mass transit aficionado's topics - tribe.net

Muni Lifeline Pass

2008-05-27T20:16:46Z

by Paul Hogarth, 2008-05-20
As the Supervisors vote on the Muni Budget for fiscal years 2008-09 and 2009-10 (which would raise fares during the second year), the MTA’s Governance Committee has instructed staff to develop a proposal improving the Lifeline Pass. Created in 2005 to help low-income, transit-dependent riders, the $35-a-month pass has proven inadequate because (a) the discount is minimal, (b) the pass does not work on BART, (c) the income cut-offs leave many working people behind and (d) even buying the pass can be a challenge. Ensuring that low-income people can access transit must be a priority – and the economic slump coupled with higher rents makes it even more urgent. As the MTA plans to use Prop A funds to hire more staff and make more efficient routes, those who depend on Muni cannot be left behind.

At today’s MTA Board meeting, Vice Chair Tom Nolan will announce that the staff will soon propose changes to the Lifeline Pass. It’s a long overdue effort to make Muni accessible for transit-dependent riders – while the transit agency also proposes changes that will help riders who have other options get to work. The Lifeline Pass is currently set at $35-a-month (as opposed to the regular pass at $45), and approximately 60,000 San Franciscans who make less than 200% of the poverty line are eligible. However, less than 3,000 riders actually buy the Lifeline Pass on a monthly basis.

When you read the details, it’s easy to see why so many haven’t bought the Lifeline Pass. Ten dollars isn’t much of a discount – especially when you can only get it at three locations in the City, it’s only sold four days a month, and to qualify you must show proof of eligibility with another government discount. Mission District riders find the pass even less appealing because it does not work on BART. While seniors, youth and the disabled have complained for decades that their Muni Pass also does not work on BART, they only have to pay $10 – which makes it worthwhile.

Improvement are still in the works, but staff has indicated a $15 Lifeline Pass would be proposed – while the MTA Budget would increase the Senior, Youth and Disabled pass to $15 in 2009 (and increase the Adult Fast Pass to $55.) This would enormously help the working poor who use Muni to get to their jobs, the hospital and grocery stores. While members of the Transit Not Traffic coalition – a group that came together after Prop A’s passage – have serious issues with raising fares next year, most support (and have lobbied for) the MTA Budget if we improve the Lifeline Pass.

But lowering the cost of the Lifeline Pass is only a starting point. If Muni wants to raise the Fast Pass for everyone else, the Lifeline Pass must be modified so that more people would qualify – ensuring that those who “can afford to pay more” really can. Right now, it’s only available for households that make less than 200% of the federal poverty line – so a single person making $10.50/hour is not eligible. Muni should expand eligibility to households making 300% of the federal poverty line, or $42,000/year for a family of two.

The application process for the Lifeline Pass needs to be streamlined. Currently, eligible riders must prove that they already qualify under another means-tested program (such as the CARE program or Universal Lifeline Telephone) – forcing applicants to jump several hoops to get a bus discount. If other programs simply require you to state your income under penalty of perjury, what’s wrong with doing the same for the Muni Lifeline Pass?

To qualify for the Lifeline Pass, you must go to one of two locations (170 Otis Street or the Career Link Center @ Mission and Cesar Chavez) during regular working hours and only during four days a month. Only after you’ve been deemed eligible can you buy it the following month at a third location – 11 South Van Ness. Other bus passes can be purchased online, and are available at locations throughout the City. How many working people can take time off their jobs to travel to these locations to purchase the pass?

Finally, the Lifeline Pass can only be purchased with cash. Part of this is due to concern that credit cards charge exorbitant interest rates for poor people, but there are other means of payment to make it “user friendly.” Accepting payments by money order, bank check cards and personal checks could go a long way to improving the Lifeline Pass.

San Francisco voters passed Prop A last November. The expectation was that if we give Muni an extra $26 million a year in parking revenue, we will get the first-class system that a “transit-first” City deserves. Transit-dependent populations in Chinatown and the Tenderloin worked hard to pass Prop A, along with advocates in the Mission, ACORN, SEIU and others. Muni has plans to use this money to change the bus routes so that they are more efficient – which can help everybody.

