Free MUNI for Youth

Youth Score Win for Free MUNI Passes

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:04:14 -0800

Low-income youth of San Francisco will be able to ride Muni for free during a 16-month trial period starting early next year, thanks to the efforts of a broad community coalition. After a two-year campaign, the city’s Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) gave final approval for the funding on December 4, 2012. Campaign organizers want the program to begin in February, with a massive drive to sign up youth for free passes fully underway by March.

In November 2011, the coalition won crucial support when the San Francisco Board of Supervisors lent its support to the campaign. Spirited actions by youth, parents, and community advocates through 2011 had been aimed at winning relief for students and their families from the rising cost of bus and light rail fares following school district cuts to funding for yellow school buses.

The coalition successfully overcame the regional transit authority’s debatable funding priorities as well as opposition from some supervisors who wanted all available funds spent on improving Muni facilities and maintenance. Funds for the $13 million pilot project will come from SFMTA, the Metropolitan Transportation Commision (MTC), and the County Transportation Authority.

The grassroots drive for a free Muni youth pass began last year in response to the narrowing access to public transportation for the city’s 40,000 low-income youth. The San Francisco Unified School District is cutting its yellow school bus service by nearly half, while the price of a Muni Youth Pass for youth five to 17 years old has risen from $10 to $22 since 2009. A monthly Muni-only Fast Pass for Adults now costs $64.
Supporters of the project said the rising cost of Muni passes have led to a decline in ridership. Muni sold 18,410 youth passes in October 2010 but only 11,502 in the same period this year. With Muni becoming the school bus service for many students, the burden of paying for their commute falls heaviest on working class families with more than one child going to school.

“With the rising costs of bus passes it would cost my family $200 for all of us to get monthly passes for two adults and two kids,” said Joanne Abernathy. “A lot of people in my neighborhood are deciding between $2 for Muni fare or $2 for milk.”

Skewed Funding Punishes Low-Income Riders
Cities that want to maintain healthy bus service must contend with funding priorities at all levels of government that favor automobile use over public transportation. More than 80 percent of federal transit funds go to highways—only 20 percent goes to public transit— and the law bans use of such federal funds for day-to-day operations. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC), which distributes federal and state transportation moneys in the nine-county Bay Area allots just 6 percent of its expansion funds to bus service.

A POWER survey of 727 public transportation users in San Francisco showed that 48 percent said they didn’t have enough money for transportation in the last month. Riders use public transportation for a whole range of activities, including going to school (57 percent), appointments (41 percent), work (40 percent), grocery shopping (35 percent), after-school appointments (15 percent) and childcare (8 percent). More than half reported waiting an average of 10 to 20 minutes for a bus and 16 percent reported waiting more than 20 minutes.

Rising costs of fares put the heaviest burden on the city’s low-income families of color in the following communities: Chinatown, the Mission, Bayview-Hunters Point, Excelsior, and Visitacion Valley, which have some of the city’s lowest per capita incomes. Families in these neighborhoods spent 20-24 percent of their household income on transportation in 2005, before the doubling of bus fares.

The expansion of proof-of-payment fare enforcement has fostered widespread fear and decreased access to public transit for people in these same neighborhoods. San Francisco began implementing proof-of-payment fare enforcement (POP) in the mid-1990s on Muni’s light rail lines, expanding it to bus lines by 2005. Uniformed and armed San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) officers began boarding the buses and handing out tickets that carried substantial fines. Last year, the city paid $12 million to the police department for its POP enforcement services. However, from 2006 to 2010, the city recovered only $1 million in lost fares after spending $9.5 in enforcement.

An excerpt from Next Stop: Justice—Race and Environment at the Center of Transit Planning, a report published by POWER, DataCenter, and Urban Habitat.

Grassroots Initiative
San Francisco’s Youth Commission in 2009 began questioning the decreasing access to public transportation, drawing the attention of community organizations to the growing problem of rising fares. “Muni has become too expensive and the services that we count on are becoming out of reach for us financially,” says Leah LaCroix, who chairs the San Francisco Youth commission.

Meanwhile, People Organized to win Employment Rights (POWER) had launched a successful effort to make Muni scale back its proof-of-payment enforcement crackdown, which had triggered complaints of intimidation and racial profiling.

