It’s no secret in San Francisco that you can walk onto the bus without paying. Plenty of people do it — the indigent and homeless who can’t afford the fare, yes, but also professionals with healthy salaries.
“I don’t pay,” said a 35-year-old man wearing an orange puffy vest and clutching a beige shoulder bag and a banana. The man said he earns $75,000 working for an Oakland-based climate nonprofit. “Muni should be free, to make it accessible.”
A 25-year-old research associate for a Google-owned subsidiary who also earns $75,000 a year said she almost never pays the fare.
“I’d say 99% of the time, I just walk on,” she said, adding that she saw everyone else doing it when she moved to the city three years ago. “It’s like a San Francisco thing, I guess.”
In one of the world’s most expensive cities, a $75,000 salary hardly makes you rich (in fact, it’s below the average). But even doctors are occasional fare-dodgers here. An SF General pediatrician earning $170,000 a year said she only just started paying for every ride.
“Just when they started enforcing again,” she said. “But before, I’d pay maybe 80% of the time.”
The doctor’s reason for skipping the fare was more politeness than protest: “Just when someone was standing in front of where you tap,” she said.
These riders, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for obvious reasons, account for a tiny fraction of the San Franciscans who don’t always pay.
In an attempt to crack down, the transit bosses announced in May that they would hire 35 new Muni cops. So far, they have hired nine. It’s just one of the mitigating efforts to combat a raging financial crisis that could result in the loss of routes.
Muni cops, or “fare enforcement officers,” earn a starting salary of around $81,000 a year. SFMTA would not provide full hiring costs, the number of citations officers have issued this year or in any previous year, or how much money the agency makes from fines. It also did not provide an estimated cost to the agency of fare evasion, which is likely difficult to track.
Still, transit boss Jeffrey Tumlin said the cost of fare evasion is “rather small.”
“Losses from downtown parking garages have been much more impactful,” he said, noting that there is a 25% parking tax in SFMTA-run parking garages.
Tumlin said fare evasion has increased from 12% in 2019 to 20% this year (the agency’s estimates are based on “financial analysis” of fare revenue and ridership data), but the problem appears worse than it is because tapping a Clipper card is not the only way to pay.
“The fact that we’ve made it so easy to pay has created a perception problem,” Tumlin said. “People expect this theater of everyone tapping on, and people feel outraged.”
Another challenge is that fare evasion appears to be ingrained in the culture of SF living, showing up in viral TikToks.
“Why would I sweat my eyebrows off in my apartment when I could take my free bus to the park and sweat my eyebrows off there?” Tasha Malan asked in a video that garnered more than 100,000 views during the October heatwave.
But the Mission resident was later caught by ticket enforcers, leading to another popular TikTok post.
@theedoodlebop FINE yall win this time😔 #sf #sanfrancisco
♬ original sound – Tasha 🧍🏻
“I was so nervous about posting my TikTok in the first place because I was like, I’m literally a criminal right now, airing my shit out on the internet,” she told The Standard by phone, laughing.
Malan said she could have jumped off the bus or refused to show ID — as the comments on her video attest, fare enforcement officers cannot detain anybody — but decided to pay out of a sense of karmic debt.
“My conscience was like, you already talked about it on the internet, girl. Just accept your fate,” Malan said. “But I really love using the bus. At the end of the day, it’s very impressive how many people in San Francisco actually enjoy using the bus, because not every city can say that.”
Still, she wouldn’t mind not having to worry about Muni cops.
“It would be really awesome if SF could make it free,” Malan said.
Veronica Lujan says when she became a fare enforcement officer in 1999, an estimated two-thirds of riders didn’t pay the fare. Back then, people created fake paper tickets or disguised their day passes as monthlies. But with the Clipper card, that’s no longer possible.
The Standard rode along with Lujan on Thursday as she led a team of officers policing fares on the 49 Van Ness and 14 Mission buses. When they encountered riders who could not provide proof, they issued citations, each of which comes with a $130 fine.
Officers cited a woman named Carolina at Mission and 16th streets and gave her a flyer advertising in Spanish income-based reduced fare programs.
“Racists,” an onlooker said in Spanish.
Carolina told The Standard the citation was her first. Officer Gabriel Campos said SFMTA waives fees for most first-time offenders if they enroll in an income-based program. The agency also offers a program for seniors to ride for free, but they aren’t enrolled automatically.
On another bus, officers cited an older woman who said she was homeless.
“They just harass you,” she told The Standard afterward, adding that officers should leave older and unhoused riders alone. The woman confirmed she was not enrolled in the program that allows seniors to ride for free.
The only group that enjoys complete immunity is minors, who have ridden for free since 2021. When officers see someone who appears to be under 18, they just ask them their age and move on.
Back on the bus Thursday morning, a man in his 60s vented frustration at the orange-vested climate activist who proudly dodged the fare.
“It makes my blood boil to see people who have the means and don’t pay,” he said. “The transit system is in a financial crisis, and he obviously doesn’t understand the consequences of his actions.”