On the local level, as much as I've generally preferred to ride trains rather than buses, I think you're right -- although buses are helped immensely by having dedicated bus lanes for main arteries, and I'm not sure how feasible that would be in SF.
One of the best aspects of buses, aside from the cost, are they can go anywhere you want. If a lot more people move into the Mission, you can spend a few million dollars and double the number of buses (as opposed to literally billions of dollars to build a rail line). If people move away from the Tenderloin, you're not stuck with billions of dollars of infrastructure that now isn't needed. Just move the bus routes.
Also, lets look at NYC, one of the most successful rail systems in the world. As OP states, it costs nearly $14B a year to operate and only generates $7B a year. That means people who don't use it are paying $7B/year to the people that do use it. I wouldn't call this "perfectly functional". And as I mentioned above, the more rail you build, inevitably the less resources you have for more efficient and economical transport.
The problem with buses is capacity. If you city is relatively sensibly laid out and commuters tend to follow certain predictable routes, you can get far more capacity on a rail line than on roads. Not only does a bus carry a lot fewer people (an NYC reticulated bus can carry about 120, a full NYC subway train about 2,000), but as a practical matter you can't run the buses as fast or as frequently as you can run trains.
Predictability is also a problem. Buses are at the mercy of street traffic. Trains run on a schedule. My commute from northern Virginia to d.c. by highway used to take anywhere from 40 minutes to 80 minutes depending on traffic. My commute from westchester to new york city by train (which is actually 2 miles longer) takes exactly 34 minutes almost every day. About once a month a train will be 5-7 minutes late (which is consistent with the ~95% on-time performance of Metro North). I can leave my house 5 minutes before the expected departure time (with a 3-4 minute walk to the station) because I can count that the train will arrive within a minute of its scheduled time. You can't replicate this by car or bus in a dense metro area.
Pollution is another problem. Air pollution has huge externalize costs in a city because of the density. With electric rail, you can build the power plants out in the country where the pollution affects fewer people. With buses, you're clogging up the air breathed in by several million people in close proximity. Buses are prime contributors to sulfurous and particulate pollution in cities.
Moreover, it's not like bus infrastructure is free. You have to build and maintain the roads, and if you want to replicate the capacity of trains you need to build isolated bus highways through the city. These are not cheap, and have a very damaging effect on the communities they run through by cutting them in half. Highway construction inside a city is an absolute terrible idea from an economic point of view.
It's wholly inappropriate to compare the operating costs of transit to revenues. First, the shortfall in the MTA isn't because it can't charge high enough fares, but because the ticket prices are kept artificially low ($100 for unlimited rides per month!) as a subsidy to low-income people. Second, transit infrastructure generates high positive externalities. You have to look at the net impact on the whole economy instead of looking at just a piece of it. E.g. consider the highway system. It brings in a few tens of billions in revenue each year via gas taxes. Is that the whole of the economic benefit of the system? Are people like me, who don't drive, subsidizing people who do? Imagine if we got rid of the highway system. What would be the impact on GDP? A hell of a lot more than a few tens of billions, I can tell you.
bingo, and with SF's difficult at best development issues, it simply hasn't been possible for the city to develop as it should have around the rail.
Does this reduce congestion, traffic, or pollution? Maybe it allows for increased density or more sensible housing/business districts? More reliable commutes?
Given that the population is roughly 8 million and the gdp is roughly $1 trillion, it seems possible that NYC is coming out ahead on that $7B.
I can only dream of the day they put some modern monorail there, but it's not going to happen in SF.
As any rider can attest, it gets pretty busy. Perhaps you are thinking of SF's southern neighbor, San Jose, as an example of a highly underutilized light rail system?
Also, a lot of muni metro is underground, which is essential for keeping in fast beneath the high traffic volumes above.
as someone who has walked around sf a lot, this is patently ridiculous. for instance, from embarcadero to outer noe valley (a walk i do fairly regularly when the weather is warmer) takes me well over an hour, and that's a bit less than halfway across the city.
"As I’ve written before, and will write more about in the future, California and San Francisco suffer from “The Italian Complex”.
Our state is a lot like the nation of Italy. It has a beautiful natural landscape and weather that most people would envy. It is geographically diverse — we enjoy great sunshine and great skiing in relatively close proximity. The people are culturally pleasant, love life, and you can strike up conversation with gentle strangers. We are intellectual and passionate about both arts and science. They gave us the Renaissance, and we gave the world the Digital Age. But for all the natural and cultural brilliance, we are held down by an incompetent and pathetic government.
And if the city of San Francisco is at the heart of our political incompetence, then the Muni system is like the left and right ventricle.
The problems with Muni are so tremendous and infuriating that I don’t even know where to begin. But here are a few points off the top of my head (with a little help from Google).
Muni generates a mind-bogglingly small proportion of its own funding…
Muni charges people fares to ride, and you would think that these fares could cover at least a meaningful portion of their immense operating costs. But no. They cover a measly $198 million of the $821 million budget. That’s not even one quarter of the cost. The biggest contributor to Muni’s budget is parking tickets and fines, which should surprise nobody. But this is really just an accounting gimmick to charge taxpayers for Muni, because in most cities parking tickets would be used to fund an array of services.
Nobody is saying that Muni should operate at profit. Or that it should come even close to profit. But how about covering half of its costs through revenue from its users?
In comparison, the NYC MTA generates over $7 billion from fares and tolls, which covers more than half of its $13.4 billion annual budget.
The Chinatown political machine ensures that they get the lion’s share of the benefits
The epicenter of Muni is on Stockton, Powell, and the other major arteries that run through Chinatown. By ‘coincidence,’ this is also where the new super-expensive subway will run. People who ride the bus know about the “Dirty 30” and “45” lines that needlessly take Marina and Pac Heights commuters through the congestion of Chinatown en route to their jobs downtown or in Soma.
This is not because such routes and investments serve the people of San Francisco. It is because the Chinatown political machine controlled by Rose Pak — who basically put our mayor into office — decrees it to be the case.
The political machine keeps rolling. The big infrastructure money goes to Chinatown. Naïve hipsters with high salaries have no idea it’s going on. And the virtuous cycle continues.
But I’m sure that the camera shops, trinket stands, and street-side produce markets of Chinatown are the ones providing the city with most of its tax, jobs, and commerce income.
Muni is basically useless, anyhow. Walking is better.
Taking Muni is basically a waste of effort and money. You will be stunned by how little time you save by riding the bus vs. just walking. Riding a bike is so much more effective than taking the bus that it’s laughable.
This is a tiny city, and you can walk from any one point to another in 45 minutes most of the time.
But, back to walking. Anyone who is traveling in a North-South direction to commute (i.e. Marina to Downtown) knows that by the time the 30 or 45 bus gets to Chinatown, you can get out and walk faster, plus you don’t feel like a sardine. That walk is a no-brainer.
But what about East-West commuters (i.e. Lower Haight to Downtown)? To illustrate, I will use my old commute and Google Maps. I used to live at Fillmore/Hayes, which was two full miles from my office at Kearny/Sutter. By San Francisco standards, this is a fairly typical distance from work. According to Google Maps, the walk will take 34 minutes. If you take the N-Judah, the absolute fastest you can do the ride is in 20 minutes, but that assumes no wait for the bus, which is unlikely. Throw in a reasonable wait for the bus, and now you save maybe five minutes door-to-door. Plus it costs money and you get way less exercise. And you may get sick from having twenty people within two feet of you. So there’s that cost too.
In short, Muni is basically useless."
I agree in full.
Source: http://pandodaily.com/2012/12/29/muni-is-100-years-old-too-b...