco. Yellow Cab Co-Op, our city's largest taxi company with 530 medallions, is filing for bankruptcy the Examiner reports. In a letter obtained by the paper, president of the independent company Pamela Martinez writes to shareholders that “We are in a midst of serious financial setbacks,” Namely, those setbacks are lawsuits, Uber, and Lyft.

In 1977, Yellow Cab grew out of bankruptcy in the first place — that of their owner. "The Cooperative was formed with the objective of putting the former employees of the bankrupt company back to work and the taxis back on the road," their website explains.

Now, Yellow Cab's former president Gillespie confirms that the company's Chapter 11 Bankruptcy filing is imminent — but that it's a last ditch effort to save the company, which will operate as usual in the meantime.

“In reality, we have the best color scheme there is in the world, we’ve got a lot of loyal customers, we still get a high volume of calls [just for] our color scheme on a daily basis,” Gillespie said.

Other cab companies, such as Flywheel Taxi (née DeSoto) have rebranded and reworked the system to maintain a semblance of competition in these Uber-take-all times. Flywheel says it's doing fine, just fine, okay?

Related: Lyft Scores $500 Million General Motors Investment, Plans Autonomous Cars

Business Insider reports that in Munich yesterday Uber CEO Travis Kalanick announced that Uber's revenue in San Francisco is far larger than that of the taxi industry here. What's more, it's possible that it's doubled since last year to $500 million.

It's common to question that much-prized $40 billion valuation of Uber's. How can one company have a larger market than taxis do? Kalanick says it happens to be the case right here by the Bay, with the whole taxi market here valued at just about $140 million per year.

Uber also announced that rides in San Francisco are growing three times per year, rides in New York are growing four times per year, and rides in London are growing five to six times per year.

But some, such as Fusion's Kevin Roose, were quick to question that $500 million figure.

Roughly a year ago, extrapolations from a leaked Uber presentation showed the company’s revenue at $212.4 million per year in San Francisco, per a previous Business Insider story. Roose and others like Gigaom are questioning whether Kalanick really meant revenue: does that $500 million all go to Uber, or have they not factored in their drivers?

We'll have to wait for clarification.

"The Taxi Files: #HailFail San Francisco Edition" read the subject line of a pre-packaged, HTML formatted email sent to SFist's inbox. The subject matter: San Francisco taxi drivers are murderous, poorly regulated sex-offenders (you can read the whole thing here). And the sender? Well, it wasn't all that transparent, but it sure looks like it came from a "managing director" of the PR agency that as recently as last week worked for Uber.

We get these types of emails sometimes, press releases built like op-eds or blog posts, typically from PR agencies that hope that overworked bloggers will just cut and paste their pablum and hit publish. Usually these emails are transparently marked as coming from a PR rep, but not this one: the sender was one Erin Pelton, aka "erin@taxifacts.com." But it wasn't too hard to figure out that Erin Pelton appears to work for Uber's PR agency, and that the Taxi Facts website makes no bones about being an anti-taxi website run, at least in part, by Uber.

According to Taxi Facts' about page:

We are a concerned group, fed up with the false information propagated by Big Taxi monopolies. Instead of innovating to improve their services, Big Taxi wants government and politicians to protect their profits and their monopolies - even though taxis are unreliable and unsafe for riders and unfair to drivers.

TaxiFacts.com is committed to providing sourced data to set the record straight about how Big Taxi operates. In an era of scare tactics and corporate intimidation, we believe the public deserves to know the truth about Big Taxi. Our members include - CALinnovates, Center for Traffic Safety and Technology, Heartland Technology Alliance, The Internet Association, TechFreedom, Texans for Economic Progress, Transportation Safety Coalition [Ed note: which is apparently the same thing as "Center for Traffic Safety and Technology" above], and Uber Technologies.

