Muni: "Same Boat, Different City"

The SF Examiner put the lie to the premise of the Muni fare strike movement---that Muni is unconscionably extorting higher fares from the city's poor and working people:

Muni is not alone in its budget woes---almost every large transportation provider in the Bay Area and beyond is grappling with similar problems...All the agencies point toward factors they have no power to control---sharply rising gas prices, rocketing health care and benefit costs and traffic congestion that slows down service. SamTrans, BART, AC Transit and CalTrain are among the local agencies that have had to make tough decisions in recent years. In Santa Clara County, Valley Transportation Authority was hit hardest, with a 30 percent drop in ridership and 20 percent decrease in service over the last several years. ("Change Needed, But How?" Marisa Lagos, Nov. 14, 2005)

To read the fare-strikers' websites (http://www.munifarestrike.net/ and http://www.transitjustice.org/), you would think that SF Muni is raising fares---and only a measly 25 cents at that---just to further oppress the city's poor, not because it was struggling with the same problems that face every transit system in the area. The fare-strikers are quick to play the ultra-left class struggle card, but they lamely failed to endorse Proposition D, which would have given the Board of Supervisors three appointments to the MTA board. Maybe it wasn't revolutionary enough for the leaders of the class struggle.