Comment by aesthesia
3 hours ago
This doesn't feel like the right way of thinking about it---if you went from 20% of people paying fares to 80%, that's 4x the revenue with the same fixed costs, and farebox recovery goes from 13% to 52%. Now, I don't think compliance is actually that low, but the point is that you shouldn't think of fares as collecting a fixed share of the operating costs.
The costs may be fixed but so is ~87% of the revenue via tax money.
Muni can be 100% free without increasing taxes too. The people using public land to store their private vehicles are not paying their fair share. Proper parking pricing and enforcement could easily pay for Muni’s deficit.
Yes, money is fungible. But why should it be that people who park cars on the street need to pay their fair share but people who ride Muni don't need to pay anything?
To incentivize the people taking their cars to use the bus instead!