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Fight to bring pedicabs to Berkeley

August 27, 2010 8:33 am by Frances Dinkelspiel

Ken Lin-Ott (r) driving passengers around Oakland

For the last year, Ken Lin-Ott has taken to the streets of Oakland late at night, offering rides to anyone who wants to hop into his pedicab.

Passengers usually take a short ride – to a restaurant or bar, or a trip back to their car. Lin-Ott doesn’t charge anything for the service. He just asks for a tip.

Now Lin-Ott wants to offer Berkeley revelers a chance to get around town in a person-pedaled pedicab. He thinks his green, ecologically sound, non-polluting taxi service is a perfect match for progressive Berkeley.

There’s only one problem. He can’t get a permit.

Lin-Ott has approached the city twice in the last year for a permit, but he keeps getting bounced from department to department, he said. He has gone to the Finance Department twice, only to be referred to the department overseeing taxis, which then refers him back to the finance office.

“It feels like one of those Kafka-like situations where no one wants to deal with it,” said Lin-Ott, 31, who attended UC Berkeley but who now lives in Oakland.

To set up his business in Oakland, Lin-Ott merely went down to City Hall and got a business license. It’s not so easy in Berkeley, it seems.

In frustration, Lin-Ott has mounted an online petition drive aimed at convincing the Berkeley City Council to give him a permit for his pedicab taxi service.

Titled “Overturn Berkeley’s Bicycle Taxi Ban,” the petition appeals to Berkeley’s competitive green instincts.

“The residents, businesses and municipality of Berkeley take pride in being “greener” and environmentally forward thinking,” Lin-Ott writes in the petition. “Recent examples include biodiesel use in the city’s fleet, Mayor Bates’ pedometer, Measure G, BP’s Energy Biosciences Institute, school vegetable gardens, being named 2009′s city with most solar paneled homes, and being named “7th greenest” US city. However, there are no bicycle taxis in the city. This is odd.”

“We have approached the City twice in two years to apply for a business license only to be turned down each time. There is in effect a ban on pedicabs in Berkeley.”

“We are being asked by Berkeley residents and businesses to provide service in Berkeley, but cannot because there is no rule on the books. No rule to us means no-regulation, but to the Permit office it means no-way!”

City offices were closed on Friday due to budget constraints, but a person at Berkeley’s Customer Service Center said that the Finance Department would be the place to start for a pedicab permit. She cautioned that the police would have to do a  background check and fingerprint anyone who wanted to drive a taxi, even if it was a human-powered bicycle taxi.

Lin-Ott points out that San Francisco, San Jose, Portland, DC, New York, Austin, Boulder, Denver, Santa Cruz, and Walnut Creek permit human-powered transportation services.

One of Lin-Ott's vintage pedicabs

Pedal Express, which offers package delivery services by bicycle, has been in business in Berkeley for 16 years.

Lin-Ott got the idea for the petition drive from CupKates, the Berkeley-based cupcake truck that sells cupcakes around the East Bay. When Berkeley city officials gave the owner a hard time about where she could park her truck, she asked her clients to write their city councilmen. The public support helped her get her permit.

Lin-Ott admits that cupcakes may be more popular than pedicabs, but he still intends to fight. “It is not quite the same allure. I don’t know if the petition will help or not, but it’s the best chance I have to get the city to move.”

15 Comments

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  • http://nycpoa.org Peter Meitzler

    Ken,

    When we started the pedicabs in NYC, we did the same thing you are doing now…we went around to various agencies for input and guidance, and we only gave away rides at the time.

    We visited the taxi and limousine commission (nope, we’re not motorized, so not there), and the dept. of consumer affairs (but this was 1994/95 and they just didn’t know what to make of us…and, they had nothing on the books telling us we couldn’t), the mayor’s office of transportation, the dept. of transportation, and community boards, which, in NYC, are supposed to advise city council and be the most immediate contact between government and the community. We met periodically with the transportation committee of our community board and went from there. That proved helpful. Develop support among key council members.

    We lobbied for ten years to obtain reasonable regulations in NYC. If they had happened sooner, we might not have had the ungovernable aspects that so characterized the last few years. That being said, the new NYC regulations are for the most part friendly (though a few matters warrant re-visiting).

    In the meantime, if you are not charging a fare and accepting tips only, and as long as you are operating as if regulations were in place, including:
    -operating the pedicab safely
    -having liability insurance on your pedicab, yourself, and cover property damage
    -having safety equipment such as seat belts, lights at night, turn signals, reflectors on wheels
    -requiring a motor vehicle license first (just like they do in other parts of California, e.g. San Francisco)

    ….then I don’t see the problem. Once you charge a fare on city streets, that can change things.

    It used to be in this country, one could assume that if a thing was not expressly prohibited, it was legal. Once you ask for your freedom, you’ve just lost a tiny bit of it. So, I’d say go for it. Write to info@nycpoa.org for more information.

    Additionally, I’d say look for a sponsor out there who could cover some of your costs so you can continue with your tips only approach until the market develops further.

    Shout out to my friends at Pedal Express!

    -pm

  • http://www.preservenet.com Charles Siegel

    How dumb can the bureaucracy be? I have signed the petitition, and I think that pedicabs have more allure than cupcakes – or at least are healthier.

    Pedicabs attract business to San Francisco. Why not to Berkeley?

  • http://basiscraft.com Thomas Lord

    Peter,

    No, they seem to think (and reading the code, I would agree) that they need a business license or else can not lawfully operate in Berkeley. My guess is that they needed it under 9.04.220 – the miscellaneous business category. They don’t fall under the taxi category or any of the other non-misc. categories … but clearly qualify under 9.04.220

    Anyway, the taxi ordinance appears to absolutely not in any way apply. It seems clear that finance has simply erred and is in fact obligated to issue the business license upon application and payment of fee. The city does not appear to have any discretion to withhold a business license here.

