Pedestrians and transit riders will soon have one more thing to watch out for on San Francisco’s downtown thoroughfare: Mayor Lurie has opened up the previously transit-and-taxi-only portion of Market street to autonomous rideshare company Waymo. This announcement came just a week after the SFMTA (San Francisco’s transit authority) voted to expand service cuts to MUNI (SF’s transit service) for the second time this year. This will make public transit less accessible, worsening the ability for MUNI to provide the service thousands of SF residents depend on, while at the same time clogging up streets with driverless cars, often carrying only a single rider.
How much of a dent will these cuts make in MUNI’s 320 million-dollar deficit? $7 million per year, or just over 2% of the deficit faced by MUNI (or around 0.35% of the $2 billion that Google’s experimental division lost, of which Waymo likely makes up a large portion). These cuts come when MUNI is finally showing signs of recovering from the pandemic – total ridership pushed past 75% of 2019’s, with several individual lines well above 2019 numbers.
MUNI is a lifeline to San Francisco’s poorest residents, and thousands more depend on its services to get to school, work, or simply around the city. Cuts to MUNI service will make the city less connected, less accessible to elderly, poor or disabled people, its streets more clogged and its residents more isolated from one another. Especially as many companies pursue return to office strategies, MUNI should be expanded, not cut.
The cuts proposed will not make MUNI financially healthy. They will, however, negatively impact the services provided, pushing MUNI further into the “death loop” of worsening service leading to lower ridership, leading to further cuts.There are several tools at the disposal of state and local governments to fund MUNI (and BART). Instead they are allowing it to fail, diverting profits to a private corporation.
