March 5, 2008
Money is What Muni Wants
Due to budget problems, the Muni Powers That Be have decided on a possible solution, that being raising the Muni Fast Pass from $45 to $60 bucks. Suck on it, Muni riders.
Muni's budget defecit is projected to be around $66 million bucks by 2010 and raising Fast Pass fares could generate about $12 to $15 million a year. The idea was proposed by a top-notch panel that Gavin commissioned to help fix the unfixable that is our public transportation system.
Knowing that this would be make any garden variety potato Vampire Weekend hot, Gavin and everyone else is hemming and hawing about whether or not this will happen. The whole trial balloon thing, especially as they previously said nyet to increases earlier. Apparently, the Fast Pass is a pretty good deal compared to other local areas and in a contorted piece of logic that totally baffles us, would actually be fairer to the poor. So we got that going for us, which is nice.
Budget cuts appear to be the new budget increases as besides the education cuts in Vallejo, SF has announced ginsu-like precision cuts to other budget items such as healthcare, and wheel chair access to City Hall’s legislative chamber. Suck on that Michela.
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So why isn't anyone in the Newsom administration taking a pay cut to help out with the deficit? Why did the head of MUNI get a $38,000 pay raise days before Gavin announced a deficit? Why does he need numerous $100K++ advisors? Most importantly, why can't anyone call him on his blatant bullshit in a public forum?
Fire all of the high paid political hacks and get the people into government and the professional leeches out of the pockets of the taxpayers of San Francisco. Hold real town meetings where you have an admin/note taker for Gavin where the people get to voice their concerns, not listen to him evade questions, ignore the real concerns and pose for photos. The guy makes Bill Clinton look genuinely sincere. Gavin Newsom is ruining the City and all anyone can say is how nice he looks in his pretty suit. Disgusting.
Holy crap! $60 bucks for a pass? If you haven't done this yet, check with your employer if they use Commuter Check. The program automatically deducts from your paycheck and it is pre-taxed.
If you pay $60 bucks... if Muni costs $3 a day (round-trip), and multiply that by 20 working days in a month, you'd be breaking even. If you don't work as often, say four days a week, you might just want to pay in cash.
I forgot to add this:
Or just enter through the back door. Muni is broke, so why would the invest in fare inspectors?
No more MUNI passes for me then. $60 makes it not worthwhile, just like Akit says.
Ah the downward spiral. Higher prices, fewer riders, bigger deficits, higher prices. I guess Muni will be gone within 10 years. Without new dedicated rights of way they can never break out of that cycle.
still a bargain. seattle is something like $58 within the city and higher if you commute out to another zone. i was shocked to find that a fastpass was only $45 when i moved here.
i'd gladly pay $60. i generally take use Muni at least twice daily; cash fare would certainly be more.
suck on it, SF. pay for transportation with user fees instead of increased taxes. oh and eliminate that back door nonsense with that OMG translink thing!!! isn't that working yet? Lol.
oh brother...maybe if muni was actually reliable i'd be ok with paying another 10 bux a month for a pass...but as it is, the only way i'd be getting a fast pass for $60 is if my employer was paying for it...i'd rather invest in city car share, or ride a bike, or hoof it...
btw would the single ride fare increase?
besides, why not raise taxes on all the 200 million cars to discourage so many people from driving, make roads safer for peds and bikers, and help out the public transit system both financially and, um, by getting all those freaking cars off the road and simultaneously encouraging more people to invest in the 45 dollar version of the bus pass? eh? eh? eh?
NYC metro card is $81 for 30 days of unlimited bus subway use.
30 days start is from the time you first use it.
the card costs more than here, but most people use it multiple times a day AND THE SYSTEM WORKS.
I've been buying Fast Passes every month since 1993 and if they raise them to $60 I'm buying a bike. Muni has never worked for me, in all these years...and I still blindly, stupidly pay the piper for a vague chance of getting where I need to go when I need to get there...I give up. Fuck you Muni.
With the MTA's logic, raising the cost of the Fast Pass is "fairer to the poor" because Muni already provides a Lifeline Pass for low-income bus riders at $35. Ten dollars is not much of a real discount, but if the regular pass goes up to $60 it would be.