It looks like the Taxi Facts site has been in the works for a bit: the domain was registered in June of 2014, but it appears that things didn't get rolling on the site until September 15 of this year, a little more than ten days before the district attorneys of S.F. and L.A. teamed up to investigate Uber, Lyft, and Sidecar for a handful of practices that they assert are in violation of state law.

Uber's a funny company to cover, you guys. You send them an email asking a question, and they always respond with a canned quote. Follow-up questions (about things like why the driver who allegedly hit a passenger with a hammer might have taken such a crazy route) are almost always ignored, making straight answers an impossibility. Sometimes the email statements come from an Uber email address, and sometimes from Mercury, a national PR agency. Yes, the same PR agency at which Taxi Facts' Erin Pelton is a managing director.

But here's the thing: few of the assertions made in their angry email screed regarding cab drivers are misstatements of fact, and a lot of the issues are ones we've raised on this very site.

So why doesn't Uber feel comfortable just coming out and saying these things themselves? Why does the company choose to communicate with the media this way, with prepared statements that say nothing, and then through sketchy emails and second-party-seeming websites? Why can't you just be straight with us, Uber?

It makes you look like you have something to hide.

Previously: District Attorneys Call Uber, Lyft, And Sidecar 'A Continuing Threat To Consumers'

A recent estimate puts the dent that rideshare companies have put in the San Francisco taxi industry at 65 percent — and that just in the last fifteen months. Though there has been much lamenting about this, including this documentary short on the topic, taxi drivers haven't really known what to do besides give and become Uber or Lyft drivers themselves, if they didn't already own medallions or had the freedom to do so. As the Chron reports today, taxi drivers and cab companies have been quitting their whining and doing some constructive things to save what's left of their industry, lobbying Sacramento for greater regulation on ride-shares and convincing the MTA to lower operating fees on standard cabs.

Also, they're hoping for a crackdown on Uber/Lyft/Sidecar drivers using taxi-only lanes, and taxi stands, which are things that they pay for with their fees.

Three things the traditional taxi industry still doesn't have going for it, which account for why their numbers have been decimated by the more modern ride-share companies, still remain sticking points for consumers.

• 1) While traditional taxis are technically, legally, supposed to cover all neighborhoods (and the Chron piece mentions this as an important fact), we all know that they have not always done this. Denizens of the Richmond, Sunset, and Excelsior know all too well that cab drivers have passed them up in years past, and they're still bitter about it.
• 2) Everyone hates cash. The ease of hailing and payment that comes from the Uber and Lyft apps has now spoiled many of us to the point that fumbling for our wallets feels downright third-world. Not to mention the fact that traditional taxis are supposed to accept credit cards but you will still find drivers who get grumpy about this — or, worse, lie and tell you their credit-card machines are broken. The local taxi companies are catching on with the apps, only WAY too slowly. Per the Chron: "About 80 percent of the city’s cabs use the Flywheel app, while 60 percent use the Curb app," which both allow you to hail cabs and pay by a pre-stored credit card. But once you've found out how cheap UberX is by comparison, why would you use them?*
• 3) Cabs smell. The ride-share apps, particularly Uber, offer a sense of luxury and ease that the traditional taxi industry is going to have an impossibly tough time competing with.

Add to this the overall, notorious crankiness and unreliability of S.F. taxi drivers, and you had a perfect storm of ill will that led to the rise of ride-sharing — and to a general "you deserve this" attitude among the citizenry as we watch the taxi industry go down in flames.

This is not to say that we at SFist have no sympathy for the men and women who are seeing their livelihoods affected by this sea change, because we do. But some sour-grapes, eleventh-hour negotiations and piecemeal modernization efforts are going to do very little to save the taxi industry from itself.

The Chronicle, however, will keep having their back.

[Chron]

Previously: Video: The War Between Taxis And Ride-shares
DeSoto Cab Head Says S.F. Cab Industry Could Collapse In 18 Months

*This post has been corrected to show that you can pay by credit card through Flywheel and Curb, and that the taxi industry was not involved in legislation pertaining to insurance requirements for non-limo rideshare drivers.

