It’s one big idea in a list of big ideas that the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA), the quasi-independent department that controls our transportation system, should consider.

Big new ideas are necessary because the old ideas to close the budget deficit, fare increases and service cuts, thrust Muni into a downward spiral that deepens its structural deficit and threatens to starve the system to death.

Numbers add up

First, let’s look at the numbers.

Muni’s farebox recovery rate is 18 percent, or $122 million of a $678 million budget. That isn’t much lower than is typical for transit systems: the Golden Gate Transit bus system, Portland’s Tri-Met and Seattle’s Sound Transit each get 22 percent of their revenues from fares. And after raising fares by 50 percent from three years ago, there’s not much more room to squeeze transit riders.

On the expense side, Muni could save $10 million directly by not collecting fares: maintaining equipment, counting and depositing money and enforcing proof of payment. More importantly, Muni wastes half a million hours each year waiting for people to stuff dollars and coins into the fare machines. This delay translates to a huge expense because fewer buses and drivers would be needed if buses could complete their runs, and get back out in revenue service, more quickly. In fact, there is probably no single easier operational change Muni could make to provide faster and more reliable service.

When you take into account actual costs plus the monetized cost of time delay, Muni may be losing money by collecting it.

If we were to make Muni free, there would be a great deal of questions to address. How do you keep the buses from becoming roving homeless shelters or teenage hangouts? How can we make sure people value what they don’t pay for? Can Muni handle the extra passengers free Muni would attract? Where will Muni store the extra buses they may need to handle the added passenger load. If we consider Muni a public utility, what is the best way to fund it?

There are systems to learn from. Small fare-free systems and large systems with fare-free zones abound. Portland’s downtown "fareless square" was recently expanded to the adjoining Lloyd commercial district at the urging of the district’s merchants, who chose to increase revenue from parking meters to pay for the move.

Packaging big-idea reforms

We encourage the MTA to look at this big idea and several others as an essential antidote to the downward spiral caused by years of small tinkering.

Free Muni, or something close to it, might be a healthy sweetener as part of a package of big-idea reforms that should include route restructuring and stop consolidation. Speeding up service by 25 percent on the routes that carry 80 percent of Muni’s passengers can reduce Muni’s structural deficit by 75 percent, according to SPUR calculations.

CalTrain, for example, in responding to their budget crisis, eliminated many stops but provided faster service for most customers. The result? They increased ridership by 25 percent.

We’re not sure free Muni is the way to go, but we are sure that yet another round of fare increases and service cuts is not the way to go. As the extreme opposite of the MTA’s recent practice, free Muni and faster service is certainly worth a look.

- - - - - -
Gabriel Metcalf is executive director of San Francisco Planning and Urban Research.