But unless we improve the Lifeline Pass, many San Franciscans won’t benefit from these changes. It's now up to the MTA Board to craft a good proposal.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Paul Hogarth is the Program Director of the Tenderloin Housing Clinic’s Transit Justice Project, and a member of the Transit Not Traffic Coalition.

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TEP Draft Proposals to Transform Muni

2008-05-09T21:23:30Z

Have you guys seen these? What do you think? I am just now reading them.

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http://www.sftep.com/docs.html

"The TEP’s preliminary proposals aim to transform Muni so people can get where they want to go quickly, reliably, and safely. The proposals would also help address Muni’s structural budget deficit by making service more efficient, and would reduce traffic congestion and pollution by attracting new customers to Muni. The preliminary TEP proposals are the result of countless conversations with Muni customers and will be further refined through continued dialogue. These proposals are draft documents; we will continue to update them as we correct small errors."

posted in mass transit aficionado - 3 replies

A few more SFTEP meetings left in May

2008-05-07T22:26:04Z

Saturday, May 10 at 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Harvey Milk Civil Rights Academy
4235 19th St. at Diamond St.
Nearby Muni routes: F, K, L, M, 24, 33, 35 & 37

Monday, May 12 at 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.
West Bay Conference Center
1290 Fillmore St. at Eddy St.
Nearby Muni routes: 5, 22, 31, 38 & 38L

Wednesday, May 14 at 6:30 p.m. – 8:30 p.m.
Bessie Carmichael Elementary
375 Seventh St. at Harrison St.
Nearby Muni routes: 9X, 12, 14X, 19 & 47

Saturday, May 17 at 10:30 a.m. - 12:30 p.m.
Mission YMCA
4080 Mission Street at Bosworth St.
Nearby Muni routes: 14, 23, 49 & 67

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Caltrain adventure

2008-03-10T21:01:26Z

I rode Caltrain down to San Jose the other day. Well, first, I either fell asleep or totally flaked on getting off at the right stop for the airport. I had to take the #22 bus back to the Santa Clara stop and then take the #10 to the airport. It kind of put me behind schedule, and I didn't have fare on me. Luckily, I was taken pity on, and a bus driver at the San Jose Caltrain station gave me a pass for free. I was feeling pretty good about making it over to the bus stop, pass in hand, waddling with my 50+ lb. bag of laundry to take to my mom's for the weekend, and then I got onto the bus going the wrong way.... bummer. Okay, off and then across the street. Eventually, I made it to the right bus and to the #10 stop... just as one pulled away. Dammit! I sat down, and it was warm. Actually hot. It felt good. I took off my layers and just sat there soaking it up. It felt good to be out of the city. Then this guy starts bitching -- why isn't there a bus here when the train lets off? I dunno, because trains and buses aren't on the same schedule. I tell him we just missed a bus but one should be coming anytime. Then, a second later, a #10 bus pulls up. But, he lets passengers off and says that no one can board. His doors close and I see he is going on break. Then, the man at the stop is irate. He says that we should at least be able to sit on the bus while this guy is sitting here. What?!? I don't sit in your breakroom while you are on break. That's just silly. About ten minutes later, another #10 pulls up, and the one sitting opens his doors. We all board and the irate man asks for a schedule. He fumes over the paper that is probably going to tell him what we all knew, that the bus was right on time. I got to the airport a little later than expected but with a clearer head. I was going with the flow, and it felt good.

posted in mass transit aficionado - 1 reply

BART magnetism

2008-03-10T01:38:07Z

Do you mean that I can finally use purses with clasps again? Or a cell phone holder? My life can return to magnets.

I do think it is funny that the person who wrote the story doesn't know what happens when your ticket gets screwed up, though. You get it verified by the ticket agent, then you go to the line at the transit store. Then, you can get a refund in amounts of $5.00, so if you have $2.00, you have to pay $3.00 to get $5.00 in BART credit. So, if you go somewhere that costs $6.00, you then have to add fare once you get there. Pain in the ass!
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BART planning tickets that resist magnets
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

BART management hopes to limit the havoc that those dastardly magnets can cause with fare cards.