Some San Francisco cabbies are now invoking a little-known article of the SF Municipal Transportation Code that allows them to charge a $100 vomit clean-up fee should one of their late-night drunken passengers have to yack in the backseat.

Hoodline noted one cab company's cartoonish, laminated sign referring to the law, which I suppose is meant as a deterrent to anyone who enters the cab feeling nauseated? But how many drunk, about-to-throw-up individuals do you know who focus long enough to read a sign?

Actually, it's probably more useful after the fact, when the cabbie has to argue with the drunk customer who owes him $100. And, sure, a clean-up fee seems only fair when a cab driver can't very well go pick up anyone else with puke all over the place.

The language of the ordinance says, "Drivers are authorized to collect a cleaning fee of up to $100 from any passenger who permanently stains the interior of the vehicle or who renders the vehicle temporarily unfit for for-hire passengers because of spillage of any substance such that the vehicle must be taken out of service and cleaned."

The cities of Austin and Chicago currently charge $100 clean-up fees for vomiting in cabs, and the party island of Key West, Florida recently instituted a similar $50 charge.

Flickr user Aaron Harmon noted a similar sign with a funny stick-figure illustration in another S.F. cab as far back as March 2013. But, given the ongoing war between traditional cabs and ride-share vehicles, perhaps it's best if cab drivers just whip out these signs as needed, rather than alienating all drunk passengers and implying they are all potential pukers.

[Hoodline]

A complaint that began on Twitter, in which an UberX customer claims he was verbally and physically assaulted by a driver in November, has now been escalated to the District Attorney's office. George Gascon announced Tuesday that he'd be bringing misdemeanor battery charges against the driver in question, as SF Weekly and others report.

The incident happened on November 24, and customer James Alva claimed he was called a "dirty Mexican faggot" by the driver, and then was struck several times when he tried to take a photo of the driver and his license plate. No initial arrest was made, but Uber contacted Alva to offer to refund him his $14 fare.

The driver, 28-year-old San Francisco resident Daveea Whitmire, despite having served prison time and having multiple felonies and misdemeanors on his record, appears to have passed UberX's allegedly stringent background check. How? That's unclear, but his driver account was deactivated in December after the assault incident came to light.

Whitmire was in fact on probation much of last year, and skipped out on a preliminary hearing in April for felony charge of buying cocaine with intent to resell, and a misdemeanor for resisting arrest. Just a few weeks before the November incident, Whitmire's probation officer had filed a petition to revoke his probation due to an unspecified violation.

Pando Daily originally broke this story in January, and Uber responded by transferring blame to Hirease, the company they contract with to do background checks.

They said,

This driver had a clean background check when he became an Uber partner in October. Uber maintains a zero tolerance policy for any alcohol and drug-related offenses on any background check with any partner nationwide, unlike, for example, the taxi industry in San Francisco, which permits drivers with DUIs and drug offenses.

Except that couldn't possibly be true, since his first felony charge, for marijuana, dated back to 2009, and he had the second one in 2012.

To be clear, the company isn't being charged in this case, only Whitmire. But somebody still needs to answer for how this guy slipped through.

[SF Business Times]
[SF Weekly]
[Pando Daily]

If you drink and drive tonight, you will probably kill someone. True words. Fortunately, Luxor Cab (care of Berg Injury Lawyers) will give you one free ride home (up to $35, per ride) from 10 p.m - 4 a.m. tonight. If you need one, please call 415-282-4141.

Also, as Catherine Bigelow pointed out, you can get a tow: "Triple AAA The Tipsy Tow program provides a free, one-way tow (up to 10 miles) for both Triple AAA members and non-members. 6 p.m.-6 a.m., March 17-18. Call: (800) 222-4357 and tell the operator you require a "Tipsy Tow.' "

Have fun. Stay safe. Don't walk home alone. Cheers.

