Wipe Out Muni’s Upcoming $300 Million Deficit
How much revenue is lost to fare evasion? Muni really doesn't care
EEvery kid in the Sunset knew some way to sneak into Giants and 49er games at porous Candlestick Park. Many of us only stopped sneaking in when we started high school and became eligible to work at the Stick for Harry M. Stevens, Inc.
As an accountant, I now reflect on how the San Francisco Giants could have measured the revenue lost to people sneaking into games. Consider that if a retail store has no record of selling merchandise, and the item is missing from inventory, it's presumed lost to theft (shrinkage). But without inventory figures, how does an organization account for something that never happened, essentially a statistical ghost?
In a Mission Local article, reporter Christina Macintosh reported observing only 10% of Muni riders paying.”
Starting July 1, 2026, just 15 months from now, MUNI is on a collision course with a $300 million financial cliff. We trust Muni to properly manage hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers' and riders' funds. Yet somehow Muni and the anti-car faction downplay the lost revenue attributable to sneaking on (fare evasion) by lying that only 20% of passengers aren't paying.
Muni’s reported 20% fare evasion rate dramatically deviates from what media sites and others have personally observed. Like Muni’s historical statistical mischief and manipulation,[1] I will document how Muni has no basis for their 20% figure, and that they pulled the quoted rate out of thin air to fool the public.
Media reported evidence of excessive fare evasion conflicts with Muni’s 20% figure
If you ride Muni, you have probably formulated an estimate of how many passengers evade paying. (Note: there's a lower rate of observed fare evasion for people entering underground stations because the turnstiles make cheating more obvious.)
In a March 2023 Mission Localarticle, Christina Macintosh reported observing only 10% of Muni riders paying. Granted, Macintosh never intended this to be a scientific survey, but it supports the fact there is a serious problem of fare evasion on Muni.
In June 2023, Lyanne Melendez of ABC Channel 7, observed that only 25% of Muni riders pay. As a frequent Muni rider, I concur that only about a quarter of riders pay. In the same segment, Melendez interviewed a Muni bus driver who said that only 40% of people pay on a good day.
Former MTA Director Tumlin initiated a falsehood that our observations on fare evasion are misleading. Muni staff now parrot that falsehood. The new spin: if a rider tags onto a first bus, they usually don't tag onto the second bus they transferred to. They want us to believe that most of our 75% rate of observed fare evasions is attributable to riders having tagged onto an earlier bus. The statement, not based on any surveys, is total B…. S…, and has empowered cheaters with an excuse not to tag on.
The public records request that set off alarm bells at MUNI.
Muni’s 20% rate seemed so out in left field that on February 13, 2025, a public records request (PRA #25-1137) asked them to support their 20% sneak-in rate. Muni obviously feared the answer would expose their incompetence because they immediately started backpedaling:
Muni, before assessing lost revenue, you must first establish a base headcount of the number of fare evaders. If Larry Baer, president of the SF Giants, wanted to measure the number of Sunset kids sneaking into the ballpark, he would say it's irrelevant whether the freebies sit in the box seats or bleachers. Similarly, whether a rider is entitled to free ridership because they are homeless, or is allowed a senior citizen discount has no bearing on the headcount of riders not tagging on. Muni, you're obfuscating.
Has Muni ever made a single base survey of fare evaders?
Suppose Baer recognized there was a ticket evasion problem. In that case, there are only two ways he could make an "accurate survey" on the sneak-in rate. And this would only be a first step towards ascertaining lost revenue:
1) Giants' security teams could go row-by-row, seat-by-seat to check whether every fan has a valid ticket, or
2) Randomly sample seat occupants to see if the fan has a legitimate ticket, then extrapolate those findings to the general population. Muni fare inspectors cherry-picking some areas of the city and avoiding others does not meet the definition of "randomly selected."
In their response to the records request, Muni confirmed their knowledge of the proper survey methods illustrated in the Giants' example. However, out of laziness or to obscure the evasion problem, Muni’s 2024 Fare Recovery Status Update[2] named the "known data" method as the mechanism for how they arrived at the 20% evasion figure.
Let's unpack the "known data" word salad by applying it to an SF Giants analogy. Muni believes the Giants can ascertain a headcount of ticket evaders by comparing the difference in the Giants total annual ticket sales between two seasons. Suppose the Giants had sales of $130 million in 2022, and $135 million in 2023. In that case, Muni somehow believes they can decipher a cheating headcount from the $5 million difference in sales.
Muni, I'm sorry, that is impossible.
Muni claims that their 20% fare evader headcount estimates were made more complicated by "confounding variables." [3] This is Muni’s statistical gibberish, again making a big deal on whether a fare evader sits in the bleachers or box seats.
Why the rate of fare evaders is so important to determining lost revenue
In 2021, Muni was projected to earn $219 million in gross revenue (above) from transit riders. They are projecting 33% less revenue at $140 million for the current year.