“In March, April, and May 2010, there was an initial youth fare program for 12,000 kids, and the passes were used up really quick,” said Jaron Browne, POWER’s director of communication. “The need greatly exceeded availability. That’s when we saw the problem was huge.”
POWER convened a broad coalition of community organizations that propelled the free Muni for youths campaign, including the Chinatown Community Development Center, Jamestown Community Center, SRO Families Collaborative, MORE Public Transit Coalition, SF Organizing Project, Senior Action Network, Coleman Advocates for Children, San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, Filipino Community Center, Causa Justa, and Senior Action Networks, among other groups.

“Perhaps the most exciting part of the campaign is the leadership role San Francisco’s youth has played,” said Bob Allen, director of the transportation justice program at Urban Habitat, pointing to POWER, a community-based advocacy group founded in 1997, as the leading force of the movement. POWER had helped raise the minimum wage in the city and has been organizing women domestic workers as well as residents of low-income communities.

The Free Muni for Youth drive is part of POWER’s larger campaign for “transit justice,” to correct the rising cost of commutes, the poor quality of public transportation service to low-income neighborhoods, and heavy handed “criminalization” of fare evasion. Urban Habitat has provided campaign support for the project and is a coauthor with POWER and the DataCenter of Next Stop Justice: Race And Environment at the Center of Transit Planning. (See sidebars to this story and Research and Resources on page 87 for more on the report.)

Research and Strategy
The community coalition held a straw poll, setting up voting booths near the Mission and Geneva intersection to ask commuters if they thought youth should be able to ride Muni for free—“to get a sense of the depth of the need,” said Browne.

Then, with assistance from allies, such as Supervisor David Campos—who wants to follow New York’s example and provide public transportation that is “accessible to students in our public school system”—Urban Habitat, and DataCenter, the coalition undertook extensive research to identify the key funding sources likely to be responsible for transit programs.

“Urban Habitat was particularly helpful in mapping us out an understanding of the regional funding stream,” said Browne. The campaign learned that competitive funding was available from a broad range of sources—city, county, and regional bodies responsible for improving public transportation access for low-income communities and for addressing the region’s air quality.

The coalition also “carefully analyzed areas of potential cost savings—the MTA’s capital budget, work order charges from other city agencies for providing services to Muni, overtime costs—that would allow Muni to put more service on the street,” said Allen.

Armed with data-based arguments, including a model program and price structure, the campaigners organized delegations to convince elected officials and decision-makers at various government levels. The campaign “was smart about it and had a strategy that made sense,” said Campos, It was well informed about “the different pitfalls” ahead, he added.

“We really put a lot of pressure on various government levels,” said Browne. The SF Board of Supervisors would call on SF Municipal Transportation Agency, SFUSD, SF County Transportation Authority, and Metropolitan Transportation Commission to collaborate with community groups in designing and securing funding for a free Muni for youth program. Support also came from Mayor Ed Lee, the SF Board of Education and its Student Advisory Council, the SF Youth Commission and the Parent Teacher Association board.

Better Public Transit for Better Air
In the San Francisco Bay Area, personal vehicle exhaust is a leading source of greenhouse gas emissions and toxic air pollutants. Cars and light trucks accounted for 78 percent of transportation sector emissions in 2007. In the city, transportation sources produce 50 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions. Passenger vehicles contribute nearly four times more to global warming than heavy duty trucks, ships, and aircraft combined.

San Francisco’s poor and working-class communities of color are affected more by poor air quality because they tend to live next to high-volume roadways. Residents of Chinatown, the Mission, Bayview-Hunters Point, the Excelsior, and Visitacion Valley suffer severe health burdens from pollutant exposure. One study of 12,000 residents in the Bayview showed rates of cervical and breast cancer double those in other parts of the region, and hospitalization rates for heart failure, hypertension, diabetes, and emphysema more than three times the statewide average. San Francisco Department of Public Health figures show startlingly higher rates of asthma hospitalizations in these neighborhoods than in wealthier ones.

Approximately 60 percent of all trips in San Francisco used a private vehicle. Muni wants to reduce this to 30 percent by 2030, a step in the right direction. Yet, some recent Muni policy decisions, such as increasing transit fare and decreasing bus service, severely undermine this aim. Every 10 percent increase in fares decreases ridership by 4 percent, according to the American Public Transportation Association.
Community-Based Lobbying
“Hundreds of young people came and testified before the Board of Supervisors, before the MTA, the Muni board of directors,” said Campos. “Kids talked about how they sometimes had to choose between paying their bus fare or buying lunch, or how they just walked to school and ended up late.”

