Skip to main content

SFMTA Budget Priorities for FY 2023 to FY 2024

SFMTA Budget Priorities for FY 2023 to FY 2024
By Andrea Buffa

T Line LRV at the Oakdale boarding island in the Bayview District

It’s budget season! 

Every two years, the SFMTA develops a consolidated budget to guide the agency’s decisions about where to focus our funding to best meet the transportation needs of all San Franciscans. We’re developing a budget that’s designed to support San Francisco’s economic recovery, increase transportation equity, protect the environment and keep the agency on sound financial footing.  

We presented the base budget (projected revenues and expenditures for the next two years if we made no changes and continued our current policies) to our Board of Directors in early February to get their feedback and are now seeking input from the public. Your feedback will help us understand what to change in our base budget: which investments are most important to San Franciscans and which new revenue sources you think we should pursue. We’re considering both fare increases and decreases as well as changes to parking fees. 

The City Charter requires us to submit the final budget to the Mayor’s Office by May 1. The Mayor then sends it to the Board of Supervisors on June 1 for a final vote. 

How to provide your input on the SFMTA FY 2023 to FY 2024 budget 

Online Survey: We invite you to give us feedback about your transportation priorities by filling out this short survey. It’s available in English, Spanish, Chinese and Filipino. We’ve included an open-ended question so you can let us know if there’s a specific transportation priority you want to let us know about. 

Community Transportation Priorities Survey image

Online Listening Sessions: We’re hosting two listening sessions that will include a short budget presentation and time to hear your questions and suggestions. You can request simultaneous interpretation in any language for our budget listening sessions by calling 415.646.2109 at least 48 hours prior.  

Online Town Hall: At our online Town Hall meeting, we’ll share the feedback we heard from the survey and online listening sessions. 

March 10, 2022, 6:00 p.m. - 7:00 p.m.  
Get login information at SFMTA Budget Planning - Fiscal Years 2023 & 2024 

After gathering feedback from the public, our directors and our staff, we’ll revise the budget and present it for additional review at two SFMTA Board of Directors meetings: 

SFMTA Board of Directors Budget Meetings:  

  • March 15, 2022, 1:00 p.m. 

  • April 5, 2022, 1:00 p.m. 

Budget Background 

If you’ve been tuning in to our Board of Directors meetings during the two years, you’ll know that the SFMTA’s revenue was severely reduced by the COVID-19 pandemic. COVID devastated our transit fare and parking revenues, which are two of our three biggest revenue sources. Even now, our transit revenues are about 75% lower than pre-pandemic levels and parking revenues are 20% lower.  

The recovery of our transit fare and parking revenue depends on the pace of San Francisco’s economic recovery, which is still uncertain. Data from the Controller’s Office shows that the city’s economy and downtown are recovering more slowly than comparable metropolitan areas. 

This compounded the financial problems our agency already had. Over the last 20 years, the demands on San Francisco’s transportation system have grown and revenues haven’t kept up. Our agency has what’s called a “structural deficit” -- the amount of money it takes to operate our system costs more than the revenues we take in. 

We got through the last two years because we fought for and won San Francisco’s fair share of federal pandemic relief funding and then we were prudent about using that funding to restore service.  

Recently, our short-term budget outlook has somewhat improved because some of the external revenue sources we rely on did better than expected. We’re receiving more money than we thought we would from the San Francisco General Fund and need to spend less on our pension costs. Still, according to the Controller’s Office, the SFMTA will face a structural deficit of approximately $20 - $50 million every year beginning in FY 2024-25.  

This background informs the FY 2023 to FY 2024 base budget that we’re asking for feedback on. It tries to balance the need for us to restore and expand services with the need to maintain the agency’s long-term economic stability. 

Click below to view the budget website in:  

Español - 繁體中文 -  Filipino    



Published March 02, 2022 at 12:33AM
https://ift.tt/BameGSR
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

New top story from Time: These Moms Work as Doctors and Scientists. But They’ve Also Taken On Another Job: Fighting COVID-19 Misinformation Online

https://ift.tt/3tT3UwO Last March, friends and neighbors began stopping Emily Smith in her town outside of Waco, Texas, with questions about the coronavirus. An epidemiologist at Baylor University, Smith knows all too well how viruses are transmitted. But as the wife of a pastor and as a woman of faith, she also holds a trusted position in her community, and she would speak to those who asked about why she personally thought social distancing was a moral choice. As the weeks wore on, the questions kept coming: “What does flatten the curve mean?” “Is it safe for my child to kick a soccer ball outside with a friend?” So she started a Facebook page and called herself the Friendly Neighbor Epidemiologist. She adopted “Love thy neighbor” as the page’s credo. Smith wrote from the perspective of a scientist but also a wife and mother. She recently explained, for example, why churches should still continue to refrain from holding in-person services even though Texas has lifted i...
Post a Comment
Read more

