This doesn't feel like the right way of thinking about it---if you went from 20% of people paying fares to 80%, that's 4x the revenue with the same fixed costs, and farebox recovery goes from 13% to 52%. Now, I don't think compliance is actually that low, but the point is that you shouldn't think of fares as collecting a fixed share of the operating costs.

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ProfessorLayton a day ago | parent [-]

The costs may be fixed but so is ~87% of the revenue via tax money.

Muni can be 100% free without increasing taxes too. The people using public land to store their private vehicles are not paying their fair share. Proper parking pricing and enforcement could easily pay for Muni’s deficit.

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aesthesia a day ago | parent [-]

Yes, money is fungible. But why should it be that people who park cars on the street need to pay their fair share but people who ride Muni don't need to pay anything?

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fragmede a day ago | parent [-]

To incentivize the people taking their cars to use the bus instead!

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aesthesia 11 hours ago | parent [-]

Sure, but then it's not about a "fair share" any more; it's about incentivizing specific behaviors.

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ProfessorLayton 10 hours ago | parent [-]

It's both. Why should the public 100% subsidize private vehicle storage in vast swaths of the city (And greatly undercharge when it's paid), but not public transit?

SF has some of the most valuable private[1] and public land in the US. Why is it so pressing to charge the last 13¢ on the dollar for a Muni rider, but not for drivers to pay for the public space they're storing their property on?

[1] Private land owners know this, which is why they charge a lot to use their parking garages/parking lots in SF.

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aesthesia 5 hours ago | parent [-]

The proposal was to charge for public street parking so we can make Muni free. That's not (at least not obviously) a "fair" allocation, it's just a transfer from one group to another. I agree that it's bad for street parking to be free, I just don't think it's necessarily the best use of funds from that to make transit free. If you're spending on transit, why not spend the money on expanding service instead?

	▲	ProfessorLayton 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> The proposal was to charge for public street parking so we can make Muni free. My proposal is to make Muni free full stop. Via taxes is fine with me, I provided another way that doesn't necessitate that. We are already paying for the vast majority of each Muni trip from taxes. >That's not (at least not obviously) a "fair" allocation, it's just a transfer from one group to another. You're saying we're just transferring from one group to another, well SF was built for people before cars became commonplace, with excellent public transit before it was torn out for cars. I'm arguing that some of that needs to be transferred back to the people for better use (Bigger sidewalks, bike lanes, restaurant parklets etc.) >If you're spending on transit, why not spend the money on expanding service instead? Expanding service is great, but you'd be hard pressed to pay for it via parking meters/tickets and it costs even more to run a system on top of that, particularly the metro system.