The worst day of the year on the internet is here, and some people are still acting like it's 2002 and fake news headlines are fun April Fool's jokes. One of them is San Francisco Supervisor Dean Preston.
Preston jumped on Twitter this morning to tweet, "BREAKING: MTA Director just announced SF will launch Free MUNI! Thank you @sfmta_muni for embracing this visionary policy to make public transportation in San Francisco free!"
This is, of course, not true and not an effective joke either β maybe Dean thought it was hilarious in his head? β and while it tricked a few people, some merely took it as a confusing announcement given everything we've already learned about Muni's finances during the pandemic.
BREAKING: MTA Director just announced SF will launch Free MUNI! Thank you @sfmta_muni for embracing this visionary policy to make public transportation in San Francisco free!
— Dean Preston (@DeanPreston) April 1, 2021
Dean, I love you, but no. This is not cool. You got me really excited and others may take this tweet as the truth because we trust you. You're a public elected official. You need to label these things as jokes
— Thee sleep enthusiast βπΎ (@olive_dragons) April 1, 2021
Also, the staunchly progressive Preston has earned some critics during his tenure on the Board of Supervisors, and they took to trolling him and his attempt at April's Fool's Day humor.
To wit:
This isnβt funny.
— David Broockman (@dbroockman) April 1, 2021
What would be: @DeanPreston supports making it just as difficult and expensive for SF homeowners to sell their existing homes as he makes it to build new homes.
Funny b/c it makes light of the one constituency you *do* care about: wealthy homeowners!
We are so excited to announce that @DeanPreston is planning to rezone San Francisco to allow fourplexes everywhere!
— SF YIMBY (@SFyimby) April 1, 2021
Thank you Supervisor!
And @AaronPeskin is calling for a reduction in some of our more cumbersome public engagement processes!
Thank you Supervisor!
I heard on another platform that you resigned this morning because of a pending investigation by the FBI on political corruption. Oh well.
— Richard Manso, J.D., Esq. (@RichardManso3) April 1, 2021
Preston has, IRL, been pushing for Muni to be free since he was campaigning for supervisor. And as recently as last month he was proposing to make Muni free for the remainder of the pandemic.
But the SFMTA has some major budget woes that would have led to mass layoffs of operators if it weren't for the most recent federal stimulus package β and it's not at all clear that the agency is out of the woods. Just last week we learned that the Muni Metro's K, L, and M lines won't be brought back into service until early 2022 at the earliest, and dozens of Muni bus lines are still on hiatus a year after the pandemic began, both due to budgetary issues and lack of available buses due to the bus shuttles needed to replace offline light-rail trains and the F line.
Anyway, "happy" April Fool's Day. Like the Muni Metro, you may as well stay offline the rest of the day.
Photo: Matt Baume