The trouble is that low-income people (who must make less than 200% of the poverty line) are not buying the Lifeline Pass because it's not a good deal at that price. You can only buy it at 3 locations in the City (and only 2 to initially prove your eligibility ), and it doesn't work on BART.
Therefore, a lot of people who would qualify are simply buying the Regular Fast Pass. Especially if they live in the Mission and depend heavily on BART.
With the MTA's logic, raising the cost of the Fast Pass is "fairer to the poor" because Muni already provides a Lifeline Pass for low-income bus riders at $35. Ten dollars is not much of a real discount, but if the regular pass goes up to $60 it would be.
The trouble is that low-income people (who must make less than 200% of the poverty line) are not buying the Lifeline Pass because it's not a good deal at that price. You can only buy it at 3 locations in the City (and only 2 to initially prove your eligibility ), and it doesn't work on BART.
Therefore, a lot of people who would qualify are simply buying the Regular Fast Pass. Especially if they live in the Mission and depend heavily on BART.
With the MTA's logic, raising the cost of the Fast Pass is "fairer to the poor" because Muni already provides a Lifeline Pass for low-income bus riders at $35. Ten dollars is not much of a real discount, but if the regular pass goes up to $60 it would be.
The trouble is that low-income people (who must make less than 200% of the poverty line) are not buying the Lifeline Pass because it's not a good deal at that price. You can only buy it at 3 locations in the City (and only 2 to initially prove your eligibility ), and it doesn't work on BART.
Therefore, a lot of people who would qualify are simply buying the Regular Fast Pass. Especially if they live in the Mission and depend heavily on BART.
The only way this makes sense is if they also raise the cash fare to $2. Perhaps the Fast Pass press release is just a trial balloon.
No transit system in the world makes its money at the farebox - it's only part of the revenue stream.
the problem is that MUNI's in a tailspin as others have pointed out of raising prices and cutting service and not making changes it needs to a) get more people to use it because it WORKS PROPERLY and b) get people to use it because it's worth the money.
2 dollar fares are bullshit. Raising all these kinds of things at the farebox are short term bullshit solutions. They need to stop pegging revenue to sources that vary wildly from year to year. Also, San Francisco's legislators need to stop voting for huge muni cuts from the state, as ours did this past year, screwing MUNI bigtime, and completely by surprise.
The solution is simple. Tax the wealthy and use the proceeds to expand the system and provide free public transportation.
The solution is simple. Stop killing 4-year-old girls with your maintenance trucks and paying out $21 million settlements.
And once you've stopped doing that, why not hire people who will run MUNI like a real city's public transit system?
I'm tired of visiting this website and finding out that the local public transportation system has maimed/killed someone.
So much for Prop. A stabilizing things. Natty Tatty Ford ought to take a pay cut. So should Newscum. So should lots of the MUNI brass that aren't accomplishing a damn thing.
Raise the fares and cut service. Thanks TEP!
$60 is still a pretty good deal, but the MTA needs to actually charge much, much more for Muni. $120 for a fast pass, $5 per boarding with no transfer. That would have Muni running at a profit, so they could provide more service and cleaner buses. Look at Caltrain, they run on almost all of their fare box revenue and receive almost no subsidy.
Each time a customer boards Muni it costs $4. Suck it up guys, running a system with 700,000 daily riders is expensive. It's a shoe string operation, no wonder it sucks so bad.
The mayor comments are a red herring, yes it needs to be addressed but it isn't a huge cost. Plus, there isn't much we can do about lawsuits other than putting a cap on damages. $21m in this last round is quite a hit, that's $30 per passenger if everyone ponied up the damages in one day ($21m divided by 700,000 boardings).
I'll probably stop buying a monthly pass if it goes to $60. I'm probably not getting $45 a month of value of a pass as it is, much less another 10 rides
isn't caltrain subsidized by amtrak?