Enhancing Safety on Franklin Street

Enhancing Safety on Franklin Street By Mark Dreger We're excited to share an update on the Franklin Street Quick-Build Project, an effort to enhance traffic safety on Franklin Street between Broadway and Lombard Streets. This roadway stretch was the site of 38 collisions between 2017 and 2021, including the tragic loss of a Sherman Elementary School paraeducator in November 2021. Our data-driven approach focuses on several key safety improvements, and we are ready to share the evaluation results and the next steps to bring further safety changes to Franklin Street.  The project includes the implementation of a suite of safety measures focused on the intersections where neighborhood stakeholders expressed most concerns during the outreach process.  Painted safety zones (PSZs) have been installed to increase pedestrian visibility at crosswalks by keeping the corners of intersections clear. Slow-turn wedges have been added to encourage drivers to turn at safer speeds...
Post a Comment
Read more

New top story from Time: Dear Parents, It’s Not Just You. Raising a Teen Now Is Really Hard

https://ift.tt/3ae0nRK A version of this article appeared in this week’s It’s Not Just You newsletter. SUBSCRIBE HERE to have It’s Not Just You delivered to your inbox every Sunday. And send comments to Susanna@Time.com Well hello! I’m so glad you’re here. This week: a letter to parents of teens, many of whom are struggling, a selection of expert pandemic parenting advice, plus some evidence of human kindness. DEAR PARENTS: IT’S NOT JUST YOU, THIS IS HARD. Over the last few months, I’ve gotten so many emails from parents of teens—both readers of this newsletter and friends. And while the details vary, I can hear the thrum of fear in each one as they describe a child who seems to be slowly crumbling, or is in crisis. So this is a letter for all of you: You’re not alone. You’re not the only one feeling lost or like you’re the worst parent you know. So many of us have been where you are now, especially in an unimaginably fractured and stressful year, one that has made...
Post a Comment
Read more

New top story from Time: Chris Paul on the Legacy of the NBA Strike, 1 Year Later

https://ift.tt/3jiooN4 Even before Aug. 26, 2020—the date, one year ago today, on which the sports world shut down in protest of violence against unarmed Black people—NBA players were having difficulty processing the shooting of Jacob Blake . The video of police in Kenosha, Wis. shooting and wounding Blake emerged during the NBA’s 2020 postseason while players were isolated at Walt Disney World in a COVID-19 “bubble.” The surreal August playoffs were taking place after the season had shut down in March because of the pandemic. “It was weighing heavy on a lot of guys,” says Chris Paul , who was the president of the National Basketball Players Association (NBPA) for eight years before he stepped aside this summer. Paul told TIME in an interview this week that when George Floyd was murdered on May 25, 2020, he was home and could explain to his children Chris II and Camryn, then 11 and 8, what was unfolding on television. “Whereas when this situation happened, with Jacob Blake,...
Post a Comment
Read more

New top story from Time: The United States vs. Billie Holiday Is a Messy But Passionate Tribute to an American Legend

https://ift.tt/3uDiuKn Almost everyone has feelings about Billie Holiday , many of them strong. But no one can own her, and if there’s any supreme conclusion to be drawn from Lee Daniels ’ disorganized but passionate drama The United States vs. Billie Holiday, it’s that. Daniels’ movie focuses on an underexplored angle of Holiday’s life, one that dovetails with all the things we know about her: Holiday had a traumatic childhood—she was raped at age 10. She was repeatedly attracted to controlling, abusive men. Her emotional vulnerability spurred a heroin habit she couldn’t kick. But her personal problems were intensified by a force determined to crush her, specifically the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, which pursued her with an obsessive vengeance that surely hastened her death, in 1959 at age 44. Holiday’s drug use wasn’t even the agency’s main problem with her: what truly infuriated them was her refusal to stop performing one of her signature numbers, “Strange Fruit,” a pr...
Post a Comment
Read more