The plan is to upgrade the magnetic stripes on the tickets, which should make it harder to erase the electronic record of a fare card's value. And that should mean fewer inconvenienced riders, officials said.

On Thursday, the BART board will consider a $3.7 million contract to purchase 180 million plastic tickets. Once the fare gates and ticket machines are reprogrammed, the new tickets would use a different kind of magnetic stripe and be less prone to damage by an iPod, cell phone, purse clasp or other device that contains a magnet. The retrofit isn't expected to be completed until November.

The magnetic stripes affixed to the front of the prepaid BART tickets keep track of how much money is left on each card and serve as a sort of key to let people enter and exit the electronic fare gates.

BART now receives about 250 "de-mag" complaints each day from passengers who are blocked from going through the fare gates because their tickets are damaged, agency spokesman Linton Johnson said.

And while the new tickets wouldn't be perfect, fewer problems are expected, Johnson said.

Not only would that mean less aggravation for riders, but also for station agents, who are the front-line BART workers dealing with the trouble tickets.

When asked how widespread the problem is, an agent at the Powell Street station in downtown San Francisco suggested a Chronicle reporter stick near her booth to get the answer. It took less than a minute for Morgan Stacy, a 21-year-old lifeguard from Sacramento, to show the agent her spoiled card.

"It says my card isn't readable, but I know there's still money on it," Stacy said.

The agent swiped it on a special machine to find out the value of the card and wrote Stacy a voucher for $3.40.

Perhaps another two minutes passed before Eileen Ho showed up at the booth.

"The machine wouldn't take my card, told me to see the agent," said Ho, a 15-year-old Fremont student who was in San Francisco for an afternoon of shopping. (She said she had the day off from school.)

Ho, too, walked away with a voucher after the agent checked her card.

The problem of bum cards has been exacerbated by the growing popularity of mobile phones, MP3 players and other gadgets that can damage the magnetic stripes. BART has signs up on the ticket vending machines that warn, "Tickets & Magnets Don't Mix" - part of a public education campaign that has resulted in the number of complaints dropping by half, Johnson said.

The new tickets, if the proposed contract with Electronic Data Magnetics Inc. is approved, will be delivered within four months. The contract for the last batch of tickets was awarded in 2004. BART, which has an average daily ridership nearing 358,000, issues about 40 million tickets a year. Laid end to end, they would extend roughly from San Francisco to Pittsburgh.

Have a problem with a BART ticket?
See the station agent, who may be able to issue a fare voucher on the spot.

Or mail the damaged ticket and a reason for the refund request to: Refunds, BART Treasury Dept., P.O. Box 12688, Oakland, CA 94604-2688.

For more information, call (510) 464-6841.

E-mail Rachel Gordon at rgordon@sfchronicle.com.

posted in mass transit aficionado - 1 reply

Examiner editorial -- Mayor not setting good example

2008-01-31T07:57:30Z

Anyone see this? We all know that Gavin is making some mistakes, but I hadn't seen all of the listing of salaries that were coming out of MTA in one place yet. This is actually pretty bad. How is Muni going to function this year without any money?
Cynthia

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Editorial
Mayor not setting good example
The San Francisco Examiner Newspaper
2008-01-29 11:00:00.0

SAN FRANCISCO -
What in the world could Mayor Gavin Newsom have been thinking? Here is one of the most image-conscious mayors in San Francisco history. Yet he raided Muni coffers to go on a hiring and staff promotion spree for his office staff, only weeks after announcing an upcoming $229 million deficit and demanding an all-department hiring freeze plus cuts of up to 13 percent.

Did Newsom imagine nobody would notice? Or did he believe his landslide re-election proved the public loved and trusted him so much that he could do anything he felt like — even things that made him look like a self-important hypocrite and played into the hands of his supervisor enemies.

“Leadership is leading by example,” Board of Supervisors President Aaron Peskin said, pointing out an obvious ethical truth. This is a time when a wise political leader should have garnered wide praise by instituting a hiring freeze and budget cuts in his own office, exemplifying the level of responsibility being sought from The City’s other public servants.