It may surprise no one to learn that there are currently no enforceable dispatch performance standards in place for San Francisco taxis. How many times have you been told a taxi is on its way, only to wait on the sidewalk or awkwardly linger at the apartment of a one-night-stand for agonizingly long, only to realize that taxi dispatcher lied to you and there is, in fact, no ride coming? Walk to that bus stop, you fool.

As such, it's small wonder that rideshare services like Uber and Lyft have gained market share (a moving car icon on a map always trumps a human voice on the phone, apparently). But the SFMTA is taking action: in April, the transit agency authorized 750 new taxis to be introduced between 2012 and 2015. And today, they're taking up the issue of the notoriously spotty taxi dispatch services in a meeting that could establish minimum standards to improve the problem. The SFMTA powers that be are considering increasing the size of a dispatch service and the number of calls successfully served per day by the end of 2015, at which point competing rideshare technology will have produced flying cars and public hoverboard services.

While they figure that out, let's air our worst taxi experiences, shall we?

[Examiner]

Ridesharing service — scratch that — Transportation Network Company Uber will roll out their latest publicity stunt this weekend: As nostalgic former inhabitants of the 1980s, we are obligated to tell you this publicity stunt involves the DeLorean Motor Company's ill-fated/cult classic DMC-12.

In the past, Uber has offered on-demand ice cream trucks, singing telegrams, and mariachis. This time around, the company is quick to point out their drivers won't ferry you back through time to make out with your mom or get a leg up on your sports bookie, but they will give you a free ride (paid for by the fine folks at mega-conglomerate General Electric) anytime today between noon and 9 p.m. or between noon and 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. There are some (ahem) time constraints as well: rides can only be 15 minutes long and you'll have to ride all by your lonesome since the gull-winged two-seater doesn't fit anyone other than you and your driver.

The company assures everyone, most importantly the SFPD, that no one will be trying to hit 88 miles per hour on Market Street.

Meanwhile, the AT&T Park DeLorean Hovercraft guy is all, "Roads? Where we're going we don't need roads."

Note: If you, like us, opened the Uber app to look for an available DeLorean and didn't see the option, a rep for the company tells us that it will only appear when there's one available and that rides are "very limited."

[Uber]

Travelers looking to get home from San Francisco International Airport using ridesharing services like Lyft, Sidecar or Uber, might have a harder time finding rides starting right about now. As CBS5 reports, SFO officials are now making citizen arrests of drivers from the app-hailed services.

Like most airports, SFO takes a hardline stance on gypsy cabs and anyone picking up paying riders curbside or away from the cab stands is considered to be unlawfully trespassing. The airport issued cease and desist letters to the big three companies back in April, forcing drivers willing to make airport pickups to rethink their strategies. According to one Lyft driver who spoke with Valleywag, the company started warning drivers months ago to stop going to SFO -- presumably because that big pink mustache is such a dead giveaway. Sidecar, meanwhile, issued a memo basically telling drivers they are on their own if they get fined at the airport.

Meanwhile, taxi drivers from the San Francisco Cab Drivers Association and United Taxicab Workers of San Francisco held yet another midday protest at City Hall today. The drivers were (again) calling on city officials and regulators to declare ridesharing illegal. So, if you had a hard time finding a cab and were forced to turn to your iPhone instead, now you know why.

After first declaring ridesharing illegal, the California Public Utilities Commission backtracked earlier this year and agreed to look into ways to regulate the companies. A report is expected to come from the commission sometime this week.

Previously: Ridesharing Gets A Reprieve: PUC Agrees Uber & Lyft Are Both Legal For Now
All ridesharing coverage on SFist
[CBS5]
[Valleywag]
[KTVU]

Much ink has been spilled over the pros and cons of the ride-sharing services that have quickly become a fixture of city life. But not so much has been said about what happens when your friendly, neighborhood rando tries to pick you up (after he picks you up).

