My Artistic Side and Sanitation

Graffiti and Sanitation

As most of you have noticed, a lot of Muni buses have some sort of graffiti on the seats, windows, or even on the floor and the roof of the bus. These people vandalize the bus just so they can express their artistic side of them, but in the meantime, they are wasting taxpayer’s money. Muni uses money to clean up the graffiti on the buses, and Muni gets money from taxes, so they are wasting our money. 

Every year, Muni uses around 12.5 million dollars to clean, repaint, or replace parts of the buses that have been vandalized (SF Public Press). With that amount of money, we can use it to improve sanitation or replace the defective security cameras. We should not have to waste so much money on cleaning up graffiti.

Graffiti on Muni buses

I have seen people vandalizing Muni many times, but I have not done anything. Once, I witnessed a boy that was 15 or 16 years old take out a permanent marker and draw on the places where the ads were. However, I was too young at the time so I couldn't really do anything. But today, it’s much easier to report these people, and is much safer as well, because they won’t know.

Graffiti on where the ads are placed

As a result, Muni is cooperating with the San Francisco Police to catch people who vandalize Muni buses. Muni provides a number to text to if you see graffiti happening, so they can arrest those people that are wasting our tax money and to prevent these incidents from occurring again. The number is 415 – 710 -4455. This will then be reported to the police to catch these people. 

Graffiti on Streetcars

According to the SF Public Press, there have been 53 arrests since January 2010 to May 2011. If these efforts to catch graffiti vandals continue, we can lower the number of people vandalizing and decrease the amount of money we waste.

Another problem that arises is sanitation. We all hope that every bus is as clean as possible, with no crushed goldfish on the floor, strands of hair sticking in the corner of the window, or even gum stuck on the floor. Unfortunately, that will take time to improve. 

Just yesterday, I stepped on a piece of gum while sitting down. The gum, of course, stuck to my shoe. Well, I couldn’t really do anything but write on this blog how unhappy I was and hope that Muni will improve their service.  Hopefully, we can spend the 12.5 million dollars on creating a cleaner Muni bus rather than spending it on cleaning graffiti. 

That would really improve Muni service and less people will complain how dirty the Muni buses are. Until then, you can comment on this blog if you are angry how dirty the buses are!