Instead, Newsom hired a deputy chief of staff out of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s district office and a director of government affairs from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Each of them gets $143,123, a substantial raise above their predecessors’ earnings. High-profile former regional chief U.S. prosecutor Kevin Ryan took over the Office of Criminal Justice with a salary of $160,862, a raise of $21,424 more than the prior appointee.

Newsom’s previous director of government affairs — with no known expertise in climatology or environmental technology — is now San Francisco’s director of climate protection initiatives with a salary of $130,112. This salary is paid by funds from the Municipal Transportation Agency, the Public Utilities Commission and the Department of Environment

Especially problematic is that no less than seven officials in the Mayor’s Office now have all or part of their salaries funded from the cash-starved MTA. Meanwhile, Muni bus operations struggle with a triple-digit structural budget deficit and consistently fail to meet on-time performance goals.

One such MTA-funded position is the new deputy press secretary hired two weeks ago for $85,000. Longtime political functionary Stuart Sunshine, a veteran of the inner circles of Mayors Frank Jordan and Willie Brown, earns $217,000 as Newsom’s point person on transit issues. Sixty percent of Sunshine’s pay is funded by the MTA, as is the entire $70,000 salary of his assistant.

The bottom line is that Mayor Newsom should have realized it was ethically and strategically wrong to beef up his own staff — especially at Muni expense — while simultaneously calling on all other municipal departments to cut their budgets and freeze hiring. We expect better from him in his second term.

posted in mass transit aficionado - 1 reply

Who you calling a ferry?

2008-01-30T01:44:09Z

anybody here ride the ferry? i live and work in the city, so don't do so as a commute, but i do love to ride them just for the heck of it, and it's really fun to go with someone you like to neck with. heck, they even serve booze.

the one i've taken most often is the one to jack london square. heinhold's first and last chance saloon is a great old dive bar, well worth the trip. some times on lovely days i just take the ferry over there, have a beer, and head on back. the commute direction they're really crowded, but coming back to the city they're virtually empty.

and the crew seem very convivial, as if they actually like their jobs.

posted in mass transit aficionado - 2 replies

Free ride? Fat chance: Muni fares will stay -- Article in Chronicle today

2008-01-29T18:49:26Z

Free ride? Fat chance: Muni fares will stay
Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Eliminating fares on San Francisco's Municipal Railway - an idea Mayor Gavin Newsom wanted explored - would worsen delays, overcrowding and financial burdens on the already strained transit system.

That bleak assessment by private consultants who evaluated the free-rides idea has led Newsom to quietly abandon the concept, top administration aides told The Chronicle on Monday.

"It's not something that we plan to pursue at this time," said Stuart Sunshine, the mayor's top transportation aide.

Newsom asked transit officials in March to study a no-fare system, saying at the time, "If it could happen here, it could happen anywhere." His suggestion was aimed at luring people out of their cars to reduce air pollution and traffic.

The consulting team hired by the city, led by Sharon Greene & Associates, looked at what happened when other jurisdictions adopted free transit programs. In larger cities, such as Austin, Texas, Trenton, N.J., and Denver, ridership increased by nearly 50 percent.

If that happened to Muni, which now provides nearly 700,000 trips on an average day, the annual operating and maintenance costs would rise by nearly $69 million. Muni's annual budget is about $670 million.

The extra costs would come from paying more drivers, maintenance and cleaning crews, supervisors and security guards.

In addition, the city would have to add an estimated 267 buses and streetcars to its fleet of about 1,000 at a cost of approximately $537 million. New storage and maintenance yards also would be needed to accommodate the new vehicles.

Muni also would have to figure out how to run more streetcars through the tunnels. The consultants warned of bottlenecks and added delays. The system already has problems running on schedule.

Muni currently needs an estimated $100 million to $150 million more a year to make the significant service improvements voters demanded in 1999 but have yet to see.

Even if the money were available, it would take five to 10 years to purchase the new equipment and expand the maintenance capacity.

City Controller Ed Harrington, a veteran City Hall fiscal watchdog who also chairs a special mayor's panel looking at ways to stabilize Muni's finances, said the notion of free Muni should be shelved because it likely would attract hundreds of thousands of new riders and prove detrimental.

