http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2008/01/29/MNFQUNU4C.DTL... Free ride? Fat chance: Muni fares will stay Rachel Gordon, Chronicle Staff Writer <mailto:rgordon@sfchronicle.com> Tuesday, January 29, 2008 Mayor Newsom has abandoned his idea to eliminate fares on... <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/01/29/MNFQUNU4C.DTL&o=0&type=printable> Passengers will continue to have to pay to ride San Franc... <http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/object/article?f=/c/a/2008/01/29/MNFQUNU4C.DTL&o=1&type=printable> 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 <mailto:rgordon@sfchronicle.com>./ -- "I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." -- Che Guevara