SFMTA's new two-year budget will hike parking meter fees and cable car fares starting next July. The details are still crystallizing, but the playbook is painfully familiar — rather than meaningfully cutting costs or reforming operations, the agency is squeezing revenue from every conceivable source. Tourists riding cable cars? Pay more. Commuters feeding meters? Pay more. The budget must balance, and someone's got to fund it.

Let's be clear about what's happening here. SFMTA is a sprawling bureaucracy with over 6,000 employees and a history of cost overruns, delayed projects, and operational dysfunction. And yet, every budget cycle, the conversation isn't about whether the agency is spending wisely — it's about where to find more money.

Parking meter hikes are a particularly frustrating lever. Businesses in neighborhoods already struggling with foot traffic now get the added bonus of making it even more expensive for customers to park. Meanwhile, cable car fare increases effectively turn one of the city's most iconic attractions into an ever-pricier tourist tax. At some point, you price people out of even visiting.

As one local put it, "Imagine if we treated public services like actual public services and not businesses." It's a fair point — but it cuts both ways. If Muni wants to be treated as a genuine public service deserving of public investment, it needs to demonstrate it can operate with discipline. You don't get blank-check funding when your system is plagued by delays, safety concerns, and bloated overhead.

Another Bay Area resident raised a question worth sitting with: "How much money do the roads make? What about water treatment? Public education?" The comparison is apt. We don't expect highways to turn a profit. But we also expect highway departments to account for how they spend taxpayer dollars.

The real issue isn't whether fares should go up a dollar. It's that SFMTA keeps treating fare and fee increases as the first option rather than the last resort. Until the agency demonstrates genuine fiscal accountability — real audits, real efficiency gains, real prioritization — every price hike is just a tax on the people least able to avoid it.

Balance the budget? Sure. But try starting with the expense column for once.