It was also “very powerful,” Campos added, to have “parents and families talk about the impact of the lack of access to public transportation on them—how painful it was for them to not be able to give bus fare to their kids because they just didn’t have money.”

Coalition activists also disseminated information through social media and the mainstream press, with students from various schools throughout the city videotaping messages of support for the plan.

They explained that up to 70 percent of San Francisco high school students surveyed use public transit to commute and that the pilot program would cost less than one percent of Muni’s $800 million annual budget.

More Public Transit Means More Jobs
From 2008 through 2010, nearly 90 percent of all the transit systems in the U.S. had to raise fares or cut service. As a direct result of these service cuts, 97,000 U.S. transit workers lost their jobs in 2009. By September 2010, an additional 78,000 jobs were lost. The economic impact of transit austerity politics goes beyond job cuts for bus drivers and mechanics. Every $1 in service cuts caused by operating deficits bleeds $10 from the local economy in lost wages and increased transportation costs. These cuts hit transit-dependent people the hardest.
Investment in transit operations and service—and in bus drivers, mechanics, and support staff—is one of the most efficient and effective economic development strategies available. Ten million dollars invested in transit operations produces $30 million in increased business sales. This strong multiplier effect yields both additional jobs in the local economy and increased sales tax revenues for state and local governments. An analysis of federal stimulus spending showed that transit operations created 72 percent more jobs than similar investments in transit capital.

With the steadily increasing prices of fares and passes many people, including students, are tempted to resort to fare evasion, risking fines of $100 to $150—a big bite off a working family’s budget—if inspectors catch them without proof of payment. And yet, campaigners reported, the enforcement program costs $9.5 million a year but recovers only $1 million in lost fares.

Campaigners also argued that a free Muni for youth program was one of the best ways to secure a generation of new users of public transportation. In the long run it would help improve air quality, said POWER leader Manuela Esteva. “We started realizing that not only would free Muni benefit youth, but we could also have a positive impact on the environment.”

At the MTA-level negotiations, the campaign agreed to a compromise. Instead of an initial goal of free passes for all youth, it agreed to make the program specific to “low-income” youth. “We will eventually push for between 100 percent to 120 percent of median income, so we could include even unionized workers and more working class people,” reported Browne.

After hearing youth and parent testimonies in a public hearing, the SFMTA board in April approved $9 million for a free youth fare program, but only if $4 to $5 million could be obtained from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission (MTC).

The MTC is the transportation planning and financing body for the Bay Area’s nine counties. It disburses up to $3 billion annually to local transit operators, highway and road construction, and planning activities.

Letdown
In July, however, the MTC voted 8-7 against giving San Francisco the $4 million, arguing that only the city’s youth would benefit from the program while there were other low-income families in other cities that need help just as much. That left Muni’s $9.4 million free youth pass plan $5 million short.

Yet, in the same meeting attended by an audience of nearly 150 plan supporters, the MTC approved at least $18.6 million for the new ferry service between Alameda and South San Francisco. An example, critics say, of class bias and lopsided funding priorities.

The ferry outlay amounts to a public subsidy of $47 per ferry ride. Workers from biotech firms, such as Genentech, are currently the main users of the ferry. Meanwhile, coalition activists contended, the subsidy for free Muni for 40,000 kids would amount to only $2.86 per ride.

“It’s been a very eye-opening experience for me,” said Zeke Osmond, a restaurant worker and sales clerk who is also a member of POWER. “It’s been very tough and somewhat embarrassing to see these commissioners, and how they approach these situations.”

However, on October 10 came a pleasant surprise—the MTC awarded the city $6.7 million in federal funds meant to increase transit ridership and improve system performance. The money could be used for a variety of purposes, including free fares.

But Supervisors Scott Wiener, Mark Farrell, Sean Elsbernd, and Carmen Chu wanted the new funds to be spent on capital improvements and maintenance first, instead of free youth fares.

Campaign supporters criticized them for setting up a “false choice” between increasing transit access for low-income youth and improving Muni. SFMTA transportation director Ed Reiskin stated, “I don’t see this as an either or. We have ridership goals and we have productivity goals. We’re trying to use these dollars to address both.”

Reiskin proposed to use $1.6 million of the $6.7 million for setting up the free Muni rides for low-income youth between February and June, and the remaining $5.1 million for rehabilitating Muni light-rail vehicles. The agency would set aside another $1.8 million in the following fiscal year to keep the pilot project going.

