Taxi Upfront Fare Pilot – First Quarter Report

Dear Taxi Industry Members,

Please find the final Q1 report of the taxi upfront fare pilot attached.

By way of brief background, please recall that the SFMTA Board authorized the creation of a one-year Taxi  Upfront Fare Pilot Program. The pilot gives taxi customers the ability to book a taxi trip through a taxi e-hail app and pay a flat-rate, upfront fare. It also allows taxis to be dispatched to  customers using approved third-party apps.  The Pilot launched on November 9, 2022 and this is the first quarterly report. 

A quick snapshot of key data points during the first quarter of the Pilot shows the following:

• A total of 10,834 Pilot trips were provided, including 1,604 Taxi Pilot Trips and 9,230 Third-Party Pilot Trips
• 276 drivers participated in the Pilot – 257 drivers provided Taxi Pilot Trips and 77 provided Third-Party Pilot Trips, with some drivers providing both types of Pilot trips
• Driver fare revenue increased about 33% during the first quarter of the Pilot as compared to the same three-months in the prior year
• Drivers who provided Third-Party Pilot Trips earned an average of $1,103.02 per month from those trips alone, and earned 15.5% more on average than drivers who did not provide Third-Party Trips
• An analysis of the geographic distribution of Third-Party Pilot Trips indicates that these new types of trips are helping to extend the density of taxi pick-ups to outer neighborhoods in San Francisco that have historically been underserved by the taxi industry

This report represents a huge amount of work for SFMTA Taxis, Access & Mobility Services staff, particularly the data analytics team – from updating the type of data received to establishing dashboards to analyzing the data to working with the taxi industry partners to ensure that they are sending the data.

We will continue to send our key stakeholders quarterly reports to provide transparency regarding the status of the one-year Pilot.