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Matthew Brezina!
District 5!
San Francisco, CA 94114!

San Francisco Municipal !

Transportation Agency!
Attn: Transit Violations!
P.O. Box 7718!
San Francisco, CA 94120-7718!

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To Whom This May Concern,!
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I was issued a citation for failure to pay for muni. This was a shock to me as I have no incentive
to skip out on a $2.25 fee. In fact, id happily pay more if it went to upgrading our municipal
transit system. While Muni is better than mass transit in many American cities (thank god for
SFMTA leadership in the late 1970s http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muni_Metro), it is honestly a
disgrace given we have the highest light rail ridership in the country http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
List_of_United_States_light_rail_systems_by_ridership, have an economy that is the envy of the
country http://www.best-cities.org/bestcities.taf?rankyear=2014&type=largecities&metro=DMSAF, and live in the 2nd most densely populated urban area in the USA http://
www.citylab.com/housing/2012/10/americas-truly-densest-metros/3450/. Muni is not becoming
of the global city we aspire to be. But i digress.!

When i dont bike to work, i ride the muni metro from Castro street to Powell street. Both
entrances are equipped with turnstiles. You scan your clipper card to enter. When the card is
scanned, the gates open, youve paid your fare, and you begin your journey.!

When riding the bus or entering muni rail above ground there are no turnstiles. We all know to
scan our cards, watch the screen for confirmation of payment & wait for the appropriate
confirmatory beeps.!

When entering a metro station, any user you ask will say that the signal that payment has been
received is the opening or unlocking of the turnstile (note: this is the behavior of every major
metro system across the world from Dehli to Melbourne to Paris to NYC).!

I spoke to the Muni attendant (Badge: 9790) the day after my fine to understand how my card
wasnt scanned, yet the turnstile opened for me.!

I learned the handicap gate has a motion sensor that at the attendants discretion can be
switched to a mode that opens the gate when the motion sensor is tripped, even if the clipper
card isnt scanned! This is apparently to speed peak traffic (id love to see this study). See
Figure 1.!

There is no indicator to the user that a turnstile has entered cheat mode and will open without
scanning a valid card. As we all know, sometimes it takes more than one try to get a clipper
card to read. In cheat mode, we have no reason to think our card didnt scan properly.!

Please remove the ability for the attendant to put a turnstile in cheat mode. This is bad product
design. You are no doubt catching other unintentional criminals like myself who are confused
by a poorly designed user experience.!

And finally, please void this silly fine and bill my clipper account for the $2.25 the turnstile
entrance system indicated to me that I had already paid.!

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CC!
Open Letter www.scribd..!
Rob Maerz (muni attorney)!
Scott Weiner (supervisor district 5)!
Jane Kim (supervisor District 3)!

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Figure 1. (Is this turnstile in cheat mode? Nothing would indicate that it is.)!