Recommendations from Next Stop: Justice
1. Increase San Francisco’s investments in public transportation by taxing large developers and corporations. Large developers and corporations already benefit from public transit’s contribution to increasing property values and bringing in workers and customers. Corporations have a responsibility to pay their fair share and invest in the system as a whole.

2. Expand and improve transit in the city’s eastern neighborhoods. The SFMTA must commit to improving transit service in working class communities of color in order to meet the needs of its residents who rely on transit the most. Seriously investing in the eastern neighborhoods is essential to making San Francisco family friendly and to increasing connectivity in the city.

3. Scale back aggressive fare enforcement and use resources to improve service. Saturating bus stops and buses with police officers to catch fare evaders generates far more fear than fares, criminalizing people for trying to ride while poor and black, Latino, or Asian Pacific Islander. The money saved by cutting out the POP program should go towards improving service.

4. Reduce transit fares as a central strategy for reaching San Francisco’s climate objectives. Free Muni rides enticed more than 200,000 San Franciscans to leave their cars at home during the first two “Spare the Air” days in 2007. Make public transit the first choice for workers, youth, and families by making it truly affordable and accessible. An important first step is establishing permanent funding for free Muni passes for all youth in San Francisco.

5. Expand transit as a green job growth sector. Public transit not only supports the environment, it also sustains a racially diverse unionized workforce that earns living wages—making it a model of a green jobs sector. To expand transit jobs, San Francisco should prioritize use of transit resources for operations, rather than large capital investments.

6. Shift transportation policy to prioritize public transit over car travel. San Francisco must designate auto-free zones and expand the bus priority zones in areas where transit and alternative mobility options exist to encourage people to use transit. It should also close tax loopholes that favor wealthy drivers, including increasing the tax on corporate downtown parking garages, and closing the valet loophole in the city’s parking tax. Both the city and the region must prioritize operations and maintenance needs for public transit over freeways and capital projects.

7. Collect and publish demographic data about transit riders in the city. Low income communities and communities of color have the highest rates of transit dependency, but the SFMTA doesn’t consistently track information about the ethnicity, gender, or income levels of riders. San Francisco should look to the data tracking and transparency practices of Los Angeles and other cities to find ways to ensure that public transit serves the communities who depend on transit the most.

8. Create a mechanism for greater democracy and community accountability in the SFMTA. All members of the SFMTA Board of Directors are appointed by the mayor and have little direct accountability to transit riders. The agency manages a multimillion dollar budget and decisions made by its board have huge public impacts. Its board should be publicly elected, like the Board of Education and the Community College Board. Even splitting appointments to the SFMTA board between the mayor and the Board of Supervisors would allow for greater public accountability and more motivation to refocus transportation priorities on the needs of the environment and the community

For the article click here.

Low-income kids to have free Muni passes thanks to SF advocacy group

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 17:00:41 -0800

Single mother, Donaji Lona came to San Francisco from Mexico 12 years ago in search of the land of opportunity. What she found was a barrage of rising rental and transportation costs that made caring for her two sons a major challenge.

Lona became a member and then a staff organizer for People Organized to Win Employment Rights, commonly known as POWER, a membership-based advocacy group of Latino and African-American workers in San Francisco. Since then, she has been a part of some important victories for low-income families in the city – including her own.

In 2009, POWER’s group of youth and transit advocates started calling for the Free Muni for Youth Pilot Program, to provide free transportation for the youth of more than 40,000 low-income families in San Francisco. The San Francisco Municipal Railway (Muni) operates the broad fleet of streetcars, light rail vehicles, diesel buses, alternative fuel vehicles, electric trolley coaches and the cable cars around the city.

It started as 20 San Francisco schools began eliminating yellow school-bus service for their students over the past several years to cut costs, leaving many students to rely on Muni to get to class. Then the price of a Muni Youth Fast Pass skyrocketed from $10 in 2009 to $21 in 2012.

“This perfect storm led to a number of situations where kids were having to choose between paying for Muni on a given day or paying for lunch,” San Francisco Supervisor David Campos, a big supporter of the free Muni program, said in an interview.

He said some kids would choose just to walk to school. Others would hop on Muni without paying, risking fines or disciplinary action.

As a single mother of two children, ages 17 and 12, Lona said she encountered this problem firsthand. One son wanted to take music lessons because the school he attends does not have art classes. He applied and won a scholarship. But that was just half the battle.

“Sometimes I just don’t have enough money to let my son take the bus to go to these classes,” Lona said. “It’s a challenge.”

