SFist: Ask a Muni Driver

Belgand

Thu, 07 Jun 2007 14:19:08 -0800

My biggest problem with the BART FastPass is that I live in the extreme Southwest near the Daly City BART station. Unfortunately they stuck the station just barely over the city limits so while I live in San Francisco a FastPass won't work on BART unless I want to take a Muni bus up to Balboa Park. As a result of the slower service on the M I usually take a mix of BART and Muni to get around which makes a FastPass a really bad deal for me. I try to keep a roll of quarters around so it's easy to pay fares, but seriously when you get down to the South almost all of the BART stations are just barely on the wrong side of the city line: Colma is effectively in Daly City, South San Francisco is in Colma, and Daly City is placed to better serve people who live in Ocean View than people who live in Daly City proper.

transit troublemaker

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 19:08:42 -0800

about BART and FastPasses, There is little excess capacity on Muni routes paralleling BART. Muni pays BART .86 per rider carried. Muni claims 25% percent farebox recovery. At the 1.50 fare that means Muni SAVES perhaps $3 by "outsourcing" riders to BART rather than increasing their own service. Another stat, Muni claims over 65% of riders board either w/ transfer or pass--only approx. 30% pay single cash fares.

Jerry Jarvis

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 21:57:03 -0800

I predict come September Gavin will take credit for MUNI when the software programmers get here.

Jerry Jarvis

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 21:54:39 -0800

I no longer have advise for MUNI.They don't listen.They hide behind Gavin's hair gel.

iris

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:20:01 -0800

How about an evenings/weekend only fastpass for those of us who don't use MUNI for commuting but do the public transit thing for extracurricular activities? I'd pay $20-$25 a month to never have to use my laundry quarters for trainfare. Le sigh! It might have kept Paris Hilton out of jail. ...Or Carole Midgen when she's traveling through SF.

Dan Berkes

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 18:09:45 -0800

I'm not the original poster, but to answer Mark's question: Yes. Translink will offer the option to pay the cash fare or load a monthly pass. Or was that a loaded question, in which case now is the time you should jump up to say "Aha!" and present your argument. :)

Mark Ballew

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 17:12:48 -0800

Where does your idea go when it comes to Translink? A $2 fare as well?

b

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:27:34 -0800

I vote for promoting this driver to Muni Monarch.

suckafree

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 16:20:39 -0800

what if we replicated bart and caltrain and made everyone buy a fare before they boarded? take the drivers and the booth betties out of the cashier business. i bet this would improve service and lower costs. please ask the driver for his opinion for me.

Kay

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 15:52:40 -0800

I'm somewhere between a usual and an occasional rider (5 times a week-ish) and I usually end up paying $2.00 anyway - in this day and age of mag-striped plastic, i'm lucky to find some crumpled bills at the bottom of my purse. Usually no luck with quarters, I preciously horde those for laundry. The difference is negligible anyway. Those who would disagree can probably find less important things to trim the fat off of.

MattyMatt

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 15:01:49 -0800

Every single thing this person is saying is true. It must be awfully frustrating to be stuck in a broken system that you know how to fix if only the people running it would take your advice.

Sal

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:36:59 -0800

I think MUNI should raise the single-ride fare to $2.00. Stop screaming, there's more! At the same time, MUNI should drop the price of Fastpasses from $45.00 to $30.00. Leave the price of tokens at $1.50, bag of 10 for $15.00. Leave the Senior and Youth and Disabled fares & Fastpasses untouched. I like this idea. I never buy a Fastpass because we walk more often than we ride and you'd have to be taking Muni an average of at least once a day to justify the $45/mo cost of a Fastpass. For those of us who don't have a job we commute to, Fastpasses make no sense. Drop that Fastpass price to $30 and I'd probably buy one. Well, I'd be more likely buy one. I also like the idea of having some incentive to buy tokens above and beyond not having to deal with quarters.

Scorched

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:28:16 -0800

I love those ideas. Make the tourists and occasional riders fund the system (improvements and needy riders) -and- speed things up. I'm a BART/Fastpass rider and I would pay and extra $5-10 to continue to ride BART in the city. THe fastpass benefit was one of the reasons why I bought a house near BART; if you take that benefit away, you will have a massive rider revolt in Glen Park and points south. :D

Pen

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 14:12:50 -0800

I'm all for having a separate Muni and Muni/BART fastpass. Here on the west side of the city, BART doesn't service us. So why should we subsidize them?

Ciaran

Mon, 04 Jun 2007 13:35:41 -0800

Yes, yes, yes on higher cash fares, lower pass prices. This is another idea we should steal from London (although they have a super smartcard way of doing it that we're never going to have). But provide a big incentive for people to pay before they get on the bus - either by having a pass or a token (make tokens easier to get - vending machines?) so the bus doesn't have to wait for five minutes while people try to feed crumpled dollar bills into the slot (and fish around in their handbags for the money).