"The odds are," Harrington said, the initiative "would become so successful that you'd destroy the system."

The consultants' draft report, a copy of which was obtained by The Chronicle, said, "Conceptually, fare-free service would appear consistent with San Francisco's 'transit-first' policy, which requires the city to promote alternatives to car travel. However, without significant improvements made to the system's infrastructure in order to increase reliability, fare elimination alone may actually make public transit a less viable alternative to other modes of travel."

Newsom, in asking for the study, speculated that the amount of money Muni now spends collecting and counting fares isn't much different than it gets at the fare box.

But actually, the consultants found, the difference is considerable. Costs related to fare collection add up to about $8.4 million a year. Muni collects nearly $112 million a year in fare revenue.

Muni charges $1.50 for a regular cash adult fare - $5 for a cable car ride - and $45 for a standard monthly FastPass. Discounts are offered to the disabled, seniors and youth.

Many transit agencies across the country have offered free rides - some systemwide and some in limited geographic areas, such as the programs in Portland, Ore., and Seattle that let people board for free in the downtown areas.

The experiments in Trenton, Austin and Denver were abandoned, and higher costs were cited as just one reason. Another reason: Drivers and longtime passengers complained that the free rides attracted rowdy and destructive joyriders.

Only a handful of systems that began a systemwide free-boarding program within the last 20 years continue to offer the service, the consultants found. All of them, in such places as Logan, Utah, and Clemson, S.C., are relatively small operations.

Closer to home, the East Bay city of Emeryville provides free bus shuttle service around town and to and from an Oakland BART station.

In Bay Area: The president of the Board of Supervisors demands that the mayor return transit money used to pay the salaries of mayoral aides. D5

Muni at a glance
-- Average daily ridership: almost 700,000
-- Annual operating budget: $670 million
-- Annual revenue from fares: nearly $112 million
-- Annual cost to collect fares: $8.4 million

E-mail Rachel Gordon at rgordon@sfchronicle.com.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/29/MNFQUNU4C.DTL
This article appeared on page A - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

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SFBG editorial today regarding failing transportation policy

2008-01-24T00:38:25Z

Did anyone see this today? Interesting. I would have thought that more people were riding Muni the way it is so packed and with gas prices so high.

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The city's transportation policy is failing -- as the city itself gets richer
By Tim Redmond (SF Bay Guardian)

There's a January report from the San Francisco Controller's Office that says the city's transportation policy is failing.

It doesn't say that in so many words — that might have gotten some media attention — but the implication is clear.

The report is on the taxicab industry, always a fascinating topic, and it's filled with charts and graphs discussing how much money the cab companies make and how little the drivers make. But in the middle of all of that is a remarkable paragraph that says:

"The resident population in San Francisco appears to be increasing. Since 2000, the Department of Finance reports it has grown by 4.7 percent, or by approximately 0.6 percent per year. Although the Census Bureau believes San Francisco lost population from 2000 to 2005, it too has reported population increase since 2005. Muni trips have slightly declined over the same period — a cumulative negative change of 2.5 percent — while vehicle registrations in San Francisco have increased by 1.5 percent. This suggests that residents may be substituting away from mass transit and into private and personal transport modes."

That reads like, well, a Controller's Office report, but here's the translation: More San Franciscans are driving cars. Fewer are taking Muni. It's not exactly shocking news to anyone who pays attention to traffic patterns in town, but it's a serious indictment of city policy.

The statistics show a couple of things. One is that the city is, indeed, getting richer — generally speaking, wealthier people are more likely to use private cars. Another is that Muni hasn't been performing: all of the national and local data show there's a direct correlation between on-time transit service and ridership (and of course there's a direct, or rather inverse, correlation between the number of people riding Muni and the number of cars on the streets.)

But what it says to me is that city hall doesn't really consider the car glut a top priority.

There is no official city goal to reduce the number of cars in town or the number of car miles traveled or the number of vehicles on the streets. The city Planning Department continues to base its land-use decisions on projections of increased car traffic (which has to be accommodated with more garages). Nobody's calling for a five-year plan to turn the trend around.