As the prices continued to rise, the number of kids paying for monthly transportation passes declined. People in the community reached out to POWER about the growing problem. And POWER answered.

“We started making things happen,” Lona said. “How is a young man to get to school if he doesn’t have the 75 cents to do that?”

While the support from much of the community was evident, some were not in favor of the program. In July 2012, the Metropolitan Transportation Commission rejected a proposal for funds, disappointing POWER and the youth advocates that had been fighting for the program for almost two years.

San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener also opposed it. Wiener voiced concerns about the youth program being funded directly out of Muni’s operating and maintenance budget. He said Muni’s transportation system is in need of significant upgrades, and more children riding Muni would just put additional pressure on the system.

“Muni is dramatically underfunded,” Wiener said in a phone interview. “We should not be paying for this and taking away the critical funds from Muni’s budgets.”

And although free transit for youth is a pilot program, Wiener said there is no way it will end once it begins.

“Muni will have permanent ongoing operations to fund this program,” he said. “If you give it to people for free, it sends a signal that somehow the system doesn’t cost money. Once we give it for free, it’s inevitable that low-income seniors and the disabled will come forward as well.”

At $21, the monthly youth pass is a 75 percent discount from the $72 adult pass. Wiener said it would be better to consider lowering the cost, rather than giving it for free.

But Campos argues that a free transit program is vital. The city is becoming increasingly less affordable for families. Free Muni is just one step forward for low-income families, saving them $21 per child a month. For Lona, that amounts to $42 total per month.

“That’s huge,” she said. “It’s enough money to buy enough food for three days. Can you imagine? I can tell you really honestly I can get more quality food for my kids, more fresh vegetables, with this money.”

“Sometimes you really, really want to give quality food for your family, and it’s something you cannot do.”

Now that’s something Lona can do.

After a two-year fight, the POWER youth and transit advocates are victorious. Last December, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency approved funding for the program.

Starting March 1, the agency, which operates Muni, will launch the Free Muni for Youth Pilot Program. Low and moderate income students who live in San Francisco will have free access to Muni for a 16-month period when using a Clipper card, the all-in-one transit payment card for Bay Area.

All San Francisco youth ages 5 to 17 with a gross annual family income at or below 100 percent of the Bay Area Median Income level are eligible for the program. That means a family of four making a median income level of $103,000 annually would qualify for the program.

“What’s remarkable about this whole campaign is I’ve never seen so many young people come to city hall and advocate,” Campos said. He thinks the adoption of the program in San Francisco may spur other cities in the Bay Area to look into programs of their own.

Some other U.S. cities offer similar programs. New York City provides three free swipes for kids at the subway each day – one to go to school, one for an after-school program, and one to come home. Cities like Portland and Chicago have variations on the free youth passes as well.

While free Muni is one victory for Lona and the people of POWER, Campos said there is always more work ahead of them.

As Campos put it, “We need to continue to make every effort as a city to make the city affordable, so that families of all income levels are able to live here.”

For the article click here.

Free Muni For Youth Program Begins Friday

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:58:16 -0800

Students, parents and school and city officials gathered in San Francisco today to celebrate the launch on Friday of a pilot program to provide free Municipal Railway rides for youth.

The 16-month Free Muni for Youth program will allow low- and moderate-income youth between 5 and 17 years old to ride Muni with a valid Clipper card.

More than 20,000 children have already signed up and organizers who held a rally this afternoon outside of Everett Middle School encouraged others to register as the program is set to start.

“Transportation is a right that everyone should be able to enjoy,” said Paul Monge-Rodriguez, a member of the San Francisco Youth Commission.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s board of directors in December approved $1.6 million for the program as part of a grant from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission. The SFMTA and the San Francisco Unified School District also contributed additional funding.

“We had a hard decision to make,” said SFMTA director of transportation Ed Reiskin.
“The Muni system has a lot of needs,” Reiskin said. “But while our system has needs, our community has needs too.”

The cost of a Muni youth pass had gone up from $10 to $22 since 2009, while the school district had reduced its bus service by 43 percent since 2011 because of state budget cuts.

The program had support from some members of the city’s Board of Supervisors, most notably Supervisor David Campos.

“We’re investing in the future generation of riders,” Campos said at today’s rally.

“We have to make it so families can afford to live in San Francisco,” he said.

The program is important for parents like Donaji Lona, who has two children that go to public schools in the city, one at Everett Middle School and the other at Mission High School.

