So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the MTA budget “woes” (ugh, I really hate magazine & newspaper speak) of late. I don’t think it’s any secret that I tend to skew progressive/populist in my thinking about these things. I am an ardent Muni booster (even when there is no inbound N-Judah at Cole & Carl from 8:48am to 9:09am STILL I DEFEND YOU, SFMUNI!), and I generally tend to take the side of the most vulnerable party in any situation. You know, like you’re supposed to do on the roads. And in kindergarten. Do unto others like you’re wearing their shoes. Or something. Feel me? So, anyway, I was a little reticent to get behind the whole “Veto the MTA Budget” thing, because despite the rampant badmouthing of city workers (or maybe because of it), I’ve known them to be decent (if a little demotivated), capable people who do the best they can within limitations of resources and politics. And, I find the public’s tendency to freak the fuck out in a budget crisis to be too reactionary and short-sighted. Prosperity is cyclical, and until we learn how to make policy for the long term rather than the band-aid format, we’ll never get past these “OMG WE HAVE NO MONEY HOW DID THAT HAPPEN!?” periods in which we make emergency decisions that have lasting impact on quality of life and municipal services. So, I initially felt like rejecting the budget might be more emotional than practical, and somewhat insulting to those who clearly put their best work and knowledge into drafting it, but I also can’t help but feel like some of the MTA’s actions and alternatives in this situation are not good policymaking, and it doesn’t feel like they’re doing what’s best for the city in the long term, it feels like they’re doing what works politically right now. Sort of. The most glaring indication of this is in the decision to raise Muni fares and cut Muni service, but without comparable increases in car parking fees. The point of merging Muni and DPT was, I thought, to stop pitting cars and transit against each other, and start letting them work together towards the “Transit First” city policy, which thus far, has only really been lip service. The TEP (Transit Effectiveness Project) was a helpful, well-intentioned thing, but it wasn’t given the feeding and watering it needed to make positive change (and it certainly won’t now, given the budget issues.) Mayor Newsom points to the TEP as his tangible contribution to reforming Muni, but the people who actually use Muni (he is not one) will get nothing but decreased service. The TEP called for good alternatives and increased efficiency on the most important lines, but this current budget-shortfall policymaking will ensure we get little to none of the *good* improvements, but plenty of the service cuts. Also, many of the TEP’s recommendations for rerouting lines to create artery streets (like Haight, and Mission) would only work with a corresponding decrease in car traffic on those streets, which this particular mayoral administration has made no effort to abate; actually he talks proudly about *increasing* the number of cars on city streets (as long as they’re hybrids it’s apparently okay.) The hottest political button seems to be the fare increase. I am actually not as worried about the $2.00 fare; many other American cities’ transit systems are already at that price point. And even though transplants to San Francisco love to declare Muni inferior to other systems (insert NYC subway here, even though it is totally not analogous), pretty much all public transit users in every American city have universal gripes about timeliness, cleanliness, reliability and clear communication. Until public transit is better funded and made a higher political priority at the federal, state, and local levels, it will never be a magical chariot ferrying the most clean and well-behaved sector of society to their destinations on golden wings of infallible schedules. And even in places where transit is a well-funded, widely-used, efficient part of daily life, it isn’t infallible; on a trip to the Netherlands last fall, NS (the Dutch nationwide rail) worked great the majority of the time, but wasn’t immune to maintenance issues that kept us on one train for almost an hour between the two relatively close-together cities of Amsterdam and Utrecht. Similarly, the city surface buses in the minor city where we stayed were clean and nice, but not super frequent (about 3-4 times an hour) and on occasion, would leave the stop a few moments before the scheduled time. So, even when prioritized, well-funded and the most acceptable mode of transportation for all cross-sections of the population, transit systems are still imperfect. This is all just to say, Muni isn’t all that terrible, comparatively. It covers the city comprehensively, it works mostly when and how it’s supposed to, and its idiosyncrasies are not wildly divergent from those you find in cities across the nation and world. Granted, it is a system that works best for users who know it well and/or requires a fair amount of study to get it right, since we’re not great at communication (signage, wayfinding, service updates) for the unacquainted. Also we have well-publicized maintenance and staffing issues, but I don’t need to be your link bitch for those; they’re easy to find. Overall though, it’s a decent system comparable to other American examples. And one I wouldn’t mind paying $10 more a month for (I’m a monthly pass user, rather than a per-fare rider.) I actually don’t mind paying more for Muni. I do resent *this* proposed budget, however, because it comes with two simultaneous bitter pills: cuts to basic service I use every day, and no comparable increases in fees for car parking. MTA is recovering revenue from precisely the wrong group of stakeholders; penalizing Muni riders discourages the kind of activity a real “Transit First” policy supports, and ignores the much larger revenue windfall that could be recovered from premium priced car parking. And car parking SHOULD be premium priced; personal automobiles take up an obscene amount of personal space per person, and by its very nature, a dense urban core has less personal space to offer. The city already sacrifices the public space usurped by private curb cuts (made by private driveways) with little or no remuneration for its losses. Continued profligacy with scarce public space in order to preserve automobile culture doesn’t make any kind of sense, economic, environmental or social, and it doesn’t demonstrate that the decisionmakers are taking custodianship of our future in the long term, which is what I believe public administrators ought to do. For a much better assessment of this issue, please click here!

