To substantiate my claim that the Muni fare is too high,
I'd point out that S.F. has one of the lowest rates of subsidy per passenger
mile in the
country. The following is the order of major cities in the U.S. in subsidy
per passenger mile, adjusted for differences in cost of living, as of 1995:
St. Louis -- 55 cents
Cleveland -- 52 cents
Denver -- 43 cents
Dallas -- 41 cents
Portland -- 39 cents
Washington 39 cents
Atlanta -- 39 cents
Boston -- 37 cents
Milwaukee 37 cents
Minneapolis 32 cents
Seattle -- 32 cents
Philadelphia 31 cents
Houston 31 cents
San Antonio 30 cents
Baltimore 27 cents
S.F. Muni 27 cents
LA MTA 24 cents
New York 20 cents
Honolulu 11 cents
New York and L.A. do better than Muni but those are the only cities
(other than Honolulu!) that do so.
Both L.A. and New York have fares that are quite high. And L.A.
does as well as it does only because it has an absolutely
punishing rate of crowding...the worst in
the country. It can get away with high
fares and brutal crowding because its constituency has
been reduced to those with virtually no other options.
What the proponents of the required fare recovery ratio don't seem
to realize (or maybe they don't care) is that they would be locking
Muni into high levels of crowding to achieve that fare recovery ratio.
Tom Wetzel