“I think it’s huge,” Lona said. “Imagine being worried to not have enough money to send our sons and daughters to school.”

For information on eligibility and how to sign up for the program, people can go online at www.sfmta.com/freemuni4youth.

Muni will provide a 30-day grace period for enforcement to educate new users on how to use a Clipper card.

For the article click here.

San Francisco Launches Free MUNI Program for Youth

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:56:00 -0800

Beginning March 1, San Franciscans may see more young people on MUNI. it’s the first day of a new pilot program giving free MUNI passes to low- and moderate-income students.

Youth 17 and under whose families are making less than the Bay Area median income are eligible for a Clipper Card that works 24 hours a day on all MUNI vehicles. At least 20,000 have already enrolled.

Balboa High senior Paolo Acosta was one of hundreds of students who spent two years lobbying the Municipal Transportation Agency and Metropolitan Transportation Commission to lay out more than $6 million for the free MUNI program.

“Just coming back over and over and over and over and over,” said Acosta. “The more and more networking and marketing we did about this campaign, we actually tired out the MTA and got them to approve it.” .

“We always believed that this effort was not just about satisfying the economic needs of these students, but it was about how we as a city look at transportation.” said San Francisco Supervisor David Campos, who worked alongside the students to make the program a reality.

“We are investing in the future generation of riders, and San Francisco is leading the way.”

Campos said other Bay Area cities will be watching closely to see if the program results in higher ridership, increased school attendance, and other benefits to the community.

Students are being encouraged to use their Clipper Cards, so accurate ridership data can be calculated. At the end of the 16-month pilot period, those numbers will help the Metropolitan Transportation Commission decide whether to continue funding the program, and possibly make it permanent.

For the article click here.

Free Muni Program for Youth Kicks Off

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:55:30 -0800

Dozens of San Francisco youths and several city leaders, including supervisors David Campos and John Avalos, gathered Wednesday afternoon on the steps of Everett Middle School to celebrate a new pilot program that will allow local youth to ride Muni for free. As of Friday, March 1, kids from 5 to 17 years of age who live in San Francisco households of low to moderate income will be eligible for a free Clipper card.

“Transportation is a right that all people should enjoy,” said Paul Monge-Rodriguez, a member of the San Francisco Youth Commission who campaigned for the program and spoke at Wednesday’s event. Students from Mission High School, Everett Middle and other schools crowded the steps, carrying handmade posters that read, “All power to the people,” “Muni is my ticket to the city” and “Muni is my school bus.”

The kickoff event marked a hard-fought victory for supporters of the program and for the local group People Organized to Win Employment Rights, which helped to orchestrate the grassroots campaign for free Muni passes. POWER worked with families, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and city leaders for over two years to make the pilot program a reality.

Campos said that the idea of free youth passes was not an easy sell when he began pushing it a few years ago. The supervisor gave one of his aides, Sheila Chung Hagen, the credit for coming up with the concept.

“Everyone we started talking to about it at the time said, ‘This is never going to happen. You can’t be serious about this,’” Campos said Wednesday. He said that organizers had to gain support from a long list of city, county and regional government agencies in order to make the pilot program possible. Providing youth with transportation is not only about making sure that San Francisco remains affordable for families, he said, but also about “transforming how we as a city think about transportation.”

The new program comes in response to cuts to the San Francisco Unified School District yellow school bus system. According to a press release, the school district has decreased its bus service by 43 percent since 2011 because of state budget cuts. Compounding the problem, the cost of Muni’s youth Fast Pass jumped from $10 to $22 between 2009 and 2012.

“A child’s last thought should be how they’re going to get to school,” said Howard Nelson, a father of two children and Muni operator on the 14 Limited and 38 lines. Students who spoke at Wednesday’s event said that the new program will make it possible for them to get to school, jobs and internships that may lead to future careers. Supporters of the program hope that after the 16-month pilot period, city leaders will move to make the program permanent.

The SFMTA has already received 20,000 applications for the free Clipper card pass for youth. Organizers of the campaign said that the vast majority of those applications were accepted and the cards sent out to the families. To help prepare for the influx of youth on Muni, schools are implementing lessons about public transportation safety and responsible ridership behavior.

The pilot program will cost $8.7 million, to be funded by local and regional agencies, including the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, SFMTA, school district and San Francisco County Transportation Authority.

Applications for youth passes are currently being accepted on a rolling basis. Youth with a gross annual family income at or below 100 percent of Bay Area median levels are eligible for the program. To see those levels explained for various household sizes, see the SFMTA web page for the pilot program here. For instructions on how to apply for a youth Clipper card, see below.

