Muni Fast Passes up $2 in July
Who knew about this before this week? I didn’t. And judging by the lack of Fast Pass-related vitriol in our Twitter feed, it sounds like a lot of people didn’t get the memo.
Adult M Fast Passes—Muni only—go up to $66 from $64 starting with July passes. Adult A passes—Muni and in-city BART—will be $76, up from $74. The official word from Paul Rose at SFMTA: “This was approved last year as part of the current two year budget, as part of the consumer price index.”
The email from Clipper, of which I took the screenshot above, also included some helpful tips:
Don’t get caught short! Prepare for these changes:
- Manage your transit benefits
Contact your transit benefit provider or log in to your transit benefit account to make sure your benefits cover these Muni price increases starting with your July pass.- Check your Autoload funding source
Make sure that the funding source linked to your Clipper card has sufficient balance to cover the Muni pass price increases or your pass will be blocked. Adjust your Autoload settings now.*Note: No refunds will be granted for costs resulting from blocked passes. Please manage your Clipper card account to prepare for these upcoming price increases.
I mean, I get it, “Muni Fast Pass increases by $2” is perennial headline at this point. But there is decidedly little fanfare over this news, right? Especially since, at least at my company, we’re fast approaching the deadline for making transit-benefit changes for July.
Consider this your fanfare (arms flailing slightly), and update your information accordingly, like, now.
When the Fast Pass first appeared in the 1970s, the adult fare was 25 cents, and the Fast Pass cost $11. That’s the equivalent of 44 rides (and this in a day when transfers were directional and couldn’t be repurposed for a quick round trip). FP started saving you money after 22 round trips, about a month’s worth of weekdays.
The original Fast Pass did not include BART. Today’s comparable M (Muni-only) Fast Pass, even after the July fare increase, will cost $66: the equivalent of only 33 individual rides at $2 each.
So the Fast Pass is now a much better deal than it was in the beginning, because you’re breaking even after only 16-1/2 round trips, instead of 22.
If however, you regularly take quick, short round trips and can get away with using the transfer for your return trip (not actually legal), you’d have to make 33 such trips a month before the Fast Pass started saving you money.
I had the same reaction MD did. Had no idea until I got an email the other day about it. And I’m long past the time where I could make changes for July (sad trombone).
What’s a little funny is that they cite CPI as the reason. CPI is a little hard to predict (it actually went down in the last month for which the government released data) so the idea that you’d tie a price increase to a fixed number in advance based on CPI is a bit odd. But, the pass price shouldn’t vary by CPI in any event – as the above comment implies – it’s supposed to be a discount for heavy users (or a price cap). The base price of the service ($2) hasn’t changed. THAT would be what I’d expect to see tied to CPI. Except that would be a political mess. This is just a simple tax increase on the folks who buy these passes.
Faster than inflation.
And just *WHAT* are we getting for the $2 increase!!??
FUCK YOU SFMTA!!!!
Well, you can always walk if you don’t like the increase.