My name is Tara, and I’ll be your guest blogger this afternoon. I beat out hordes of competitors for this gig by being almost as eloquent, yet about as indignant, as Here and There, of which I’ve been a fan for a while, now. Cheers, HaT, and thanks for the soapbox.
We are gathered here today thanks to this story on SF Gate. This time, SF City Hall is patting itself on the back over the so-called “Connected Bus” in its Muni arsenal. A vehicle that, once you finally board it 15 minutes late, allows you to connect to the internet and download music, porn, or whatever your pleasure is as you commute home. There is so much wrong with this idea, and here’s why.
1. $10,000-shmousand
This SuperBus apparently costs in the neighborhood of $10,000. I don’t care if it cost $10. Don’t hold news conferences to show off your urban transportation prowess if you can’t devote significant funding and time to fixing Muni’s problems, the most basic and largest one of them being on-time performance.
2. All that said, Muni is broke. According to this Feb. 15 SF Gate story:
“The San Francisco Municipal Railway has a ridership of nearly 700,000 a day, but has been unable to deliver the level of service that city voters demanded in 1999 when they required 85 percent on-time performance – a milestone that’s never been achieved. To make significant improvements, agency officials say they need between $100 million and $150 million more a year. That’s in addition to the agency’s annual operating budget of $687 million.”
If that means raising the cost of a monthly FastPass to $60 — something I am willing to pay, since governments run on taxes and fees, after all — so be it. However, even that increase would be a drop in the bucket, amounting to roughly $18 million per year. Raising the single-ride fare to $2 from $1.50 would bring in another $13 million to $14.8 million per year. They could maybe go for a voter-approved bond or tax increase if that option gains enough support. Or, maybe they could divert funding away from fancy-sounding staff positions in City Hall in order to aid the transportation system — something residents, tourists- and bridge-and-tunnelers alike use in some capacity every single day.
3. I’ve never seen anyone with a laptop on a Muni, unless it was the underground light-rail that goes right through downtown. Even rich urban people tend not to ride the bus, since, from a socio-economic standpoint, it’s still more of a lower-class thing to do in a city. These people, the ones with laptops and PDAs, won’t start doing riding the bus unless they’re on time, more frequent and become more comfortable.
Socio-economics aside, given the slippery seats, the constant vigilance in an attempt to stay unstabbed or unrobbed and the sometime raucous atmosphere, this is a horrible place to get any work or internetting done. Maybe, I don’t know, devoting money first to upgrading these mobile blight carriages would encourage more people, rich and poor, to ride them, cut down on unruly passengers, and make the drivers less pissed-off.
4. Luddite?
Before you tell me to untwist my granny panties, let me just say: I love the internet. I get anxious if I’m disconnected at home or at work, I actually do have a laptop (two, actually, if you count my work machine), and I’m upset that citywide wifi, and the resulting plethora of free access to information and services, isn’t more of a priority. Muni and access to wifi are both problems that need to be addressed, but smashing the two together and calling it progress sounds analogous to polishing a turd.
Oh, awesome. Did ya hear? The United States Postal Service will be raising the cost of first-class stamps starting Monday. The current cost? $0.42. The increase? Let me give you a magnifying glass: $0.02.
