Streetsblog San Francisco

Expect to see twice as many pedicabs on the streets this weekend in San Francisco. If you're counting, that amounts to a modest addition of 15 bicycle taxis.

After several months of negotiations, a San Francisco staff committee comprised of transportation engineers, planners, police and the fire department has adopted a new policy on approving pedicab routes, a complete about-face from existing policy that encourages pedicabs on many more streets than before, provided they don't interfere with transit lines.

The previous pedicab rules, initiated in 1986 and revised in 2000, were a litany of prohibitions against the pedal-powered cabs, isolating their use to a tiny portion of the Embarcadero. In contrast, the new rules adopted by the Transportation Advisory Staff Committee (TASC) on January 28th begin with a preamble that couldn't have been better written by the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition:

It is in the interest of the City and TASC to facilitate new pedicab routes throughout the City and County of San Francisco. Pedicabs provide a convenient, emission and carbon-free alternative to private automobile use and advance the intent of the Transit First Policy and the General Plan of the City and County of San Francisco to provide priority to transportation modes other than the private automobile.

Under the new rules, rather than prohibit pedicabs, the city encourages their use on streets with wide curbside lanes and along any street striped with bicycle lanes in the Bicycle Plan network, which will grow significantly when the bicycle injunction is lifted later this year. Additionally, pedicab routes are to be approved on streets with low traffic volumes, streets with speed limits of 25 mph or less, and streets with a gradient of 8 percent or less.

The news couldn't be better for the new Golden Gate Pedicab company and its director, Justin Bruce, who moved to San Francisco from Boston in late 2008. Bruce, originally a driver for Boston Pedicab Company, never expected the lengthy process that has been required to do business in San Francisco.

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Among the many users of San Francisco's streets, pedicabs occupy a space somewhere between a bicycle and a motorized taxi cab, though their movements are restricted far beyond other modes, in part because pedicab owners don't have the budget to lobby city leaders and don't have an obvious constituency to advocate on their behalf. This could change as new pedicab businesses move to the city and push for their right to use the roadways for their enterprise.

San Francisco Pedicabs, the sole company operating pedal-powered liveries in the city since 1989, is about to be joined by Golden Gate Pedicabs, an offshoot of a company from Boston. Rather than resist the addition of a competitor, San Francisco Pedicabs owner Keith Saggers has been working with Golden Gate Pedicabs to negotiate the complicated permitting procedure with the SFPD, whose Chief Gascón has sole discretion over where the bicycle taxis may operate.

Saggers, whose company has a permit to do business exclusively along The Embarcadero between The Ferry Building and Fisherman's Wharf, hoped the addition of a new company and the growth of pedicabs in general would convince the city to revisit the pedicab rules, which were established in 1986 as Article 39 of the Police Code. He said the permitting procedure is a constant issue for him as his company has expanded to 15 cabs and as demand for greener transportation choices increases. His current permit limits his drivers to a route that doesn't connect to important downtown destinations like Union Square and the Moscone Convention Center. He also conceded that his drivers will occasionally take the risk of a ticket when customers request those destinations.

"Sometimes I think the routes are a stupid idea, sometimes I think they are good because they keep us off dangerous streets," said Saggers, who added that efforts to expand his permit to include a route to the Moscone Center had been met with resistance from the SFPD and the MTA at meetings of the Interdepartmental Staff Committee for Traffic and Transportation (ISCOTT), an interagency body that traditionally determines street closures.

According to a policy document adopted by ISCOTT in 2000 [PDF], there are a litany of reasons why new routes should not be approved, particularly in the downtown core, the logical place for pedicab business.  Permits are discouraged in general for routes that include transit or heavy traffic, unless those routes have a bike lane wide enough to fit a pedicab or if the vehicle lane is wide enough to comfortably fit a vehicle and a pedicab side-by-side.

When asked whether its policy should do more to promote pedicabs in San Francisco, the SFPD Officer Samson Chan said that the issue for his agency was whether or not the proposed new route "will mess up the flow of traffic."

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