[Sustain] Fwd: Beyond Chron - Free Muni

[Eric Brooks]

http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Free_Muni_Free_San_Francisco__5327.html

 

Free Muni! Free San Francisco!
by Marc Norton, Feb. 01, 2008

Matier and Ross, San Francisco's premier political gossips, say that 
Mayor Gavin Newsom plunked down $55,000 for a report 
<http://co.sfgov.org/webreports/details.aspx?id=660> telling him that 
making Muni free would get a lot of people to use public transit.

Hey, Gavin, anybody on the street could have told you that for zip. But 
what really takes the cake is that the well-paid consultants who wrote 
this report concluded that getting more people to use Muni would be a 
BAD thing.

The consultants estimate that free Muni would increase ridership by 
35-40%. With around 700,000 boardings in an average day, that would mean 
something like 250,000 more trips. Think about that. Thousands and 
thousands of people getting out of their cars. Thousands and thousands 
more people going places in the City they couldn't afford to get to 
before. Less traffic congestion, less pollution, more people out and 
about enjoying themselves and probably spending money in SF businesses. 
How horrible!

Why would this be so BAD? Because it would cost Muni money. Wow. We paid 
$55,000 to learn that?

We all know Muni needs money. I mean, Muni chief Nathaniel Ford is worth 
every penny of that $336,000 salary we pay him. Then there are all those 
mayoral staffers (Willie called them "special assistants") being paid by 
Muni to buff the Mayor's policy-wonk image. Good thing we passed 
Supervisor Aaron Peskin's Prop A.

The consultants also tell us that free Muni would create a need for more 
buses, streetcars and trains, not to mention more drivers and mechanics. 
Holy cow, Batman! Perhaps we should let these consultants in on a little 
secret -- Muni already needs more buses, streetcars and trains, not to 
mention more drivers and mechanics. Anybody who has ever tried to get to 
work in the morning on Muni knows that.

Here's my favorite argument against free Muni put forward by our 
esteemed consultants -- it "could adversely impact movement towards an 
integrated SMART-card based electronic fare collection system in the Bay 
Area." Talk about putting the cart before the horse! But the consultants 
have a solution to this problem: we could all use our SMART cards when 
we board Muni "solely as a means to count riders." How high-tech and 
cool, don't you think?

The consultants carefully delineate all the costs associated with free 
Muni in their 138-page report. But somehow they never get around to 
talking about the financial and societal benefits of taking thousands of 
cars off the streets every day. Nor do they consider the financial and 
societal benefits of less pollution, or of much greater mobility for 
thousands of San Franciscans. Some "transit-first" city! Hurrah for our 
"Green Mayor!"

And here is a little gem that didn't make it into the Chronicle's 
front-page hit piece against free Muni. According to the report, 
elimination of various identified "fare related projects that would no 
longer be required... would result in a savings of approximately $255 
million over the period of 2007-2037." That's in addition to the modest 
estimate that Muni would save $8.4 million per year in fare collection 
costs.

Okay, okay, you ask, where would we get the money to pay for free Muni? 
I'm glad you asked.

A couple of months ago, one of those blue-ribbon panels that mayors like 
to appoint delivered a preliminary blue-ribbon report on how to get more 
money for Muni. But, before they even began, they wantonly jettisoned 
the one and only real idea that makes any sense: taxing downtown big 
business and downtown landlords.

I confess, here I go again. How do all those downtown businesses, 
hotels, and landlords make their bucks? Off of people who come downtown 
to spend money, or to work for them, or both. And what makes downtown 
possible? Why, Muni of course. Take Muni out of the equation, and 
downtown is just one big highrise ghost town.

And who pays for Muni now? Why, everybody except downtown businesses, 
hotels and landlords. Apparently, that is the natural order of things.

Right now we are building downtown a small empire of vertical gated 
communities for millionaires and billionaires. I say we turn those 
skyscrapers upside down and shake some moola out of those rich dude's 
pockets. If they don't like it, let them buy a condo in Fresno.

If Don Fisher can plunk down $100 million or more just to display his 
art collection at the Presidio, let's expropriate those millions to buy 
buses, streetcars and trains, and hang his art in Muni Metro where 
everybody can see it -- for free of course.

Free Muni! Free San Francisco!

------------------------------------------------------------------------


/Copyright © 2008 by Marc Norton

Marc Norton is a bellman at a small hotel in downtown San Francisco. 
Contact him at nortonsf at ix.netcom.com, or through his website at 
www.MarcNorton.us <http://www.marcnorton.us>./

-- 
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." -- Che Guevara

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