Do lower salaries = faster buses? A San Francisco ballot measure is betting yes

Muni bus in San Francisco, California. Photo by BrokenSphere.

(San Francisco–Casey Miner, KALW News) San Francisco’s MUNI is facing a good news/bad news situation. The good news is its buses and trains are boarded more than 590,000 times a day. The bad news is that represents a 4.4% drop in ridership–or 10 million fewer rides than the year before.

So why are fewer people riding the city’s buses, rail and trolleys?

First, imagine this: You’re standing at a MUNI stop in San Francisco, transfer in hand, ready to get on a bus. A bus drives right on by. Packed full. Okay, no big deal – you wait for another one, but then that one goes by too. Sound familiar? Backers of November ballot measure Proposition G say they feel your pain. Their solution is to change the way MUNI operators are paid. Right now, the city charter guarantees them a set salary: MUNI drivers must be the second-highest paid in the country. (Right now, they’re behind Boston.) Prop G would change that, so they’d have to do collective bargaining like other city unions. Is this really the way to make those buses stop where they’re supposed to? Listen to the story at KALW News.