Jilted San Francisco Muni passengers who suspect that others aren’t paying their bus fare can now feel vindicated: According to a new report from urban planning think tank SPUR, the transit agency’s rate of fare revenue per passenger is less than half what it was ten years ago.
That finding, buried deep in a 32-page analysis that compared San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency to 14 of its national peers, shows the challenges that city officials must confront as they try to persuade voters to bail Muni out this November. Faced with an operating deficit that could rise from $307 million this fiscal year to $434 million by 2030, SFMTA is relying on passage of two ballot measures — a regional sales tax and a citywide parcel tax — to prevent drastic service cuts.
To sway the voting public, agency leadership have tried to tell an efficiency story, underscoring the positions they have cut, the schedules they have tweaked and the bus routes they have sped up. And the SPUR report suggests that the work is paying off. Crunching numbers from the National Transit Database, analysts found that Muni had performed “consistently well,” with ridership rebounding since the pandemic, more passengers per hour than other transit systems, and moderate costs to deliver service.
Muni “is an exceptionally productive system,” said Sebastian Petty, SPUR’s senior transportation policy advisory and the lead author of the report. He views San Francisco’s transportation agency as uniquely nimble in the wake of pandemic shutdowns, remote work, inflation and competition from ride-hail vehicles…