So, I’ve been thinking a lot about the MTA budget “woes” (ugh, I really hate magazine & newspaper speak) of late.

I don’t think it’s any secret that I tend to skew progressive/populist in my thinking about these things. I am an ardent Muni booster (even when there is no inbound N-Judah at Cole & Carl from 8:48am to 9:09am STILL I DEFEND YOU, SFMUNI!), and I generally tend to take the side of the most vulnerable party in any situation. You know, like you’re supposed to do on the roads. And in kindergarten. Do unto others like you’re wearing their shoes. Or something. Feel me? So, anyway, I was a little reticent to get behind the whole “Veto the MTA Budget” thing, because despite the rampant badmouthing of city workers (or maybe because of it), I’ve known them to be decent (if a little demotivated), capable people who do the best they can within limitations of resources and politics. And, I find the public’s tendency to freak the fuck out in a budget crisis to be too reactionary and short-sighted. Prosperity is cyclical, and until we learn how to make policy for the long term rather than the band-aid format, we’ll never get past these “OMG WE HAVE NO MONEY HOW DID THAT HAPPEN!?” periods in which we make emergency decisions that have lasting impact on quality of life and municipal services. So, I initially felt like rejecting the budget might be more emotional than practical, and somewhat insulting to those who clearly put their best work and knowledge into drafting it, but I also can’t help but feel like some of the MTA’s actions and alternatives in this situation are not good policymaking, and it doesn’t feel like they’re doing what’s best for the city in the long term, it feels like they’re doing what works politically right now. Sort of.

The most glaring indication of this is in the decision to raise Muni fares and cut Muni service, but without comparable increases in car parking fees. The point of merging Muni and DPT was, I thought, to stop pitting cars and transit against each other, and start letting them work together towards the “Transit First” city policy, which thus far, has only really been lip service. The TEP (Transit Effectiveness Project) was a helpful, well-intentioned thing, but it wasn’t given the feeding and watering it needed to make positive change (and it certainly won’t now, given the budget issues.) Mayor Newsom points to the TEP as his tangible contribution to reforming Muni, but the people who actually use Muni (he is not one) will get nothing but decreased service. The TEP called for good alternatives and increased efficiency on the most important lines, but this current budget-shortfall policymaking will ensure we get little to none of the *good* improvements, but plenty of the service cuts. Also, many of the TEP’s recommendations for rerouting lines to create artery streets (like Haight, and Mission) would only work with a corresponding decrease in car traffic on those streets, which this particular mayoral administration has made no effort to abate; actually he talks proudly about *increasing* the number of cars on city streets (as long as they’re hybrids it’s apparently okay.)

The hottest political button seems to be the fare increase. I am actually not as worried about the $2.00 fare; many other American cities’ transit systems are already at that price point. And even though transplants to San Francisco love to declare Muni inferior to other systems (insert NYC subway here, even though it is totally not analogous), pretty much all public transit users in every American city have universal gripes about timeliness, cleanliness, reliability and clear communication. Until public transit is better funded and made a higher political priority at the federal, state, and local levels, it will never be a magical chariot ferrying the most clean and well-behaved sector of society to their destinations on golden wings of infallible schedules. And even in places where transit is a well-funded, widely-used, efficient part of daily life, it isn’t infallible; on a trip to the Netherlands last fall, NS (the Dutch nationwide rail) worked great the majority of the time, but wasn’t immune to maintenance issues that kept us on one train for almost an hour between the two relatively close-together cities of Amsterdam and Utrecht. Similarly, the city surface buses in the minor city where we stayed were clean and nice, but not super frequent (about 3-4 times an hour) and on occasion, would leave the stop a few moments before the scheduled time. So, even when prioritized, well-funded and the most acceptable mode of transportation for all cross-sections of the population, transit systems are still imperfect. This is all just to say, Muni isn’t all that terrible, comparatively. It covers the city comprehensively, it works mostly when and how it’s supposed to, and its idiosyncrasies are not wildly divergent from those you find in cities across the nation and world. Granted, it is a system that works best for users who know it well and/or requires a fair amount of study to get it right, since we’re not great at communication (signage, wayfinding, service updates) for the unacquainted. Also we have well-publicized maintenance and staffing issues, but I don’t need to be your link bitch for those; they’re easy to find. Overall though, it’s a decent system comparable to other American examples. And one I wouldn’t mind paying $10 more a month for (I’m a monthly pass user, rather than a per-fare rider.)

I actually don’t mind paying more for Muni. I do resent *this* proposed budget, however, because it comes with two simultaneous bitter pills: cuts to basic service I use every day, and no comparable increases in fees for car parking. MTA is recovering revenue from precisely the wrong group of stakeholders; penalizing Muni riders discourages the kind of activity a real “Transit First” policy supports, and ignores the much larger revenue windfall that could be recovered from premium priced car parking. And car parking SHOULD be premium priced; personal automobiles take up an obscene amount of personal space per person, and by its very nature, a dense urban core has less personal space to offer. The city already sacrifices the public space usurped by private curb cuts (made by private driveways) with little or no remuneration for its losses. Continued profligacy with scarce public space in order to preserve automobile culture doesn’t make any kind of sense, economic, environmental or social, and it doesn’t demonstrate that the decisionmakers are taking custodianship of our future in the long term, which is what I believe public administrators ought to do.

For a much better assessment of this issue, please click here!