8 ms·

San Francisco's Muni (light rail + bus) system has a budget of about $1.2B and its ticket revenues are about $200M. That means, 5/6th of the budget is subsidize

• Spooky23 11mo ago
  Without nominal costs, buses turn into mobile benches for unhoused people and druggies. It’s the same story as what happens with libraries.
  • int0x29 11mo ago
    Have you ever ridden Muni? The fares are mostly dodged. This would change next to nothing.
  • crazygringo 11mo ago
    They're already mobile benches for unhoused people and druggies. They just get on anyways already and don't pay the fare. And the driver does nothing because they don't want to get in a fight. (Unless a passenger threatens others, then they get the police involved.) Making the buses free isn't going to produce any more of it.
    • zdragnar 11mo ago
      If the fares aren't enforced, then yes, the buses are free.
    • j_w 11mo ago
      Yeah comments like the parents are typical from people that don't use public transit. The people who can't/aren't going to pay that some people "don't want" on public transit are always going to not pay and still use it, so why not make it free for everybody? I live in an area that had outdated payment systems on their bus network. They determined that the cost to upgrade the payment systems would be higher than the revenue of fares, so they just made the buses free. Edit: A lot of replies associate fare payment with behaviors (and smell?) of riders. I think that it's important to recognize that ones ability to pay a fare does not inherently indicate that they are "undesirable" in some way. Could their be a correlation? Possibly. But dedicate the policing to things that actually matter - an unruly passenger should get policing efforts, not a non-paying one (or smelly, really? Obviously homeless people can be putrid but seriously people smelling bad is not a crime).
      • eru 11mo ago
        > Yeah comments like the parents are typical from people that don't use public transit. The people who can't/aren't going to pay that some people "don't want" on public transit are always going to not pay and still use it, so why not make it free for everybody? Huh? I never owned a car and taken public transport all my live, and it's never been much of a problem kicking non-paying people off. What kind of lawless hellholes are you guys living in? (I lived in Germany, Turkey, Britain, Singapore and Australia.)
        • wetpaws 11mo ago
          [dead]
        • BoorishBears 11mo ago
          I can't tell if you're feigning not realizing the thread about San Francisco under a post referencing "Iowa City" is probably referring to the US. Feels like a coy way of getting to say something as inflammatory as "the US a lawless hellhole" on HN: which is fine enough... but there's also a reason YC isn't a Singaporean or Turkish or British or German institution.
    • Qwertious 10mo ago
      >And the driver does nothing because they don't want to get in a fight. Historically, it wasn't even the driver's job - the bus would have 2 employees: the driver and the conductor. The driver would drive, and the conductor would go around collecting fares after everyone gets on the bus. The conductor could have the angry discussion with the fare-evader without interrupting the driver, and if need be, the driver and conductor could 2v1 the fare-evader. At some point, before computers were on buses, they got rid of conductors. For "efficiency".
  • mlmonkey 11mo ago
    You think it's presence of a fare that prevents homeless people from getting on a bus?? Even the light rail has ways to get on without paying, and the homeless know them.
    • eru 11mo ago
      You can have enforcers kicking people out?
      • teaearlgraycold 11mo ago
        I’ve only seen them do this once in my 18 months living in the city.
      • 6510 11mo ago
        Some countries have cameras on public transport with security people watching the footage live. If someone misbehaves ever so slightly (like drinking alcohol) the doors wont open until enforcers arrive. With modern AI you can have one person monitor countless cameras. They could even retract before the doors open so that you cant smash or spray them and run away.
        • trial3 11mo ago
          this… can’t be a serious suggestion, can it? have you ever had to rely on public transit in a major city?
          • fragmede 11mo ago
            Oh which continent? Is it possible that what you assume it's normal and default is colored by your personal experience and not representative of the world at large?
            • trial3 11mo ago
              > Oh which continent? what answer could i possibly give to you that would change your response? antarctica? > Is it possible that what you assume it's normal and default is colored by your personal experience and not representative of the world at large? of course this is true. what are you going for here. my objection is to standing up a Train Security Panopticon with "modern AI" and locking commuters (in north america) on a train (in north america) who might depend on a schedule (using a north american time zone) stuck at a station until the (north american) cops can come and pull someone (who statistically, but not for sure, would be north american) off of the car for being drunk (off of beer i've had in my personal experience, coloring this example, which may not be the beer that is representative of the world at large) and napping on the seats
  • darth_avocado 11mo ago
    You clearly haven’t used MUNI. Homeless are already riding the buses without paying, and I’ve rarely seen them camp in them. Most bus drivers know these people on a first name basis and very few of them are actually do anything beyond going from place to place. And if you’re from San Francisco and use MUNI, you’ll also know that half the people don’t pay anyway. There’s no reason to make people pay.