New top story from Time: ‘We Share the Ideals of Democracy.’ How the Milk Tea Alliance Is Brewing Solidarity Among Activists in Asia and Beyond

https://ift.tt/3eie5EZ On China’s National Day this year, Thai student Bunkueanun “Francis” Paothong performed a song outside the Chinese embassy in Bangkok. “Arise! Ye who would not be slaves again,” a video posted on Twitter showed him operatically singing into the humid evening. The words famously open China’s national anthem, “The March of the Volunteers.” But they also appear in “Glory to Hong Kong”—the unofficial anthem of Hong Kong’s democracy movement —and it was this that Francis was singing at the Oct. 1 protest. “For Hong Kong, may glory reign!” he intoned. Written and composed anonymously last year, the song has come to represent Hong Kong’s youth-driven rebellion against Beijing. But its four stanzas are now also sung in Thailand where protesters against the military-backed government and the monarchy are not only adopting tactics of resistance from their Hong Kong counterparts but are also cross-promoting causes. Though their demands may be different, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

New top story from Time: What Jeff Bezos’ Philanthropy Tells Us About His New Priorities—and What Change They May Bring

https://ift.tt/3zFiTgP Money is power, so when the world’s richest man begins to spend his fortune, it’s worth paying attention to what he’s doing. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and newly minted pseudo-astronaut, has a lot of money to spend . On July 19, the day before he took a 10 minute joyride 66 miles (106 km) above the earth, his wealth increased by $13 billion , thanks to a bump in the Amazon’s share price. That flight cost $5.5 billion which, as global change groups hastened to point out, could have paid for a lot of global change . But for Bezos, it was not quite half the previous day’s wages. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Bezos announced in his post-flight press conference that he was donating $100 million to two high profile founders of non-profits: the celebrity chef (and former TIME cover subject) José Andrés , and Van Jones , the former Obama green jobs czar, CNN commentator and prominent climate change activist, to do as he said “what they want with.”...
Post a Comment
Read more

New top story from Time: The Fight for a $15 Minimum Wage Is Our Selma 

https://ift.tt/37oF2Ez After the public lynching of George Floyd last summer, his cry of “I can’t breathe” galvanized a movement for Black lives that won majority support among Americans . Floyd wasn’t the only one gasping for breath. While Americans watched a police officer choke the life out of Floyd, we also witnessed Black Americans contracting a deadly respiratory disease at three times the rate of our white neighbors , according to an August report from the National Urban League. The growing public consensus that we as a nation must address systemic racism has led to serious soul-searching in families, churches, universities, corporations and political life. But just as the Selma campaign became a symbol during the civil rights movement of the need for legislation to expand voting rights, the $15 an hour minimum wage proposal in Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan represents the possibility that our government can take decisive action to make racial justice real tod...
Post a Comment
Read more

New top story from Time: WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Accused of Conspiring With LulzSec and Anonymous Hackers

https://ift.tt/3hZ0cN4 WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange conspired with hackers affiliated with the “Anonymous” and “LulzSec” groups, which have been linked to numerous cyber attacks around the world, according to new indictment by the U.S. Justice Department. Assange, who’s detained in the U.K. on a U.S. extradition request, gave the leader of LulzSec a list of targets to hack in 2012 and told this person that the most influential release of hacked materials would be from the Central Intelligence Agency, National Security Agency or the New York Times, according to a statement Wednesday from the Justice Department. The LulzSec leader was cooperating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation at the time, according to the statement. An Anonymous and LulzSec-affiliated hacker stole emails through a data breach of an American intelligence consulting company that were published in WikiLeaks, according to the statement. Assange indirectly asked that hacker to spam that company a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager

Gene Henderson: Honoring Muni’s First Black Division Manager By Jeremy Menzies In recognition of Black History Month, we bring you the story of Gene Henderson, the first Black man to become the head of a Muni bus division, Muni’s Kirkland Division. Henderson’s Background Gene Henderson was born in Houston, Texas, in 1916. He married his wife Naomi in 1939 and then served in the U.S. Army during World War II. Following the war, Gene and his family moved to San Francisco where he began his career at the San Francisco Municipal Railway. Early Career On February 1, 1946, Henderson was hired as a streetcar motorman out of Sutro Division, which was located on the corner of 32nd Ave. and Clement St. He was hired just five years after Muni’s first Black transit operator, Audley Cole, had successfully fought to integrate the carmen’s union in 1941. In his early days at Muni, Gene worked one of the three lines running out of Sutro Division from the Ferry Building to the Richmond District o...
Post a Comment
Read more