Vol. I, No. 58 · San Francisco — Monday, November 2, 2026 · Price: one nickel, minted locally
BY INES CALLOWAY, TRANSIT
On July 31, 1913, Mayor James Rolph spoke to the workers of the Illinois Pacific Glass Works, at 15th and Folsom, and asked them to vote for more city streetcar lines. The bonds would not raise their taxes, he said. “Quite the contrary, it would decrease them.”
He had the books to say it. In its first six months the city’s Geary Street line took in $134,923.85 in fares and spent $73,366.98 to run and maintain. Fares covered those costs 1.84 times over. In the year that ended June 30, 2025, Muni’s fares covered 9.5 percent of what the system cost to run. One new line and a citywide system are different machines; the two figures give the direction of travel and no more. Tomorrow voters decide Proposition H, a tax on each property in the city. The Controller expects it to raise about $177 million a year, more than Muni’s riders paid in fares in fiscal 2025.
In June 1909, a $1.95 million bond for a city-owned line on Geary fell 402 votes short of the two-thirds it needed. United Railroads, the private streetcar company, argued that a city line would not pay its own way. That December a revised bond passed with 72.7 percent.
The line opened on December 28, 1912. After $29,647.67 in bond interest, its first half-year showed a profit of $31,909.20, the San Francisco Call reported. Transit paid its way then, the agency’s history notes, and the surplus went into better service, not into taxpayers’ pockets. The nickel fare lasted until 1944.
In fiscal 2025, Muni spent $1.16 billion running the whole system, including paratransit vans for riders with disabilities, and collected $110.5 million in fares. Each boarding cost $6.91 to provide and brought in 66 cents, transfers included. Local sources paid about half its operating money, the state a quarter and Washington 13 percent.
Fares covered 22 percent of operating costs in 2002, a high of 33 percent in 2013 and 23 percent in 2019. Then fewer people rode, and each ride brought in less. Boardings fell from 223 million in 2019 to 168 million in 2025, and the average boarding brought in 88 cents in 2019. Together they cut fare revenue 44 percent, while operating costs rose 36 percent.
Federal pandemic relief is running out, the Controller’s economists write. Proposition H would charge $129 a year on a single-family home or condominium of up to 3,000 square feet, and more on bigger ones: at most $50,000 for an apartment building, $400,000 for offices and stores. Most owners 65 or older living in their homes would pay less or nothing; landlords could pass half to rent-controlled tenants, up to $65 a unit a year. It would run 15 years from July 2027, rising with inflation.
The same economists expect owners of offices, stores, hotels and other nonresidential property to pay about three-quarters. If the measure fails, the transit agency’s list of likely cuts includes suspending cable cars and running buses and trains up to half as often.
This time the measure reached the ballot by petition. Its proponents are Rodney Fong, president of the San Francisco Chamber of Commerce; Tony Delorio of Teamsters Local 665; and Kat Siegal, a transit advocate. With Mayor Daniel Lurie, they turned in 18,469 signatures on May 28. As a citizens’ initiative it needs a simple majority. Placed on the ballot by elected officials, it would have needed two-thirds, the bar the 1909 bond missed. The official argument against it is the San Francisco Republican Party’s.
The bargain in which the rider paid for the ride was gone long before the pandemic, which cut what was left by more than half. Tomorrow’s vote is about who pays the difference.
San Francisco will vote in 160 garages Tuesday, and two in three are new since 2018
The share has held since 2018. The garages, and the precinct map under them, have not.
BY HAZEL WONG, NUMBERS
Precinct 9441 votes Tuesday at Eagle Pizza, on Taraval Street. Precinct 9233 votes at the Columbarium on Loraine Court. In 160 other precincts, the polling place is a garage.
The Department of Elections lists 501 polling places for Tuesday, and 160 of them are named simply “Garage.” That is 31.9 percent. In November 2018 it was 31.8 percent, 179 garages among 563 sites. Only 53 of Tuesday’s 160 were polling places of any kind in 2018; among every other kind of site, two in three were. The department redrew its precincts in 2022, from more than 600 to 514.
By the desk’s count, the rest of the list has about 60 schools, 45 houses of worship, 31 firehouses and 14 library branches. There is also a flower shop on Seventh Street, an improv theater on Mission, Club Fugazi in North Beach and a classroom in a Muni barn on Geary.
Garages are where the buildings have them. In the 94127 ZIP code, around West Portal and St. Francis Wood, 9 of 13 polling places are garages. In the Marina’s 94123 it is 9 of 15. In 94102, which takes in the Tenderloin and Civic Center, it is none of 17. Voters there use hotel lobbies, apartment community rooms, churches and a bakery on Hayes Street.
The department says it relies on the community for polling places and pays hosts a stipend. Two explanations fit, and the lists cannot tell them apart. When the lines moved, a garage serving one small precinct could end up in the wrong spot, while a school or firehouse serves whatever precinct surrounds it. Or the host moved on: a garage depends on one household, and households move, remodel or tire of it. The desk’s read is some of both, with low confidence in the split. Matching addresses across eight years can miss a site whose address was typed differently, so the turnover may be slightly overstated.
Voters are on the roster only at their assigned site, listed on the voter pamphlet’s back cover and in the Voter Portal at sfelections.org. Elsewhere, a provisional ballot may lack some contests.
ON THE CALENDAR
Make SF Better: A Hack Night with Mistral AI. Elastic and Mistral AI invite people to spend Election night prototyping something to make San Francisco life better, from a commute to a neighborhood business. By early Sunday, 350 people had registered, up from 30 when the desk’s calendar first saw the page on October 24, and Luma showed no spots left. It is a one-off, the evening before Elastic’s own San Francisco conference.
Tuesday, November 3, 5 p.m. · 33 New Montgomery St., Yerba Buena · free; sold out · lu.ma/mistral-elastic
From the desk’s calendar: public Luma pages, counts as of 1:56 a.m. November 1. Tell the desk about the gathering it missed.
PREDICT SF · PRESEASON · ROUND 1 OF 6
How many times will SF police be dispatched between 9 p.m. Monday and 9 p.m. Tuesday, Election Day?
The line: 1,828. It usually misses by about 3%. Locks 9 p.m. tonight. Settles Wednesday.
Tap the number closest to your call. The game opens in your browser with it filled in: nudge it and tap Lock it. This email signs you in, so there is nothing to type. Change your call until 9 p.m.
SOURCES & RECEIPTS
1. San Francisco Call, August 1, 1913, p. 12. 2. Call, July 10, 1913, p. 12. 3. NTD, ectq-t3k3, npsm-38gk. 4. SFMTA archives, Callwell chronology. 5. NTD, 4tmr-gwuu. 6. MTC Vital Signs, qn4f-43jj. 7. Controller, August 10 and September 16; ballot digest, July 23. 8. Elections Department; sf.gov; SF Chamber; Bay City News; KQED; SF Public Press. Queried November 2, 2026; queries in receipts.json.
2. Department of Elections list for November 3, 2026 (as of September 29); types by keyword. 11. 2018 list, Wayback Machine copy of October 2, 2018. 12. Desk match by street address. 13. sf.gov, “Be a polling place host,” “Vote in person.” 14. DataSF bsfq-aeyw (2012), d6x4-hefw (2022). Queried November 2, 2026; queries in receipts.json.
The Frisconian · Published from forty-nine square miles surrounded by reality · thefrisconian.com · @deaconsanti