  • http://basiscraft.com Thomas Lord

    Charles,

    I doubt that the license hang-up has anything at all to do with being against pedicabs. It’s an easy mistake:

    Taxi businesses are, for good reasons, separately regulated. If you go down to Finance and say you want a business license for your new cab company, and they send you over to the taxi folks — that’s just exactly right.

    The subtlety is that you have to read the Berkeley code pretty carefully (well, ok, find and read the appropriate “definitions” sections) to figure out that all of the taxi-specific code applies only to mechanically and/or electrically motorized vehicles. None of it applies to pedicabs or hand-pulled rickshaws (which is arguably a drag since that means they don’t get to use taxi stands).

    So, you say “Pedicab” to Finance and they’re first instinct is “Cabs? No, we don’t do cabs. Go over there.”

    And you talk to the taxi guys and say “Pedicab” and they say “Bikes? No, we don’t do bikes. You want Finance.”

    If I’m reading this all correctly, it could probably be sorted out either the discretion of a higher-up in Finance or by that person with a little help from the City Attorney.

    (This is not to question the undoubted marketing benefits of a petition drive :-)

  • http://popspedicabs.com Pops’ Pedicabs

    Check out the pedicab ordinances for the City of San Diego, either on the City website or you can find them on my website in the document library (links -> pedicab resources -> document library). There are a few oddball things that are not optimal, but overall a good template.

    Dale Hill
    Pops’ Pedicabs

  • http://www.berkeleyhomes.com/blog Ira Serkes

    If only you could just edit a pedicure license …

  • John Seal

    As long as Mr. Lin-Ott allows smoking in his pedicabs, he shouldn’t be given a license.

    I’m being facetious.

  • http://web.mac.com/nancyschimmel Nancy Schimmel

    Red tape vs. green transportation. May the best plan win!

  • George Berkeley

    Wow: two stories in a row that feature small local entrepreneurs who are prevented from doing business in their own city. [Ebbett's Good to Go & Ken Linn-Ott's pedicab.]

    At what point are we going to demand that our politicians reshape the culture of our vast Berkeley bureaucracy? It really is their responsibility. And I don’t mean responding to the occasional petition/demonstration/crisis. I mean reform from the BOTTOM so that a pedi-cab owner doesn’t need a petition (seriously?) just to find out where to get a permit.

    For decades many (not all) of our numberless departments and boards have focused largely on making life as difficult, or in the alternative expensive, as possible. Will we EVER see them embrace the ideal of the true “public servant” — i.e., someone who tries to SERVE and ASSIST the citizenry?

  • matt flynn

    ive been thinking about ways to get this same enterprise started in my
    own city of portland , oregon ….

    m alou flynn

  • Nathan Landau

    Because this is a new form of transportation, and because there have been issues elsewhere (e.g. pedicabs swarming certain locations, pedicab crashes), my guess is that this will take an Ordinance authorizing pedicabs. I think the City should authorize them, but that’s what it sounds like it took in New York and San Diego. I’d ask the City Council to direct the City Manager to draw up that Ordinance.

  • http://basiscraft.com Thomas Lord

    Nathan,

    I think you’re mistaken. Any business which is not specifically prohibited is permitted by right. The “business license” being sought is simply a tax, not a permit — no permit is required. If the license application is in order and fees paid, the city legally has no choice but to accept it (hence has erred in not doing so). A pedicab would be subject to all of the usual traffic laws (so the City could discourage a pedicab by being very strict about that if they can show a reasonable safety concern). A pedicab would not have right to use taxi cab areas.

    Some cities do have ordinances which restrict pedicabs by, for example, requiring operators to have a valid driver’s license. There is some contention that, in fact, cities are not lawfully permitted to enforce such restrictions.

    Consequently, there is currently a bill pending in the state senate, having passed in the assembly (AB 2294) that would authorize cities to restrict pedecab businesses in such ways.

    In any event, the city appears to have simply screwed up in not issuing the license, presumably because of internal confusion about whether or not the ordinances related to taxis apply.

  • http://www.preservenet.com Charles Siegel

    If Thomas Lord is right about the legal issues, which he seems to understand, than we just need an opinion from the city attorney to straighten this out. I bet the mayor would help get that opinion if someone told him about this issue. I will email the mayor, and we will see what happens.

  • http://basiscraft.com Thomas Lord

    Charles,

    My reasoning is thus:

    All of the code that pertains to taxis hinges on the definitions in 9.52.010 It is very clear that none of the taxi code applies to unmotorized, non-electrically-driven vehicles. In other words, none applies to pedicabs.

    Looking in 9.04, if you go down the classifications of businesses, you’ll find that none apply to Pedicabs. To fully check that you also have to look at the U.S. Government printing office publication North American Industrial Classification System Manual but… there’s no category for pedicabs.

    So, by default, a pedicab is a 9.04.220 Miscellaneous business.

    As for licenses being “by right”, see 9.04.055: “Every person required to have a license under the provisions of this chapter shall make application for the same to the Finance Department of the City and, upon the payment of the prescribed fee to said department, the department shall issue to said person a license which shall contain [....]”

    There is no discretion there: valid application plus fee and you are owed a license.

  • EBGuy

    It is very clear that none of the taxi code applies to unmotorized, non-electrically-driven vehicles.
    I’d also (hope!) it would not apply to an electric bike (aka. 3 wheeled pedicab with an electric motor that doesn’t exceed 20 mph).