Valleywag has the full tale of a 10-minute Lyft ride turned multi-week adventure in the worst kind of text etiquette in the books. It all started when a woman's Lyft driver pulled over, parked, and asked for her number.

First mistake goes to the female Lyft user in question, who gave her number out even though she wasn't into it. (However, it's fair to note that most women feel uncomfortable flat-out dissing someone who asks for their number, and many will give it their number and figure they can always reconsider or ignore any future contact as the case arises. But I digress.)

After leaving her Lyft, the woman got a text from the driver, but she ignored it (this is pretty standard code for "I'm not interested"). That's when the real trouble started, and where the story devolves from creepy Lyft driver to total breakdown of human interaction.

From her side, there's a definite failure to be clear and just say, "I'm not interested" until the clueless and persistent driver was slinging such lines as: "You give a bad name to females." and "That's what you do. Flirt flirt. Cut it off. Very typical." The part that puts this one beyond the weirdy text exchanges we've all experienced, however? The sham cancer scare.

From the full exchange, which you should really check out:

"It's okay. Found out I had cancer today. Icky. I'm admittedly projecting. Sorry"

"God, I feel so bad. Never drank until now. Meeting my own death is very scary."

"False diagnosis. I'm ok."

We're not sure if this is a common problem in the ride-share space (although the Gawker piece quotes a Lyft drivers who says that stalking was a big problem when riders' number were visible to drivers), or rather a byproduct of up-front interactions being replaced by text messaging, which lends itself to vagueness, evasion, and creepy messages from lonely souls. Lyft, whose messaging revolves around a "friend to friend," fist-bump company vibe, hasn't commented on the incident.

On the bright side? The Lyft stalker in question has better spelling than most idle pickup texters we've encountered. Perhaps he'll be able to find love after all.

Lyft responds:

We’re sorry that this passenger had to deal with this situation - it’s not acceptable behavior for anyone in the Lyft community. The Lyft team takes trust and safety matters such as this very seriously. Our screening process includes a criminal background check that is more strict than what is required for California limo and taxi drivers. Additionally, to protect personal identity, Lyft uses a third-party service that masks both driver and passenger phone numbers. Any reports of inappropriate driver conduct are investigated and appropriate actions are taken. Passengers are able to leave feedback immediately following a ride using the app and drivers’ accounts with low ratings are disabled. While the post was anonymous, we have a support case that matches both timing and story details, and that driver’s account was disabled.

[Valleywag]

Yet another reason to thank the universe for (decent) ride sharing. On Sunday morning, a cabbie turned into the Hulk after a passenger failed to give the customary tip. Strangulation ensued.

"The taxi driver had taken a 37-year-old man to the area of Waller Street and Central Avenue around 1 a.m. Sunday and the victim asked for his change back, leaving no tip for the cabbie," according to SF Appeal. "An argument ensued and the passenger tried to flee but the driver caught up to him and began choking him."

The victim described his attacker/chauffer as a white, balding man, 30-40 y/o with a muscular build and sporting a polo shirt and jeans. The cab company couldn't be identified, though the taxi in question was "white with red lettering." (Make your best guess in the comments.)

Sunday's taxi turmoil asks the obvious: is it ever okay to not tip your taxi driver? The answer is: yes. Now, we tip $3. Too much at times, we know, but we feel compelled to overtip, even if that does mean a traffic-heavy ride from South Park to Upper Haight comes to $20. It always makes the cabbie happy and, possibly, brings one good karma. HOWEVER, we tip less for obvious meth use and/or constant chatter about The Way Things Are These Days. No tip goes to cabbies who use ethnic or homophobic slurs.

Plus, with ride share you decide on the tip amount (if any) after the ride ends and your driver pulls away. No fuss and/or muss.

Something to note: some of those ride-share drivers can be equally sketchy.