When history looks back on the day the formerly great burning fire within the heart of San Francisco officially extinguished, it will be the day Muni did away with the classic, colorful, bus transfer in favor of a public parking garage-style piece of trash.
We knew this was coming. The San Francisco Examiner brings us news that starting this month, Muni is moving forward (behind schedule, naturally) with the plan to phase out the vintage ripped bus transfers in favor of new computerized fare boxes that timestamp the transfers length of validity (90 minutes) and look like all the junk at the bottom of my purse.
SFMTA Director of Transit Ed Reiskin attempted to get the San Francisco Municipal Transit Board of Directors and public at large excited about the new process which was posted to Instagram by SFBay's Jerold Chinn in this oddly mesmerizing loop (that coin drop is KILLING me):
"One of the biggest changes beyond having a more modern fare box is the old tear-off transfers are a thing of the past.The fare boxes will generate a printed transfer, or printed proof of payment, which has a big safety benefit for our operators," Reiskin gushed to the SFMTA board.
The transfer change comes along with a fare increase beginning July 1 which will charge single trip riders paying in cash an extra quarter, thus hiking the cost of a transfer to $2.75.
And this also means no more surprise, all-day transfers from generous/lazy bus drivers who don't bother tearing them off at the proper hour.
The first fare boxes will be installed later this month on the 38-Rapid, 38-Geary and 14-Rapid lines because those busses all come the Flynn Division bus yard. It will cost approximately $36 million to replace all of Muni's 1,300 or so fare boxes and the work will be done by a company based out of Illinois.
While newsprint-style Muni transfers have long been a medium-of-choice for local collage artists, the inky tickets of bus rides past might soon become valuable collectibles.
Related: Muni Fare To Increase Again July 1, Caltrain Considering Fare Hike Too
