Fight to bring pedicabs to Berkeley
Aug 27th, 2010
by Frances Dinkelspiel – Berkeleyside
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…
Read on at Berkeleyside