Seyum Asrat doesn’t kid himself. He knows the taxi industry is becoming extinct.
Since the burgeoning of ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft, taxi drivers across the nation have struggled to maintain the business and lifestyle they were accustomed to, especially those who rely heavily on lucrative airline-passenger fares.
The impact has been particularly hard felt at Norman Y. San Jose International Airport, where the number of arriving passengers seeking a taxi ride has declined by three-fold over the past five years — forcing the number of taxi drivers to drop by more than half.
Asrat, who immigrated from Ethiopia to San Jose in 1996, has spent the past 24 years working long hours, driving miles upon miles and speaking out against unfair conditions. Now he and about 140 others are hanging on by a string.
“Most of our people drive until we die — until our eyes fail or something like that,” Asrat said in a recent interview.
For more than a decade, he and fellow taxi drivers who live and work in one of the most expensive areas in the nation have had to deal with an extra burden that no other ride-hailing or taxi drivers in the region face.
At most airports, both ride-hailing and taxi drivers are required to pay “trip fees” — a charge of a few dollars for each ride they start from the airport — that go toward funding various maintenance and operations on the airport grounds. At San Francisco International Airport, a portion of those fees pay to operate a team of dispatchers who connect passengers with a taxi cab waiting in a staging area. At Oakland International Airport, the city helps to subsidize a similar operation.
But at Mineta San Jose, in addition to the trip fees, taxi drivers have had to pay hundreds of dollars out of their paycheck every month to fund the airport’s nonreservation taxicab dispatch operation.
And as the number of trips from the airport has dropped and taxi drivers have fled, the monthly operating fees per driver have risen exponentially — pushing the city’s taxi drivers even closer to the edge of extinction and forcing many to work longer hours just to recoup the losses. Asrat, for instance, went from working about 50 hours to 85 hours a week so he could maintain his income level.
Taxi San Jose, a nonprofit started by independent taxi drivers and small-company operators over what they considered unfair working conditions at other companies, has provided the on-demand dispatch services at the airport since 2005.
While some taxi companies are commissioned by nonprofits and Santa Clara County to provide certain transportation services to individuals in need, picking up arriving passengers from the airport — particularly international travelers and elderly travelers — is still the largest revenue stream for San Jose taxi drivers.
As Asrat sums it up, taxi drivers “never miss our airport day.”
When the city and Taxi San Jose entered into an initial agreement for on-demand operations in 2005, the airport limited the maximum number of annual taxi permits to 300 drivers and required that each one only come to the airport every other day.
But since the ride-hail companies popped up, the number of taxi drivers permitted by the airport has dropped from 300 to 140, and the number of taxi trips from the airport has dropped from 30,000 a month to 10,000.
To keep the nonprofit and on-demand dispatch operations afloat, the nonprofit slightly reduced its hours of operation and looked for ways to trim its budget, such as switching over to cheaper dispatching technology. But eventually, drivers were required to help pick up the extra slack — now contributing $330 a month instead of $240 from their paychecks.
And that’s not the only part of their salary that goes toward airport operations. For each passenger they pick up from the airport, about $3.88 goes back to the airport in the form of a trip fee.
Taxi drivers have spent the past few months lobbying the city to use those fees as San Francisco and Oakland do — to help run the dispatch center.
“San Jose is not a poor city as far as I’m concerned,” Asrat said. “It should be able to do like San Francisco and Oakland and just return those fees.
“We’re not asking for a subsidy. We’re just asking to let those fees come back to us. Whatever is left we can use to run the dispatch center.”
As the number of permitted taxi drivers declined by half, Taxi San Jose went from gathering more than $99,000 per month to just below $46,000. And according to the nonprofit, its expenses are about $55,000 a month.
Offering the nonprofit and its taxi drivers a lifeline for the first time in nearly 15 years, the City Council earlier this month agreed to chip in $10,000 a month so the nonprofit can continue operating until the agreement ends in January 2021.
“The on-the-ground transportation providers each contribute to the success of the airport, and even while transportation companies like Uber and Lyft are proliferating, the on-the-ground transportation option of a taxi, I think, needs to be in place to provide full service to folks,” Councilmember Maya Esparza said during the council meeting.
But the remedy is only temporary, and the state of the 140 drivers currently serving the airport remains to be seen.
The agreement gives the city the ability to break the deal before January 2021 if it decides to use a new ground transportation dispatching model, which airport and city staff currently are exploring.
The airport plans to publish a request for proposals within six months, but officials declined to say what a new ground transportation model might entail. Despite the ambiguity, airport officials are adamant that taxi services will still play an integral role at the airport — at least for now.
“Taxi services in an efficient and effective manner is important to the passengers arriving to the Airport without prearranged transportation,” John Aiken, San Jose’s director of aviation, said in a statement. “Some travelers prefer to take a taxi or may not have the digital capability to book a rideshare company. Many of our international travelers look for a walk-up taxi style service when arriving to (San Jose International Airport).”