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Muni’s Fare Inspectors Are Back This Week

SFMTA announced that fare inspectors are returning to Muni – First with education. Citations will come later this year
By - posted 9/23/2020 No Comment

The SFMTA announced that Muni’s transit fare inspectors will return to service, but with new approach.

They’ll start with educating people on social distancing and mask policies, then move to doing fare inspections and issuing warnings and phase three later in 2020 will be returning to issuing citations.

Rather than focusing solely on enforcement, the priority will shift to helping customers comply with fare policies. To support this new approach, the Transit Fare Inspectors will be returning over multiple phases this fall and they will have a new look.

Read the full press release.

At the beginning of the COVID-109public health emergency, Muni fare inspectors took on disaster service worker duties, but Muni never stopped collecting fares. Muni customer fares provide approximately 20% of our revenue and we depend on fares to provide transit service.

This week Muni fare inspectors have joined SFMTA’s larger ambassador program to provide customer assistance throughout the system. This is the start of the phase-in process for Muni to resume fare inspection.

How Muni is Phasing Back in Fare Inspection

  • The first phase includes providing Muni customers with service information, fare programs, kiosk location, physical distancing assistance, and mask distribution when needed at stops and stations throughout the system
  • For the second phase, fare inspectors will return to being on Muni vehicles to continue providing customer assistance of phase one and conducting fare inspections without issuing citations. This is expected to begin in the latter part of October
  • The third and ultimate phase will see the inspectors continuing to provide the customer service assistance of phase one and with a return to full-fare inspections, including issuing citations as needed later this year.

Inspectors have always been part of our incident response when direct customer service was needed, either during an emergency or a large public event, like a parade. Now, that customer service approach will be integrated into our inspectors’ daily work.

Fare inspectors will work to ensure quality customer service, a safe experience, and support for our customers. In light of the COVID-19 public health emergency, inspectors will remind customers that masks are required while customers are waiting to board and to maintain physical distance. They will be:

  1. Leveraging our innovative community-based Muni Transit Assistance Program as a model for our system-wide inspectors
  2. Reorganizing the Proof of Payment unit. The new approach will allow inspectors to:
  • Support and coordinate better with each other and Muni operators
  • Spend more time on vehicles
  • Cover more of the city

Muni’s Proof of Payment system means that if you are on board a vehicle or on a station platform, you are expected to have a tagged Clipper Card, a transfer, a subway ticket, or an active MuniMobile ticket proof that you have paid your fare.

As the Transit Fare Inspectors return, our inspectors’ priority will be helping customers comply with fare policies. They will eventually issue citations again, but the focus will be on service and compliance. The compliance model will help support our operators while helping to ensure that all our customers have financial access to Muni.

Here’s a summary of Muni’s new fare compliance approach:

  • Data will inform fare inspector deployment. Inspectors will be deployed on routes with high ridership across the city—both those with few incidents of fare evasion and those with higher incidents. So, if you see Muni inspectors in the Mission, you will also see them in the Presidio. If they are on the 14 Mission, they will also be on a line like the 1 California.
  • Inspectors will enter the vehicle in groups of three at the beginning of the line, or at a rest stop, and ride a segment of the line. One inspector will check on the operator while the other two will be in the passenger area for customer support and fare compliance reminders.
  • Inspectors will remind customers to tag or show fare media as they enter the vehicle. This replaces the past practice of fare inspectors making an announcement, inspecting everyone onboard, and removing customers that don’t have proof of payment. Inspectors will also have handouts to provide to customers about our discounted fare programs.
  • We will be conducting periodic full inspections of all customers onboard a vehicle, including inspection announcements. This style of inspection will occur on a random schedule at most transfer points.