    • teaearlgraycold 11mo ago
      I see a lot of homeless people on the 14 and they’re just chilling going from place to place. 38 however can have some very mentally ill people on it. My friend saw this guy on the 38 who was yelling about how much he hates the Japanese. Funny enough that guy got off at Japantown. Rambling aside, I think it’s unfair to give people shit because they’re homeless. The real issue is we don’t commit people to psychiatric care when they’re clearly a problem in our society.
      • ChrisMarshallNY 11mo ago
        > The real issue is we don’t commit people to psychiatric care when they’re clearly a problem in our society. I’m old enough to remember when we did that. The homeless population absolutely skyrocketed, after all the mental institutions were closed in the 1980s and 1990s. That said, many of them were hellholes. It’s sort of arguable as to whether the patients were worse off, but one thing’s for sure; the majority of city-dwellers (the ones with homes) are not better off, now. I’m really not sure who benefited from this. Here, on Long Island (NY), we have some of the largest psychiatric centers in the world; almost all completely shut down, and decomposing. The campuses are gorgeous, but can’t be developed, because they would require hundreds of millions of dollars in cleanup.
        • teaearlgraycold 11mo ago
          If we want to reopen them we owe it to the patients to make them a nice place to be.
      • 11mo ago
  • Hnrobert42 11mo ago
    I take the bus a lot in DC. People get on without paying all the time. If someone just wants to sit on the bus, the fee is not what's stopping them.
    • anon291 11mo ago
      The fee gives a reason to kick them off. Portland's trimet recently made it a policy to not allow sleeping which means the transit police can now intervene when the opioid addict does his dose on the train. Meanwhile the tired professionals are left alone. As it should be
      • idiotsecant 11mo ago
        It seems like the more straight forward version of that policy is 'no drugs on the train'. Allowing selective enforcement is a sure path to unintended consequences.
        • anon291 11mo ago
          Nah the consequences are more riders. That's a great consequence. > no drugs on the train Nonsense. I'd rather have people carry their illegal drugs on the train and take them at home. The issue is people experiencing the effects of the drug on the train and often times making it unsafe for women, children, and men too (it doesn't really matter what your sex is when the drugged out man vomits on you). I honestly don't care if you carry your illegal drugs everywhere, as long as you make sure the effects of said drugs are dealt with privately. I have major issues with people making the consequences of their drug use other people's problem
          • squigz 11mo ago
            Pretty sure GP meant "no doing drugs on the train" not "no possessing drugs on the train"
      • sudosysgen 11mo ago
        They will just get on another bus. Meanwhile the entire bus will be slowed down by the inspectors asking everyone to leave the bus so they can check for payment or by holding up passengers exiting at connection stations.
  • m463 11mo ago
    What if busses are a solution for the carless people. (un-carred?)
  • mmooss 11mo ago
    More fear mongering about the 'other'. Not immigrants or religous groups or racial groups this time, but unhoused and addicted people. The dangerous people are the ones spreading fear - that leads to horrible things. I've had no problem with unhoused people who I am around almost every day. Why would I? All the fear mongering is wrong. You have nothing to fear but fear itself.
    • cindyllm 11mo ago
      [dead]
  • rahimnathwani 11mo ago
    Sadly, there's very little enforcement of fares on SF buses.
  • cycomanic 11mo ago
    Here is an idea: Fix your homelessness problem and don't let other policies be guided by the best way to keep homeless people out of sight.
    • dyauspitr 11mo ago
      You can’t unless were willing to forcibly put these people in shelters. Many of the persistent ones are hardcore drug users waiting to die, they don’t give a damn about being rehabilitated.
      • Qwertious 11mo ago
        The number of people who can afford a home is very strongly correlated with how affordable homes are. I therefore propose that if we can make homes more affordable, homelessness will decrease.
      • Der_Einzige 11mo ago
        Most people here don’t realize how much the homeless are hated and how willing trump voting Americans are to literally let them die on the streets or worse. Schadenfreude is the dominant feeling of the times, and many if not most Americans would basically celebrate a “purge” of the homeless.
      • array_key_first 11mo ago
        This is just not true generally. It might seem stupid or incredibly obvious, but homelessness is mostly caused by housing prices. In places with less affordable housing, there is more homeless people. The solution to homelessness is to build more housing. That's the solution a 5 year old would come up with, too, but it's correct.
    • pkulak 11mo ago
      The problem is that the transit agency doesn't have a lot of agency over its city's homeless population.
      • bmicraft 11mo ago
  • sudosysgen 11mo ago
    This is completely false - a drug addict will simply get on the bus without paying. The fine for fare evasion won't even change the calculus one iota.
