Another Way To Think About The MUNI Fast Pass Increase
The trial balloons for an increase in the costs of a monthly MUNI Pass are being floated, primarily as a "quick fix" for MUNI's persistent budget woes. Always, of course, without mentioning how the politicians keep trying to take away money from MUNI.
No transit system in the world makes all of its money from the farebox anyway, but you know what will accompany this hike - more cuts in service. Pay more for less. The San Francisco mantra, it seems.
But wait! Let's go read some more MUNI news in the Examiner...specifically the fact that MUNI is about to make a huge payout because their employees accidentally killed a child.
This, in addition to the many many payouts MUNI makes due to accidents. As you may recall we've had a few lately, right here on our Mighty N.
So what we're seeing is that we (taxpayers) are paying out huge settlements for horrific accidents. At the same time we 'balanced budgets' by cutting safety, staffing, and maintenance. The politicians got a pat on the back for "not raising taxes," and in the short term, everything was fine, until, um the dying and suffering. If, perhaps we'd spent the nickel in the past to make sure the system was as safe as humanly possible, perhaps today we wouldn't be spending huge payouts for settlements - and lives would not have been shattered by these tragedies.
Not all accidents can be prevented (after all, they are "accidents" and not "stuff MUNI did on purpose to ruin lives"). But when you hear about big pay raises for upper management, big pay for political aides with no background in MUNI safety OR climatology, and science fiction written by the man who played political games with MUNI's budgets, and local legislators that love to talk "green" but vote for huge cuts to MUNI time and again, it's hard to accept that a fare increase of this size is "necessary."
Until people decide that they'd like to get value for their money in San Francisco, this kind of nonsense will continue. So long as you accept the notion of "pay more and more and get less and less", and accept giving big pay raises to people that are not qualified, you will get exactly what you have now. Makes for wonderful blog posts - Hell of a way to run a major American city.
