My Ups and Downs With Muni

Muni.

The first thing a lot of people see every morning once they walk outside of their house. Huge amounts of students and frantic mothers push onto the bus. I’m pretty sure that most people that live in San Francisco have ridden Muni once or twice or even hundreds of times.

As for me, I’ve ridden Muni for more than ten years. Muni is my main transportation around San Francisco, and it is quite convenient.

Muni Logo

There are a total of 82 routes that run across San Francisco, day and night.  A lot of my memories are about Muni. Some examples might be witnessing vandalize the seats and windows, seeing fights happen in the bus,  seeing people get robbed on the bus, and so on.

While some memories are bad, some memories are good. I’ve seen an old man sitting in the front seats, but when he saw a pregnant woman walk onto the bus, he stood up to let her sit. These events really make me smile just because people are being nice to each other.

Muni carries about 200 million passengers like you and me every year, and without it, I don’t know how to get to school and back home. I remember that a bus driver once let me on the bus even though I forgot to bring my bus fare. She was really nice and said that it was okay, and just go on. Back then, there were no Muni fare inspectors, so I would not have to worry about getting a ticket if I didn’t pay.

However, even though I ride Muni all the time, I don’t know a lot about Muni’s history. I feel that in order for me to talk about the improvements Muni needs, I should first know more about Muni, and how the system works. There are definitely a lot of places where Muni can improve. The fare prices have increased dramatically, the bus needs to be cleaner, security needs to be better, and graffiti needs to be cleaned, etc.

Many people complain about how Muni is bad, how things need to improve, but they don’t really know that Muni doesn't have much revenue. The City cut the budget for Muni, and Muni is definitely struggling to survive. Because of this, Muni started training fare inspectors to catch fare evaders and issue a ticket to those that didn’t pay the fare. By doing so, Muni hopes to create more revenue and close the deficit gap.

Muni has transformed a lot over the years, and Muni tries its best to cope with our daily needs. There are so many people going to and from work and school every day, and it’s hard to meet everyone’s needs. In writing this blog, I hope to be able to increase the reader’s knowledge of muni by starting off with the history, the problems that needs to be fixed, and what path Muni will take in the future.