Posted on 10/19/2009 7:16:09 PM PDT by Lonely Bull
Nearly 1 in 10 San Francisco Muni riders boards a bus or streetcar without paying, costing the city's transit agency an estimated $19 million a year in lost revenue.
The system averages almost 700,000 boardings a day.
The findings, outlined in a study to be presented to the Municipal Transportation Agency governing board Tuesday, echoes what many Muni regulars long have griped about: Fare cheating is commonplace.
Previous studies also reflected that fare evasion is enshrined in Muni culture.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
If the gate only provides 20% of system revenue, they might as well make it free.
How long before someone in SF screams that forcing people to pay fares is racist?
> The findings, outlined in a study to be presented to the Municipal Transportation Agency governing board Tuesday, echoes what many Muni regulars long have griped about: Fare cheating is commonplace. <
hmmm...honest paying people upset at others who dont want to carry their own weight...relying on other people to pay for them..
where did I hear this before? Nah. Never in a city like San Fran.
I often park in a parking lot near the MUNI central yard —many employees park there, then walk to work.
MOST of the drive late-model BMW’s or Mercedes.
I think that’s fine, but from the way their representatives speak you would think they get minimum wage and eat nothing but bread crusts.
The cars I’m talking about have lots of aftermarket stuff on them —spin-around rims, etc. Very urban.
How do they get away with it, one out of five? Do they just walk on the bus right past the driver? Entire famiies or crowds of people? Hippies riding on top of the bus or cable car?
I see the same thing at the FEMA distribution center I work near.
Back in my pre-Navy days when I was working as a dishwasher for a Chinese restaurant across town, I would always take the same last bus of the evening, and I got to know the driver pretty well because the bus was always pretty much empty until we went through this one stretch of bars.
There it turned into a total madhouse. There was always about 20 or 30 drunks piling in, no one paying, most had bottles of wine or cans of beer. They’d all just stagger to the back of the bus light up cigarettes and/or joints and party on.
The driver warned me not to say anything to them and never make eye contact.
I asked him why they got away with it and he explained that at one time, they had a very macho driver who would not let anyone one without paying. He got stabbed. He lived, but they never put him back on that route.
Then they tried just bypassing that series of bus stops, but that didn’t save any money because the drunks would throw bricks and bottles to smash windows, and sometimes even took potshots at it.
Dog days in Richmond California. One reason I still live in Japan.
San Francisco is 90 percent liberal....
it is no wonder the City is full of Cheaters...
Democrats Cheat in every segment of their Lives....
Liberals are total Failures in Life...regardless of the Facade of “Success”
You should prolly stay there, Ronin, even as a gaijin, cuz I ASSURE you that it is just as much a shi*hole as you (accurately) represented it, here.
Lots of nice urban folks, but there are just enough of the really bad ones that it screws it up for everyone.
Some nights I will hear reports of more than 3 shootings per night over there, some nights.
$11 a day for cable cars tends to lead to fare skipping.
Forcing people to pay fares is racist.
That was my thought exactly. Free riders living off those afraid to break the law or those who are honest. This is the San Francisco way! These people are model citizens living off the oppressive, racist, fare-paying majority.
Most of the cheats get on through the back side door and fail to make their way to the front to feed the fare box.
The problem is it would probably cost them $24M to collect the $19M - so there is some rationality to their apparent lassitude. When you are dealing with he public at large - you can find an optimal level, but it will never be perfect compliance.
In Boston, the situation is that any riders in the “hood” are allowed to get on free if the driver is a fellow brother. I would think that this is a widespread problem.
>> San Francisco is 90 percent liberal - it is no wonder the City is full of Cheaters. Democrats Cheat in every segment of their Lives.
Agreed - on Saturday we were traveling east on C-470 in Denver - there was road construction, so we decided to get onto a backroad. The cheaters (all too many of them with O’Bama stickers) crossed the solid white line and zoomed ahead on the shoulder. I stayed in the right lane. Then we reached the turnoff - what a great joy to see that nobody was letting them back in line. ;o)
Enter the 1964 age of "entitlement" followed by the great "pervert war," followed by the illegals invasion, and suddenly you have an unruly mob supported by an indifferent business sector populated by suburbanites. Nobody cares; most locals fear for their physical safety, and the entitlemet mentality functions across the board.
Although I have many memories there, including the birth of two of my three children, I no longer enjoy visiting the place. Not even once a year.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.