Sal

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 15:14:21 -0800

Make MUNI free. No more fussing with fare collection. No more staff worrying about how much money is coming in and whether someone's giving free rides to their friends or taking spare change out of the fare boxes. No more money spent managing the logistics of transit passes. No more hassles over people sneaking on board without paying or selling their transfers for a quarter to make a little spare change. No more delays while people fumble for their quarters. Load the bus through both front and rear doors. And a big plus would be that people riding for free would be far more willing to put up with 8MPH than people who are shelling out cold cash for the ride. And even bigger plus would be that maybe, just maybe, without the hassles of fare collection, the buses might move faster than 8 MPH. MUNI costs about $680m/yr to run if I remember rightly. Currently fares and passes bring in $125m. How much of the MUNI budget expense would be saved if the fare structure was completely eliminated? Say it's $25m to run the accounting end of MUNI, bring in the cash, print up those cute little transfers that change every day, police the system. That leaves you with a $100m gap in the MUNI budget. The city budget is something like $7.4b. I say find another $100m somewhere and just make MUNI free. The change would benefit those who ride and would benefit those who don't, by making the streets less congested. What's it worth to have a public transportation system that would actually get people out of their cars and provide transit for everyone? Imagine there are no fare boxes. It's easy if you try.

Mike

Mon, 24 Jul 2006 19:34:01 -0800

Yep, I always figure an hour to cross town on MUNI, even with no transfers, so 8 mph seems about right. I wish I didn't feel so confident that nothing will get better.

SFist: Speed King

Sal

Mike