Yes, money is fungible. But why should it be that people who park cars on the street need to pay their fair share but people who ride Muni don't need to pay anything?
SF has some of the most valuable private[1] and public land in the US. Why is it so pressing to charge the last 13¢ on the dollar for a Muni rider, but not for drivers to pay for the public space they're storing their property on?
[1] Private land owners know this, which is why they charge a lot to use their parking garages/parking lots in SF.
My proposal is to make Muni free full stop. Via taxes is fine with me, I provided another way that doesn't necessitate that. We are already paying for the vast majority of each Muni trip from taxes.
>That's not (at least not obviously) a "fair" allocation, it's just a transfer from one group to another.
You're saying we're just transferring from one group to another, well SF was built for people before cars became commonplace, with excellent public transit before it was torn out for cars. I'm arguing that some of that needs to be transferred back to the people for better use (Bigger sidewalks, bike lanes, restaurant parklets etc.)
>If you're spending on transit, why not spend the money on expanding service instead?
Expanding service is great, but you'd be hard pressed to pay for it via parking meters/tickets and it costs even more to run a system on top of that, particularly the metro system.