Muni fare hikes on the table again

Fare Box on Car 496
Photo by Nick Fisher

SF Examiner reports that, among other proposals, the SFMTA board is once again considering raising the price of a Muni ride and transfer. From the Examiner’s article:

“The cost of a single-trip fare could increase from $2 to $2.25, and passengers who pay in cash could get hit with another 25 cents every time they transfer to another line. Those two programs are projected to generate an extra $5.7 million for the agency.”

That’s to close a projected $80 million deficit. Drop in the bucket, no?

Fares were last raised in July 2009, but we’ve seen incremental hikes in fees a few times since then: January 2010: Fast Pass Fare Increase Today; June 2011: Fast Pass Fares Set to Increase Up to $2 on July 1 (Streetsblog SF).

What do you think of this proposal?

16 comments

  • Gary

    If Muni was ever on time, if its drivers weren’t mostly a bunch of whiny, unionized bitches, and if they did something about people hopping in the back door without paying… then yeah, I wouldn’t mind.

    So I guess fare hikes will never be warranted.

  • Angela

    As it is I now pay the extra $2 on my monthly pass. I do not mind paying a little extra for a better service, but the money goes up and nothing else changes. There’s no timetable, buses frequently just disappear for no reason. People enter (front & back) without showing any ticket, scanning card, or even bothering to pretend to reach in their pocket for cash. As it is, my $2 is subsidizing those people, so it’s unfair to ask for more money when they run such an inefficient service.

    It’s one excuse after another.

  • Harry

    How about uhhhh instead of raising the Muni fare, have the driver pay the fare for each fare-evader from his salary! That’s what we have cameras for, right!? Muahahhahahha.

  • I think it’s foolish to charge for transfers—a fare should be the cost of going from point A to point B, and the rider should not be punished if there is no single-route way to make that trip.

    I have no qualms with inching the fare up by a quarter, though. Provided there remains a greater subsidy for impoverished riders, the rest of us can absorb an extra 50¢ a day, especially when compared with the cost of driving and parking.

    • Alex

      The whole MUNI system was designed around using transfers to get from point A to point B. This is ridiculous. I thought we ran Ford out of town, and paid a hefty severance package to him… to get rid of this kind of stale leadership?

      [meet the new boss, same as the old]

      Perhaps the MTA should do something wild and crazy like dropping the MUNI only pass, and encouraging people to use BART. BART costs, what, about a third of what it costs to transport people on an MTA LRV?

      Hell, for all this talk about raising fares… the vehicles on the last two MUNI trips I’ve been on haven’t had working TransClipper readers. The last three times I’ve seen POP cops they’ve been socializing and not actually checking for fares.

      Swell job, Reiskin!

  • Rachael E. Lazarus via Facebook

    Frustrating- particularly the notion of tacking on a fee for transfers. But, while I do think there are plenty of union issues to be worked out at this point, it is disheartening to see people pointing fingers back at the drivers themselves when I think the issue is a larger one, concerning management in general.

  • Allyson

    Time for some serious budget cuts. I was talking to a New Yorker on the 49 recently and he suggested Muni could massively increase its reliability and decrease costs by eliminating half their stops. I don’t know any other public transit system with as frequent stops.

    There is also no need for as many downtown-bound lines. Service to the outer areas of the city is pathetic. I don’t even go to Bernal or Noe because I know it will take me an hour & a half from downtown. My daily commute to the Presidio takes over an hour.

    Until SFMTA can fix infrastructure and personnel problems, costs should not be passed on to riders. A fare strike may be in order this time.

    • Alex

      Stop reduction and consolidation has long been a contentious issue in San Francisco. But, yes, removing stops and *enabling* signal priority for transit vehicles would go a long way towards speeding things up. But, everyone wants that stop right next to their destination. People are incessantly complaining about the long walk from the proposed Central Subway stop to the existing Powell Station.

      Keep in mind that this idea of beefing up the downtown service at the expense of the feeder routes in the boonies is embodied perfectly in the TEP. From Dufty to Ford to Lee, the TEP has gotten a huge amount of political support.

  • david vartanoff

    First, transfer surcharges are essentially REDLINING of anyone whose travel patterns are not on a single trunk line–totally unacceptable. Second, as to ever rising fares, when Muni meets on time performance measures, we’ll talk. The let us raise the fares, we’ll give better service real soon lie is tiresome. There are a number of dedicated Muni workers out there, but the bad apple percentage is too high and management worse yet. For decades Muni has mismanaged Metro service angering riders and wasting funds

  • CopperJet

    I just can’t afford to pay more for my daily commute.
    MUNI doesn’t improve service on most of the routes either.
    I take MUNI & CalTrain to get to work everyday.

    I sure hope they don’t execute any plan that requires you to pay again to take another bus or to switch between MUNI & BART. People who live in the neighborhoods must take more than one bus to get downtown and to major shopping areas.

    However we shouldn’t sacrifice service to downtown to improve the service to the ‘hoods.

    Parking a car in the city should cost more!

  • Will

    Speaking about transfers, aren’t people required to have a transfer as proof of payment, even if they aren’t getting on another bus. In that case, everyOne will have to pay the fee. Anyone else thought about this?

  • JimmyD

    Their go-to answer for everything is Raise the Fares.
    They raise the fares and nothing improves. How many fare hikes have there been in the past 10 years? Anyone?

  • I truly never thought i would see the day in my own lifetime, where one got penalized for paying in CASH!!?? Are you serious? That is a scam in itself and smells quite… well… fishy not to mention unfair and ultimately disgustingly greedy! Not to mention that as a student, i had to take 3 busses to get to class. Boy would i have loved to only have had to take one, but one did not go from where i was to where my class was. I KNOW as a student, i would not be able to afford $12 a day in bus fees just to get to and from class each day. This is ridiculous. Maybe MTA should find some administrators who know how to not hemorrhage their budgets from the inside due to poor oversight and management. …Just a thought….

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