Let's say that I have a $45 MUNI pass. I work full time in the city and occasionally go out on the weekends. When you do the math that is 20 work days each month and maybe 4 other days when I head out to a bar or restaurant or need to go shopping outside of North Beach. Out of those potential 48 round trips I might take, I would pay $72, so yes, FastPass is still a deal at $60.
BUT
If you count the number of times that useless pre-paid FastPass sat in my wallet while I had to shell out $10, $15 or $25 for a cab just to get home then you would do what I do and forget about FastPass and take MUNI when you don't need to actually be anywhere at a particular time. You will end up taking a cab anyway unless you are dirt poor and we already know what this city thinks of the less fortunate.
You can send your comments to MUNI here: http://www.sfmta.com/cms/mcontact/emailmuindx.htm
Personally, if the FastPass is raised, I might as well just pay cash as I'd just about break even. Somehow, I don't see how raising the monthly pass addresses the lack of service or the fact that buses (like the 43, 5, 21, etc.) will frequently drive on w/out picking people up at rush hour (especially in the low-income areas) b/c of how packed they already are.
pdx6 - for $1.50 I will take a bus from 24th/Noe to my home at 20th/Eureka. For $5, I will walk. MUNI's overall fare recovery at those rates would be drastically less - it makes taxicabs competitive to the bus.
I can't believe the flip flopping. One month it's "let's have a free Muni", the next, "Raise the pass price by 1/3". It just shows that the leadership has no clue how to fix things.
I don't know if it makes sense to demand that Muni be profitable, or even anything close to profitable. That's not the point of public transit, as I see it. Not everything is about making money. We pay a lot of taxes exactly to subsidize unprofitable, but necessary things.
So, then raise the fast pass, but lower my taxes. As to how to close the budget hole: how about not building $1M ramps in City Hall? How about cutting the bullshit digital buses with WiFi and touchscreens? SF spends money on all sorts of frivolous ideas -- sure seems there's plenty of fat to trim.
This is an attempt at a business tax hike. For those who use Commuter Checks, the maximum amount is $60, so what Gav and Nat are proposing is to take the whole enchilada, rather than leaving $15 per pass on the table.
And I totally agree with the poster above who asked what happened to Prop A. Where did it go? Why didn't it work? Shouldn't Gav & Nat have to answer those questions first, or are they counting on the population to have a short memory?
How about keep the Fast Pass at $45, but remove the BART and Cable Cars from it? Those of us in the Sunset don't use BART or Cable Cars anyway.
What a joke. I love how they expect us to pay more but they don't offer to make the service better - what are we paying for?
It's just typical of the public transportation system here in the bay area to make it cost roughly the same to take the bart, caltrain, or muni as it would to drive. It's a conveneint way for local government to sap money from tax payers without having to get public approval.
I swear to god, MTA and Newsom must have some sort of back door deal with the oil companies. There is no other reason for their blatant attempts to push people into their cars.
Service cuts + higher prices? Who the FUCK is in charge over there?
bluecanary: Maybe Gavin has made some advisors out of ex-SFO Airport execs.
Caltrain is not subsidized by Amtrak. Caltrain contracts with Amtrak to provide staff (conductors, engineers, maintenance).
Caltrain receives contributions from the three counties that it serves. The remaining money comes through fares. It costs $15 round-trip between San Francisco and San Jose. However, it costs more than that to drive solo (if you figure in the true costs and not just gas used). Also with the baby bullet schedule, you can make the trip faster. Finally, Caltrain has a better than 90% on time rating so you can pretty much count on arriving on time.
With MUNI you have to allow extra time in your schedule for
1) the bus not showing up (no driver, bus breakdown)
2) the bus passing you by because it is too full
3) the bus getting stuck in traffic or the train getting blocked by a double-parked car
4) the Metro stopping between stations because of broken doors or a problem with the turnback.
Of course Caltrain has problems from time to time, and the delays can be horrible when something goes wrong. However, I had considerably more problems with the MUNI portion when I was a regular MUNI/Caltrain commuter to Santa Clara county.
Fuck, Muni - get a car like everyone else!
MUNI = Multi-dimensional, Un-repentant, Never-ending, Incompetence.