How to Sign Up for Free Muni for Youth

The pilot passes will only be available on Clipper cards.

If you already have a youth Clipper card, you can fill out the program application online or mail a completed application (PDF) to 11 South Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, CA 94103, Attn: Youth Pilot Pass.
If you do not have a youth Clipper card, fill out the program application form (PDF), attach supporting documentation establishing proof of age, and mail or drop off to the SFMTA at 11 South Van Ness Ave., San Francisco, CA 94103, Attn: Youth Pilot Pass. You will receive your Clipper card, loaded with your pilot pass, in the mail.

For all other questions, call 311; from locations outside the city, call 415-701-2311.

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Free Muni for low-income youth starts Friday

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:53:40 -0800

Beginning Friday, tens of thousands of San Francisco kids can take free rides on Muni - and they won’t have to sneak through the back door or the fare gates.

The long-debated free Muni for low-income youth program is a 16-month experiment and about 20,000 young San Franciscans, ages 5-17, have signed up.

Students qualify if their families earn below the Bay Area median income, which varies by family size. They are given a special Clipper card that allows free access to Muni buses, streetcars, trains and cable cars. The card is valid round-the-clock and year-round. Users are required to tag on when they board buses or they’ll still face fines for fare evasion.

Youth advocates, particularly the group Power (People Organizing to Win Employment Rights) and Supervisor David Campos led the two-year push for the $6.6 million program, which was funded by the Municipal Transportation Agency and the regional Metropolitan Transportation Commission.

They said the program would help cut student absentee and tardiness rates and would benefit families that couldn’t afford to buy FastPasses for their children. Critics said the program was too costly for a financially struggling agency.

Although the program starts Friday, Muni officials say they’re not sure how many youth will ride the buses or which lines will be most affected or what problems will arise. Students wanting to apply for the program can get information at www.sfmta.com/freemuni4youth.

- Michael Cabanatuan

Chopping block: Once again, pink slips will be hitting teaching mailboxes in the next couple of weeks with 141 teachers or administrators and 68 aides getting a layoff notice.

The San Francisco school board approved the layoff list Tuesday night to comply with a March 15 deadline to notify teachers of a potential layoff.

The number is far less than last year when 485 notices went out, but the board approved the layoffs 5-2 to give the district flexibility until budget numbers are more certain in terms of enrollment and the need of specific teachers at the middle and high schools, officials said. But layoff notices can be and will be rescinded as soon as there is more certainty in funding and staffing needs.

On top of the annual uncertainty, federal School Improvement Grant funding, which has paid for 36 positions, is running out this year. Those positions are also on the layoff list this year.

Still, teachers union President Dennis Kelly urged the board to vote no, arguing that the layoff notices devastate teachers and the majority have been rescinded in years past.

“You have to consider whether you even have to do this,” he said. Teacher-union-endorsed Kim-Shree Maufas and Matt Haney voted not to issue the notices.

- Jill Tucker

On the move: The Board of Supervisors didn’t just lose a budget whiz when Carmen Chu was sworn in Wednesday as assessor-recorder, it lost its biggest fan of the Golden Arches.

“I’m sure that some of us will be glad that we won’t have a regular McDonald’s patron in our midst,” said Supervisor David Chiu during a tribute at the end of Tuesday’s board meeting for the french fry-crazy Chu, one of three no votes against the Happy Meal toy ban.

Supervisor Scott Wiener said he enjoyed introducing Chu to the LGBT community and recalled a text message from a confused Chu regarding an unfamiliar flag flying above Castro and Market streets to commemorate a bear event.

“Go on Wikipedia and put in ‘gay bear,’ ” Wiener said. His text back from Chu: “Oh!”

At Wednesday’s swearing-in ceremony, things were a little more serious with Chu saying that she wanted to make her new office “the envy of all county assessor’s offices in the state of California.”

Mayor Ed Lee also swore in incoming Supervisor Katy Tang, whom Lee said will be well received by her District Four constituents. “They asked for continuity, they asked for integrity … they asked for Katy Tang to be their supervisor.”

Free Muni for San Francisco youths kicks off Friday

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:51:55 -0800

The contentious and long-debated experiment to provide free Muni service for The City’s low-income youths is set to begin Friday.

