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.
