San Francisco Supervisor Exploring Ticket Surcharge On Events To Help Muni
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener is looking at the possibility of placing a small surcharge on tickets for festivals and sporting events to raise revenue for the San Francisco Municipal Railway system.
The city's transit system already has over $2 billion in deferred maintenance costs. So Supervisor Wiener is asking the city controller's office to study the economic impact of a $1 to $3 surcharge on every concert and special event to help Muni pay those bills.
San Francisco Supervisor Calls For Study On Ticket Surcharge
"Our preliminary analysis has identified that this potential fee range would generate somewhere between $3 million on the low end and $22 million on the high end each year," he said.
The fee would be applied to San Francisco Giants games, events at the proposed waterfront arena for the Golden State Warriors, as well as large outdoor festivals like Outside Lands in Golden Gate Park and the Treasure Island Music Festival.
Wiener said the new revenue generated by the surcharge would be used to fix broken vehicles, mainly light-rail vehicles that are in short supply, an especially big problem when there are big events around the city.
"If light-rail vehicles need to be concentrated in a certain area for an event, that means that we don't have enough LRVs for the rest of the city," Wiener said.
He said Muni is already at a breaking point and a recovery should be aided by those event goers who are overtaxing the system.
Once the city controller returns with an assessment of the proposal, Wiener said he plans to go to various stakeholders to discuss how to implement the surcharge.
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