San Francisco's Muni is not subject to neglect! It is meeting its objectives very well. It's just that its objectives don't actually include things like "actual

San Francisco's Muni is not subject to neglect! It is meeting its objectives very well. It's just that its objectives don't actually include things like "actually moving people" and "cost control" (or even "revenue"). They are more like "advance the political career of whoever is in charge", at the highest levels, and "provide lifetime employment for everyone in the union with incredibly generous terms of work", for day to day operations. One of Muni's main problems with timeliness is drivers who don't show up, requiring either overtime work from other drivers (which they have trouble affording) or cancelling the bus. And if you think that's great, then just wait while the CALPERS pension fund (all state employees) collapses over the next few decades and no one has any money for transit anymore. It's not just the usual overpromise and underdelivering with a taxpayer guarantee on the difference. It's not even just a problem with corruption, explicit bribery, and pay-to-play campaign donations, though it has been wreaked with all of those scandals. Even when it's otherwise ostensibly on the level, it doesn't try to earn money for its employees' retirement so much as it tries, as the state treasurer once proudly put it, to "mobilize the power of the capital markets for public purpose". It'll likely make the bankrupt New York City of the 1970s look like a beacon of prosperity and fiscal responsibility. (There's other incompetence at work, of course.)