Affording MUNI

By Robert Ellison.

MUNI is headed for a ~$300 million deficit over the next couple of years. A small part of this is my fault. I live where I do for easy access to public transport. I used to take the 28 to work at least three times a week before the pandemic but like many people in San Francisco I now work from home. That's only part of the story though. MUNI decided to let kids ride free, and this is about 15% of their ridership. Many people over 18 decide not to pay as well, and fare dodging is reportedly around 20%. Over a third of passengers are not paying at this point.

As recently as 2021 fares were almost 20% of MUNI's revenue. In the 2024-2025 budget that's down to 8%, $108 million out of a $1.4 billion dollar budget.

In the short term MUNI has to reverse the trend on fares. My kids can afford to pay (at least I can) and a transit system in crisis should not be subsidizing my family's commute. MUNI has added more fare inspectors, and maybe that would help, but other steps could be taken here. MUNI fare gates don't check that you've paid on exiting the system - why not? Busses could enforce boarding at the front and producing payment or proof of payment. We can't have one fifth of users skipping payment. Also, the diverse range of payment methods removes any social pressure to pay. If I board and sit down without tagging I could be a fare dodger or I could have bought and used a mobile pass.

Longer term we need to be less embarrassing. You can't have an It All Starts Here campaign and then install whatever these ugly things are. We're also going to spend $200 million replacing the floppy disks that run light rail (maybe with laserdiscs?). San Francisco is the heart of the AI revolution. We take driverless cars instead of Ubers. MUNI's ballooning costs are largely people. At the very least the light rail system should be fully automated.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: Affording MUNI #politics #muni #sanfrancisco MUNI is headed for a $300 million deficit. We should make kids pay, make adults pay and invest in driverless light rail. )

politics, muni, san francisco