It's going to be a big year for transit policy: the city's Transit Effectiveness Study comes out in February, and the report on congestion management should be done in June. Perhaps the supervisors can use that information to create goals, timelines, and programs that will reduce — instead of accommodate — cars on the streets.

I'm part of the problem, and I know it: I drive a car, and I drive it too often. I do it because it's difficult to get my kids to and from school on a bus.

That's one of the tricky parts of this equation (school buses in a city where everyone has choice and kids from any neighborhood can go to any school), but I have to say, the parking lot at McKinley Elementary School is packed every single morning with people driving schoolkids. You'd think the city could work with the San Francisco Unified School District — maybe organize car pools. Maybe the mayor's $130,000 per year global warming coordinator could get involved.

We could start with a citywide survey: Why do you drive? Where? What would get you out of your car? Aim for 5 percent per year. It'd be better than what we're doing now.

posted in mass transit aficionado - 2 replies

Missed connections? Direct connections?

2008-01-23T23:23:13Z

I can bet we've all browsed the Craigslist missed connections at least a time or two, but have you ever had one that didn't get away? Or an encounter that was so juicy that you looked for the same person on the same bus line at a similar time?

I'm interested in knowing watcha got, and then I'll dish on a couple of my own. (Respectfully, of course... it's all good stuff.)

posted in mass transit aficionado - 1 reply

Late night Caltrain

2008-01-23T22:28:05Z

No train between 10pm and midnight. What are they thinking? I was in SF the other day with some friends and we were saying our farewells around 10:30.

Luckily someone gave me a ride down the peninsula....

posted in mass transit aficionado - 0 replies

The tribe is now public

2008-01-20T22:56:07Z

So, feel free to put up photos. I find that I take funny shots on BART and Muni from time to time. Just, please, nothing that is going to get us in trouble or is offensive... or thrown off Tribe.

Thanks!!

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To Fast Pass or not to Fast Pass

2008-01-18T02:07:37Z

that is the question.

if you take muni both ways 5 days a week it's an okay deal, and it's probably a good deal if you take s.f. bart or cable cars a lot, but for someone like me who walks to work and takes the bus home and often skates on the 38, it's a RIP at $45. i think they'd sell a lot more at $30.

posted in mass transit aficionado - 3 replies

Transit costs pre-tax? By law?

2008-01-17T19:50:41Z

Supervisor Mirkarimi Promotes Commuter Benefits for SF Residents:

Supervisor Mirkarimi is sponsoring amendments to the City's' Environment Code to require San Francisco employers to offer their employees the option to use pre-tax wages to pay for MUNI passes, vanpool costs and other qualified transit. The new law would not impose any new costs on businesses, and could actually reduce employers' payroll tax liability. As the Internal Revenue Code already allows employees' pre-tax dollars to pay for transit costs, businesses have always been able to voluntarily offer this perk. But, despite the obvious cost savings to both employers and employees, a vast majority of businesses do not offer this benefit.

This new provision of the Environment Code will help increase transit ridership by reducing the out of pocket expense.

Commuter Benefits will be heard by the Budget and Finance Committee on February 6 at 1:00 p.m. Please call or e-mail the committee members to voice your support for this measure

posted in mass transit aficionado - 0 replies

Ohmigod, we missed No Pants 2k7

2008-01-16T22:25:36Z

Improv Everywhere had their 6th annual No Pants day on January 13th. We soooo needed to have a pants off BART contingent. Next year, people, next year.

http://www.improveverywhere.com/2007/01/13/no-pants-2k7/

posted in mass transit aficionado - 2 replies

Catalyst for the public trans tribe

2008-01-15T20:38:05Z

When I read his diatribe, I thought... why do they even have this tribe when they don't even *like* mass transit? I don't even think they like New York, which is where I am guessing everyone in the tribe is from. And today, I left. It wasn't something like a big confrontation, or even a revolution, but after I read this, I thought that I wanted to start my own tribe - for public trans geeks, for people who might actually enjoy meeting neighbors on the bus, for those of us who browse missed connections on Craigslist under search terms "BART" "Muni" and our bus route numbers. Because some of us *choose* public transportation as a means to get from here to there, not just because we don't have a car, but because we are investing in the infrastructure of our city, our home.

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