> 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.

Oh, hear me out, add more buses so that those people don’t have to get into a car and create traffic.