Instead of paying the normal $22 monthly fee, more than 20,000 students between 5 and 17 years old will be able to ride for free for the next 16 months as part of a proposal that has been in the works since the beginning of 2011.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, which runs Muni, approved the free program last April, but only on the basis that it received regional funding. The plan appeared to be in limbo several times last year, but it was officially authorized in December after Muni received $1.6 million from the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the Bay Area’s lead transit agency.

A Potrero Hill mother of two who requested to use her first name only had been part of the advocacy efforts for the past two years. Claudia said she was nervous at times that the plan would never happen, but is now extremely grateful that her children will be able to ride Muni for free.

“Honestly, there were times when I could not afford the $44 for my two children’s passes,” Claudia said through a translator. “We would have to board the back of the bus and risk getting a ticket. We suffered a lot to pay for the Fast Pass, especially when we did not have enough work. This is a huge blessing for my family now.”

Claudia said her two children, who are 12 and 13 and attend A.P. Giannini Middle School in the Sunset district, will not only use the free pass to get to school, but also to explore other parts of San Francisco.

To access the free rides, students must still use a Clipper card to tag in on Muni’s vehicles. Paul Rose, a spokesman for the transit agency, said enforcement officers will make sure that the eligible youths are using the card.

Passengers without the card will be given a ticket for fare evasion, although the agency will provide a 30-day grace period at the start of the pilot program, Rose said.

He said the agency will be monitoring several aspects of the plan, including train cleanliness, school attendance, and security and safety issues. Passengers will be able to enroll in the program throughout the duration of the 16-month schedule, Rose said.

KIDS GET FREE BUS AND TRAIN PASSES IN SAN FRANCISCO

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:49:01 -0800

SAN FRANCISCO - Some school kids in San Francisco will have more lunch money to spend. If they travel to school using city buses or trains.

Beginning March 1, low and moderate income students living in the city, ages five to seven, will be able to ride MUNI buses and trains at no cost.

Students, parents, advocates and city officials gathered at Everett Middle School yesterday to celebrate its official launch.

This pilot program by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency (SFMTA) is said to be the most comprehensive of its kind in the country.

The city said it would cost taxpayers $8.7 million for the 16-month test run. About 45,000 kids and youth are eligible to apply.

Seventeen-year old Paolo Acosta said he is glad that the two years of lobbying for the passage of this program is over. His daily allowance is only $5 a day and he spends half of it on train and bus tickets.

Acosta said it helped that the lobbying effort came from the youth and their families. He said, “We got a lot of support from families, who brought along their little children. This really helped the campaign.”

This free MUNI program is a big help for 13-year old Gillian de Guzman and her family. Her mother is in the Philippines and her father has not been able to work. She said, “He’s disabled and nobody can take me school. I feel so happy because children like me can take the MUNI now for free.”

The need for youth transportation has become more urgent than ever, since the San Francisco Unified School District had to cut its bus services by 43 percent and youth transit fares increased.

Jay Jasper Pugao, youth mentor and after-school program coordinator at Mission High School said this free MUNI program will not only keep his students in school — but keep them away from the dangers of the streets.

He said, “It gives access to students to get to places where they need to be after school, instead of being in the streets, getting in trouble. They could be in libraries, in places where they could cultivate themselves.”

The SFMTA has already received about 20,000 applications for free access to MUNI service via clipper card.

Proponents said this is a temporary victory. The program lasts until June next year. They are now asking city officials to extend this kind of help on a permanent basis.

Students may apply online at www.sfmta.com/freemuni4youth.

You may contact Henni Espinosa at henni_espinosa@abs-cbn.com for more information.

For the article click here.

Free Muni for youth program to launch on Friday in SF

Thu, 07 Mar 2013 16:34:00 -0800

KTVU.com and wires

SAN FRANCISCO —

Students, parents and school and city officials gathered in San Francisco Wednesday to celebrate the launch on Friday of a pilot program to provide free Municipal Railway rides for youth.

The 16-month Free Muni for Youth program will allow low- and moderate-income youth between 5 and 17 years old to ride Muni with a valid Clipper card.

More than 20,000 children have already signed up and organizers who held a rally this afternoon outside of Everett Middle School encouraged others to register as the program is set to start.

“Transportation is a right that everyone should be able to enjoy,” said Paul Monge-Rodriguez, a member of the San Francisco Youth Commission.

“We had a hard decision to make,” said SFMTA director of transportation Ed Reiskin.

“The Muni system has a lot of needs,” Reiskin said. “But while our system has needs, our community has needs too.”