Stile Slackers

A few days ago my daughter and I paid our buck and a half each at the turnstile and were waiting to board the "N" streetcar home. One just happened to be standing at the platform.

As we approached the door she spotted a transit cop on the train, writing a ticket. "Did you get your transfer out of the turnstile?" she asked me.

Always the clueless provincial, I hadn't even been aware that the turnstile produced a ticket. I thought people just paid their six quarters and went through, but as it turns out you'd better have proof of purchase when you board a Muni vehicle in San Francisco or you can get a $177 ticket.

I guess it was my lucky day, not just because Rachel was with me to give instruction on the finer points of urban survival, but also because when we went back upstairs my pink transfer was still sticking out of the turnstile. Beginner's luck. And another "N" showed up in less than ten minutes.

But this near mishap got me wondering how many people ride the Muni -- one of the best public transit systems in the country -- without paying? And how many get away with it?

Too many, as it turns out.

Up until now Muni officials have consistently claimed that unpaid ridership throughout the city averages between ten and twenty percent. That assumption has been shattered by recent surveys run by the Transit Authority and independently by the San Francisco Examiner, both of which found that over half of Muni's passengers jump the turnstiles one way or another, as reported in a page-two series in the Ex yesterday and today. At one station fare avoidance ran 73 percent.

The cop we saw writing a ticket was one of only thirteen working the system, so anyone who wants to ride without paying has a pretty good chance of getting away with it. How much does this cost the system? Do the easy, thumbnail math: the Muni serves 700,000 riders a day, so if half of them don't pay their dollar-fifty, that's over half a million dollars a day.

Here's the thing, brothers and sisters: the Muni would still run at a loss even if everybody paid. So think for a minute about how you'd get around the city if the Municipal Railway went under, just because you don't feel like giving up your little quarters, which you can fully afford. Would you like to take a taxi everywhere? Could you even get a taxi if everyone in town was taking them? Would you care to keep a car in the city? Rent a garage? Pay auto insurance? Buy gas? Drive on Market Street at five in the afternoon?

No, I didn't think so.

Fortunately, relief is at hand in the form of the heavy hand of authority. As I used to tell my students whenever I put on my ugly face and instituted draconian measures of one sort or another, "I don't like doing this, but it's apparently how you guys want it."

"Transit agencies across the nation agree that the best way to make riders pay their fair share is simple enforcement," says today's Examiner article by Marisa Lagos, "and Muni this week approved plans to hire 40 new fare inspectors."

The new transit cops will cost the system about $3.7 million, but will bring in an estimated $14.8 million. At first, they're going to write a lot of tickets. And think of what that money could buy. Muni says for that kind of cash it could decrease fares by a quarter, or put 100 more buses on the street every day, or hire 168 vehicle mechanics, or maybe implement some combination of those kinds of upgrades.

It's a shame it had to come to this. In the People's Socialist Free City of San Francisco, so close to God and so far from the United States, you'd think people would voluntarily do the right thing. But apparently even pinkos need to be policed.