Muni

Muni fares will automatically increase with inflation as part of the SFMTA's next fiscal year budget, but the agency's board is exploring ways to fine-tune its fare adjustments to keep the system accessible to low-income riders [PDF]. The board is also considering higher fares for cash-paying riders in an effort to speed up boarding.

When it comes to gauging support for changes on our streets, it's easy to get the impression at community meetings that a handful of vocal critics represent significant opposition. But as preliminary survey results from a recent Inner Sunset meeting on improvements for the N-Judah show, public forums can often be a poor reflection of the actual level of community support for re-allocating street space to improve transit, walking, and biking.

Maybe Muni ought to start paying riders for getting cars off metro tracks.

Despite calls for more measures to get cars off of Market Street, and the benefits brought by the forced turns already put in place, the SFMTA still has yet to propose any new restrictions on private autos.

The public debate about the proliferation of tech shuttles, and the fees they should pay to use Muni stops, has thus far been driven more by emotion than by data and empirical analysis. But two city planning researchers at UC Berkeley are looking to change that by studying crowdsourced videos of private shuttles in bus zones, which they'll use to gauge the delays they impose on Muni.

Half of San Francisco's traffic signals were supposed to have transit priority installed by this spring, according to the ambitious schedule set out by managers of the Muni Transit Effectiveness Project two years ago. This may not come as much of a surprise, but the SFMTA isn't quite meeting its target.

Correction 12/17: The next community meeting on Geary BRT is tonight, Tuesday, at 5:30 p.m. at the Main Public Library.

Six years ago today, I struck up a conversation with Therese as we walked through the fare gates into Powell Station to wait for the N-Judah. I'd seen her there before, since we both regularly took the train after our late-night retail shifts in Union Square through the holiday shopping season. Last weekend, while waiting for the N at the same place on nearly the same day, I asked her to marry me, and she said yes. She still has the Muni transfer from the day we met (pictured right).

Over two-thirds of the space on Columbus Avenue is devoted primarily to cars, yet only one-third of the people on the street are typically in automobiles.