This is the sad truth.

A lot of people are commenting about "externalities". That's just handwaving.

The real solution is to increase the ridership and the frequency. Public transit must be _reliable_. I live in SF and experience Muni's unreliability first hand.

The reason a person would prefer to drive over taking the Muni is a simple one: she knows the car will be there when she's ready to head back. Muni, on the other hand: one never knows when the next bus will come or if it will come at all. And then the City hands out Muni passes to all homeless people, regardless of behavior. Yesterday I sat down in a Muni train and guess what? A used piece of TP (about a foot long) was blowing around on the floor and everybody was playing dodge-the-TP, trying to jump out of its way. Buses and trains are often not cleaned at the end of the day.

Question is: why doesn't the City subsidize Uber/Waymo etc. also to the tune of $6.37/trip (inside SF)?