Muni Diaries

Ever feel like: sometimes you can’t live with Muni, but other times you can’t live without it? Boy, do we know that feeling. If you’re on the lookout for the shirt that perfectly describes our love-hate relationship with Muni, we’ve found a new batch of local shirt makers for you.

Above: Studio Nico Muni Transfer shirt, $26 (get them while you still remember what paper transfers look like!). Read more

First, we lost those colorful Fast Passes. Then, we try to forget that paper transfers are on their way out. But honestly, we can’t pretend any more: the new Muni fare boxes are being installed and increasingly seen on buses in the wild. Reporter Joe Fitzgerald at the Examiner just saw one this evening, serving up less-than-pretty transfers that kind of look like receipts:

Photo credit: San Francisco Examiner

To be fair, we’ve been talking about this since, oh, 2015, and the new fare boxes (and new transfers) are designed to provide faster boarding, amongst other benefits. SFist has the scoop on how this all came to be:

“One of the biggest changes beyond having a more modern fare box is the old tear-off transfers are a thing of the past. The fare boxes will generate a printed transfer, or printed proof of payment, which has a big safety benefit for our operators,” [SFMTA Director of Transit Ed] Reiskin gushed to the SFMTA board.

I guess we can say goodbye to the unexpected delight when a generous driver gives you a Late Night transfer a few hours early. And forget about holding the bottom of your transfer to try to get by (Driver Doug will call you out, in any case, as he explains on our podcast episode recently).

For now, if you collect enough transfers in the next couple of months, you might still be able to make one of these nifty, soon-to-be-extinct craft projects:

Now and then: Muni transfer art
How long is this giant Muni transfer good for?
More Cool Muni Transfer Art

Or you could permanently commemorate how much you love the paper transfer like this impressive tattoo.