A founder of the worker-owned, 16-vehicle Green Cab company, Mark Gruberg is in a tight spot. Mission Local reports that his business has been unable to find a new insurance policy from an SFMTA-approved company, and that Green Cab's previous insurer wouldn't renew its policy following two serious accidents. It's likely Green Cab will soon be out of business.
And, of course, Green Cab could be the first of many casualties in the San Francisco rideshare wars as passengers and drivers look increasingly to large tech companies to get around the city. Gruberg worries that other small taxi companies will face the same problem in coming months as more policies begin to expire.
Even the city's larger cab businesses like DeSoto Cab Co.'s 204-car operation have been in trouble: DeSoto has been "bleeding money," reports the Examiner. Apparently the company is mulling the option of killing its medallions and modeling itself on its ridesharing rivals.
San Francisco has about 1,900 authorized cabs, says the SF Business Times. To get the real lay of the land, members of the cab drivers' association claim to have collected license plates of more than 3,000 vehicles transporting passengers for services like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar. Taxis are, and have been for some time, the clear underdog.
To contextualize this all, you might want to watch this quick documentary below called Taxi 2.0, which tackles the issue here at home:
Taxi 2.0 from Jarod Taber on Vimeo.