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Get
off the Bus
By
Joshua Citrak
Please sir, may I have another? In the state with some of the
highest consumer
taxes in the continental US, in the city with the highest
taxes in that state, we now are being asked to shoulder more of the fiscal burden while our local government’s ‘liberal’ dose of bureaucracy proposes to take us for another
ride, hiking the fares for getting there and then for parking once we arrive.
MUNI is hauling around a $57 million deficit, the Golden Gate Bridge District over $70 million, neither can continue to operate under their current financial constraints. Both agencies have proposed fare hikes as well as other tangential measures to balance the budget, but no one’s buying. So what to do? Are we in San Francisco willing to deem public transportation’s efforts worthy of a higher good? If yes, we do so by forking over more of our cash in peripheral fee’s to subsidize these losing ventures in higher parking tickets, bridge tolls, meter parking tolls or the very popular one time $100 fee for simply ‘existing’.
In order get MUNI back in black, Supervisor Jake McGoldrick
has a brilliant plan to tax traffic ala London’s ‘progressive solution’ to downtown congestion and budgetary crisis’- they do things much better in Europe, you know- and sink those revenues into the good ship MUNI.
Sir McGoldrick would propose setting up video cameras on every street heading into downtown to monitor traffic and assess a penalty for their use. What McGoldrick fails to mention is firstly, how to pay for this in lieu of our current fiscal problems and secondly, that those London cameras are a multitasking ‘big brother’ monitoring system complete with facial recognition technology and surveillance capabilities. Very Progressive, Sir.
Other less sensible plans have been floated to shore up these ailing transportation agencies fiscal woes, such as, hey, how about having the people who use and like these services simply pay what it costs to run them? Of course, that’s a
ridiculous
idea when we can all get together to scream for social justice (tax the rich) on the steps of City Hall.
Richard Marquez, spokesman for an ‘asphalt roots’ group, The Coalition for Transit Justice rightly exclaims,
“We don’t believe that (MUNI) riders should have to bear the brunt of MUNI’s revenue shortfall.”
Of course, an insensitive asshole would ask, then who the hell should? The guy who isn’t using MUNI?
And the answer would be, of course, duh.
If we can make someone else pay for it, why not? Never mind that MUNI fares are the second lowest of the thirty major metropolitan areas in the country. Or that the money from fares only pays 23% of MUNI’s operating expenses. We’ll just pass the buck onto the least defensible position, you damned SUV drivers, take that! Oh, so you want to drive to work, huh? Well, you’ll have to park sometime. Maybe you want to do some shopping? Bourgeois pig! Are you too good for a bike? From now on, it’s the shoe leather express for you. We thought we’d reprogrammed you with the fifty cent gas tax.
In fact MUNI officials blame their shortfall primarily on higher fuel costs, in other words, we did it to ourselves. The ‘progressives’ who thought they were pulling a fast one on the ‘reactionary’ car drivers ultimately shot themselves in the foot because that’s they way the world works. The universal circle, what comes around, goes around. Everything is everything, my brother.
Supervisors Chris Daly and Ross Mirkarimi joined tens of protestors on the steps of City Hall February 1st, 2005 to voice their collective displeasure over MUNI’s governing board considering rate increases. I found their presence to be completely ironical. I mean, besides the fact that they are protesting a board over which THEY wield power, is the fact that ordinary citizens like you and me protest, boycott and wear little ribbons because that’s ALL WE CAN DO TO FIGHT CITY HALL. These fuckers RUN City Hall! But folks, hold the applause because they figured it out for us
rubes. In addition to their deft solution of taxing businesses operating near a MUNI stop, there is Mirakimi’s observation that,
“Somebody should take a look at MUNI’s books.”
Everyone is paying for everyone else, in disproportionate amounts. We use excuses against footing the bills we charged by saying things like, this is only going to hurt the poor, which is liberal-speak for- no, no, no! tax the other guy who isn’t paying attention!
Pedestrian foot traffic on the Golden Gate should not pay a buck fifty to walk across a national treasure to fiscally support a poorly run ferry and bus service. On car tolls alone, the Golden Gate Bridge Authority is actually making money.
Car drivers should not subsidize city buses. Last year the city wrote an astounding 2,180,222 parking tickets generating $84 million dollars of positive revenue. (of which I contributed $600, so DPT fuck you) Imagine what that money could do if it weren’t all funneled into keeping MUNI afloat.
MUNI rider and self appointed transportation sage, Bill Murphy, said at the February 1st protest,
“MUNI needs to come up with something a lot more creative, a creative solution to this budget shortfall other than (a twenty-five cent) fare increases.”
I eyed a homeless dude down the street jingling his spare change cup and suddenly an idea came to me.
Copyright © 2005 Joshua Citrak
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