Let's take the $140 million fare revenue and gross it up by the various perceived fare evasion rates. We can arrive at how much Muni is approximately losing to fare evasion:
If we use ABC's 25% fare evasion rate, which ties to my observations, Muni could easily wipe out next year's projected $300 million deficit. Isn't this $300 million loss wholly attributable to Muni’s incompetency and apathy? [4] Muni has no clue how much they are losing to fare evasion, nor do they care.
Save Muni, with front door boarding and a Big Four CPA Audit
Except during winter months, I commute by bicycle. I also frequently ride Muni. I believe in and support public transportation. The objective of public transit should be to provide an attractive alternative to driving. Instead, Muni has fueled their monopolistic efforts by eliminating driving as a competing option. Muni accomplishes this by
· closing streets,
· removing car lanes, like the Oak Street proposal,
· creating speed bumps,
· installing speed cameras, which will proliferate as we move towards a citywide 15-miles-per-hour speed limit. Da ya think I'm kiddin?
· converting Kirkham Avenue into a rural one-lane road,
· reconfiguring bicycle lanes that bicyclists can't even understand,
· and, up next, an oxymoronic congestion pricing to our vacant downtown.
Muni has leveraged its empire on the convergence of two advocacy groups: 1) people who support public transportation but don blinders to Muni’s mission creep as the cause of its bleeding, and 2) environmental activists who are married to eliminating cars despite the economic costs imposed on the middle class. The anti-car warriors are best portrayed by the Peter Pan never-grow-uppers like Myrna and Luke and the belief that they can recreate SF into a 49 square mile college campus. With the support of these two factions, Muni has hit taxpayers up for more money through six ballot measures and legislative initiatives[5] in just the past eight years.
The far left believes Muni should be free to riders, but the city has never authorized it. So, the profligate and renegade Muni has effectively allowed free ridership by not monitoring fare evasion and lying about the extent of the problem. Muni doesn't care about the $300 million deficit because they know they can always get more funding at the ballot box.
To address Muni’s fiscal cliff, Mayor Lurie must immediately:
· ban backdoor boarding until fare evasion tapers off,
· contract a Big Four accounting firm to audit Muni and get their operations in order and
· let economists weigh in against Muni’s exclusive traffic-engineer mindset.
In the meantime, always vote against throwing more good money after bad Muni management.
[1] Muni’s history of fraudulent and statistical reporting under Director Jeffrey Tumlin
1) Fake West Portal Survey:
When a family of four was tragically killed outside of West Portal, because Muni took so long to complete the L Taraval upgrade, Director Jeffrey Tumlin created a survey. Tumlin's survey allowed anyone in the world to weigh in on whether they approved Tumlin's reconfiguration of West Portal traffic. The survey should have been limited to San Franciscans.
2) One-weekend Upper Great Highway survey, $19,000 per day survey
To push through closing the Upper Great Highway, Tumlin paid a firm $19,000 per day to count walkers and bikers on the Upper Great Highway, after he preannounced the date. There was no effort to prevent double-counting walkers' round trips. Then, violating every statistical principle, Tumlin extrapolated the single weekend over the other 51 weekends.
3) Math mistakes on the Muni’s Rolling and Biking Plan
To gauge whether SF residents wanted more bicycle infrastructure, Muni conducted community meetings in 10 supervisorial districts, with only 486 people voting to represent the 800,000 residents of our city. Muni missed that the majority of attendees, 60%, said they didn't intend to start biking. The survey was also fraudulent — one person, "who doesn't currently bike," voted for the plan in 3 separate districts.
[2] Obtained via public records request #25-1137
[3] What are "confounding variables?" It's like the Giants saying their annual ticket revenue comparisons are less reliable because fans may change their ticket sections for different games. One game is in box seats, and one game is in bleachers. Muni says its problem is that they have so many layers of ticket prices, (free for kids, free for homeless) that their annual revenue is too fluid to be reliable. Ya think? But they are still using it.
[4] Obviously, The Mission Local did not intend for their 10% evasion rate to be used in a survey, but their 90% evasion rate illustrates the magnified effect of mitigating each percentage of fare evasion.
[5] In November 2019, San Francisco voters passed Proposition D, to tax rideshare passengers to fund Muni and bicycle infrastructure.
In June 2022, Proposition A - to raise funds for Muni failed by not reaching 2/3rds of the SF votes.
In November 2022, San Francisco voters extended a temporary sales tax to keep Muni funded.
In November 2024, San Francisco voters prevented Muni from taxing rideshare companies to fund its deficit.
Mayor Daniel Lurie is preparing to put a ballot measure on the November 2026 ballot to raise funds for Muni.
March 2025, State Senator Scott Wiener is putting forth an increase in the sales tax to fund Muni.
Lou Barberini is a CPA and has been writing articles for the Westside Observer since February 2016.
April 2025