• deleted 11mo ago
  [deleted]
• eru 11mo ago
  > That means, 5/6th of the budget is subsidized by the taxpayers of SF. There is no reason why Muni can't be free. You'd still want to charge for congestion. Ie when a particular bus (or rather bus route) is reliably full at a particular time of the day, gradually raise prices until it's just below capacity. Basically, you want to transport the maximum number of passengers while making it so that any single person who wants to get on the bus (at prevailing prices) still can. Instead of a bespoke dynamic system that adjust prices dynamically, you might want to keep it simple and just have a simple peak / off-peak distinction.
  • _aavaa_ 11mo ago
    Oh, hear me out, add more buses so that those people don’t have to get into a car and create traffic.
    • bluGill 11mo ago
      With what money? Your fares are a good sign of value for riders
      • _aavaa_ 11mo ago
        Overfull buses is also a good sign of value for riders.
    • eru 11mo ago
      If you add so many buses that there's no congestion at all during the worst rush hour, you'll have enormous extra capacity just uselessly sitting around the rest of the day. Obviously you'd want both: charge for congestion, and use the price signals you get to help you decide where (and when) to add capacity. Resources are limited, and buying yet another bus and hiring an extra bus driver just to shave the last tiny bit of congestion off Monday morning might be a noble ideal, but you might be better off using those funds to pay for another free school meal (or whatever other do-goodery is the best use of the marginal dollar).
• manquer 11mo ago
  The net revenue would be lower than $200M. There are substantial costs associated with ticket revenue collection, from the % payment gateways charge, the maintenance and replacement cost the devices and turnstiles hardware, all the software and people who have to manage and enforce the system. The issue with SF (unlike Iowa city) is that free for all everybody is going to be harder sell to voters when there is large amount of out of city traffic -travelers and greater Bay Area residents who do not pay city taxes. What is more realistic is extend subsidies to all residents of the city beyond the current programs for youth/seniors/homeless/low income etc.
• awillen 11mo ago
  > So money can be found for the homeless, the RV dwelllers, etc. but not for the city's lawful residents and taxpayers. But it's those lawful residents and taxpayers paying for it if you make it free anyway. They're just paying through their taxes rather than through fares. So still all taxpayer money, just non-riding taxpayers subsidizing riding taxpayers. Why is that better?
• saghm 11mo ago
  > Example: the City has been trying to get rid of the RVs parked illegally on the streets, dumping their effluents and engine oil all over the City streets. To get these RVs off the streets, the City is spending $36M+ (and counting). So money can be found for the homeless, the RV dwelllers, etc. but not for the city's lawful residents and taxpayers. I'd have to assume that the ones who are driving the political political pressure for this money to be spent as it is are the so-called "lawful residents and taxpayers"; I'm sure the groups you mention facing extra scrutiny would be happy for that money to go towards the buses instead. It's not hard to imagine that certain issues like RV parking get outsized attention pretty much for the exact same reason that the buses don't.
• mvdtnz 11mo ago
  > There is no reason why Muni can't be free. Surely a city with a budget of $15B can find $200M (about 1.5% of budget) to make up for the shortfall? How many other $200M projects should they just "find" budget for? Only the one you like?
• Aloisius 11mo ago
  SF's budget doesn't contain $15B of money it can use for whatever it wants. Most of it isn't discretionary, either because of voter mandates or by federal/state government requirements and has to go to specific programs. A good chunk is actually city businesses (hospitals, airport, utility, port, etc.) which mostly break even. SF was able to spend money trying to getting rid of RVs because it was living on emergency money from the state and shifting capital expenditure priorities around (capital expenditures costs are offset mostly by the asset you're buying, at least in the short term). That emergency money is gone now, so now we're living in an era of budget cuts, though given SF's history, I full expect it to spend money recklessly and hope revenue turns around, but even they aren't so far gone to add $300M in operating expenditures to make MUNI free with no plan for a source of revenue to make up the difference.
• scoofy 11mo ago
  SF Muni is literally so deep in a financial hole, service may be cut in half next summer if they don't pass a sizable spending measure (the last two both failed). SFMTA faces a deficit of about $320 million starting next year... and that will grow. The system has already been bailed out by the state. We now going to get a $750 million loan is just to keep the system functioning until the measure has a chance to pass. This platitude of "Muni should be free" has no bearing on reality when the system is literally collapsing as we speak. https://www.sfmta.com/project-updates/sfmtas-financial-crisis https://www.sfmta.com/project-updates/sfmtas-financial-crisi... https://sfstandard.com/2025/09/10/routes-eliminated-trains-once-hour-bart-muni-contemplate-nightmare-scenario/ https://sfstandard.com/2025/09/10/routes-eliminated-trains-o... https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/politics/bay-area-transit-bailout-details-light-as-gavin-newsom-backs/article_3065e753-2ffd-4606-9bf4-61db54d7216d.html https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/politics/bay-area-transit-ba...