The ride-hailing company Uber is finally getting a small scoop of just desserts. In a few markets, its ridership has been shifting to its rival Lyft.
As Uber has slipped in slime of its own making, Lyft has carpe’d some diem. It ran attack ads that portrayed Uber as slick corporate Kalanicks, er… thugs.
Lyft was for a long time the only service that let riders tip the drivers. (Uber has belatedly done the same.) It donated $1 million to the American Civil Liberties Union as the #DeleteUber campaign raged. And while the mustaches are hard to find these days, there’s more pink than ever. Based on consumer data from Second Measure, Lyft swiped 5 percent of Uber’s U.S. market share in the first five months of 2017 alone. (It’s now Uber 78%, Lyft 22%.)
But for the residents of the 1400 block of Kansas Street in San Francisco, where more than 100 Lyft drivers stop every day, take care of business, and hang out, it is Lyft, not Uber, that is Public Enemy №1. “It’s like the second-largest cab company in San Francisco operating on a residential street,” says John Panelli.
Panelli lives a few doors up from Lyft’s new “Hub,” a satellite office that opened last fall. Just off Highway 101 on the southwest flank of Potrero Hill, drivers can easily stop in for a car inspection, fill out paperwork, grab coffee, and take a bathroom break.
It’s part of Lyft’s national plan to make life easier for their drivers. But not for their neighbors. “The Lyft Hub has been a difficult transition for the neighborhood,” SFPD Capt. Raj Vaswani, commanding officer of the Bayview district that includes Potrero Hill, tells The Frisc.
The Hub is zoned for light industrial use. A plumbing company was there before, famous for its iconic van on a stick visible from 101. “Bell Plumbing had a few trucks that went out on their shifts,” says Vaswani. “The 100-plus cars a day that use the Hub is a totally different format that has had a negative impact for neighbors.”
Even before Lyft arrived and painted the plumbing van pink, the area wasn’t exactly an oasis. Three Muni lines chug up the block, and 101 is almost always jammed, just over the backyard fences to the west. But the neighbors say they never had problems like they have now, and they are furious with Lyft for what they say are half-hearted attempts, at best, to address the problems.
Lyft drivers are bringing heavy traffic, along with lots of U-turns, double parking, blocked driveways, trash, and secondhand smoke near the Hub. A Lyft driver named Donald (he declined to give his last name) told me recently that “a lot of drivers use the Hub to network. I don’t have time for that.”
KRON-TV caught some of the bad behavior on camera in January. According to the Kansas Street SAFE Association’s Ray O’Connor, it hasn’t abated, although there’s no hard evidence. Lyft won’t share traffic data, and the SFPD doesn’t know if infractions have increased.
But Capt. Vaswani agrees that attempts to “enforce and educate” aren’t working. “It’s based on a premise that most of the people in that corridor are regulars,” he says. “But every day the drivers are different so it hasn’t had much impact changing behavior.”
Lyft has acceded to keep the Hub open only during normal weekday business hours. In addition, the city installed an all-way stop at 26th and Kansas after Lyft arrived.
Vaswani and Lyft representatives have gone to neighborhood meetings. The company has posted signs asking its drivers to behave.
It also installed a complaint line, which goes straight to a generic “the subscriber you have reached is not available” voice mail.
On the phone and in person, Panelli, who cuts hair from his house for a living, doesn’t take long to get into a lather. In fact, he says he complained so much that Lyft blocked his number.
Lyft’s general manager for Northern California, Mihir Gandhi, cited Panelli as the reason the company’s neighborhood liaison abruptly quit. In an email sent to O’Connor’s Kansas Street group, Gandhi wrote that one neighbor, who lives close to the Hub, was “extremely hostile on multiple occasions,” and that the stress of that “was a major factor in his resignation.”
Panelli acknowledged the email was about him, and countered that Lyft’s liaison probably got more flak from angry drivers when he asked them not to smoke.
Gandhi and Lyft PR staff did not respond to several requests for comment.
On a recent Wednesday morning, The Frisc counted 23 of the 51 cars parked on the 1400 block of Kansas Street had visible Lyft, Uber, or airport permit signs. In a 15-minute period, The Frisc also observed:
- 17 cars arriving and parking;
- 8 cars departing;
- 6 U-turns on Kansas;
- 3 illegal U-turns across the double yellow line on 26th Street;
- 9 “California rolls” at the stop on the corner of 26th and Kansas;
- 9 remote car-door beeps or horns;
- 2 double-parkers;
- 2 momentary blockings of a Muni bus;
- 3 cigarette smokers on the sidewalk;
- and 1 car parked illegally on the corner.
Not all of this is an existential crisis, or even beyond the pale for a modern city. But if you’re home trying to get stuff done amid secondhand smoke, constant comings and goings and a chorus of car-lock beeps, you would want something to change. Ideally, the neighbors say, Lyft will move to a more industrial area. Short of that, they would like the company to deal with the traffic with an appointment system. They also have asked city officials to consider a rezoning.
With a new study showing Lyft and Uber’s contribution to congestion, and the city attorney pressing both companies for data, the perception gap between the two — between villainous black and fuzzy pink — could start to close too. The 1400 block of Kansas could be Lyft’s litmus test. As O’Connor wrote in a recent email to Gandhi and city officials: “We will not simply go away. We live here! This is our home.”
Alex Lash is editor in chief of the Frisc.
