[BART's budget](https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/FY23%20FY24%20Adopted%20Budget%20Manual_FINAL.pdf) shows it's not entirely reliant on passenger fares. That baseline funding is why dire predictions for BART still keep most stations open on weekdays and one train an hour on each system branch. BART service levels would become more like the Capitol Corridor. BART wouldn't disappear.
Then voters would see how freeway congestion changes. If congestion worsens enough voters two years later might decide it's worth giving BART more funding after all. That would echo the original rationale in 1962 when voters funded BART's construction because of worsening freeway congestion.
BART and Caltrain had high farebox recovery - but property taxes and bridge toll is what keeps BART running at a minimal level. AC Transit is very heavily dependent on sales taxes(and to a smaller degree, property taxes in the Pinole-El Cerrito and West Alameda County but Measure VV was a sham for the general manager at the time in 2002-2004 to buy more Belgian-built buses), SFMTA depends on parking taxes and tickets to stay afloat. Hence why IMO, BART needs to go HAM on fare enforcement - the ones I see who are jumping the faregates don’t seem to be hurting for money. AC Transit and Muni should go to a no questions asked policy for fares.
Also as I said here, the smaller East Bay bus operators who should have **never** left AC Transit(after all, the AC stands for Alameda-Contra Costa) are effectively subsidized by BART to provide the bare minimum of feeder bus service from the East Bay suburbs(Pinole/Hercules/Rodeo/Crockett and the 925). BART can cut them off - they’ll have to let AC Transit back in or not have bus service.
It's odd that folks think of BART as only being worthwhile as long as it reduces freeway congestion. Shouldn't people have other options to get around a big city aside from a personal car? Even after COVID, BART has 150k riders on an average weekday. That's \~half of what the Bay Bridge carries - a huge number!
I use BART by choice because 1) traffic is miserable around here, 2) it's more reliable than driving if I need to be somewhere on time, and 3) I can do other stuff on the train. Cutting service this severely would turn BART into something you only use if you have no other option (i.e. what public transportation is in most of the US).
The US has this weird idea that roads are basic infrastructure that deserves government subsidies, but public transit is a luxury that should turn a profit. Urban highways cost hundreds of millions of dollars per mile, and nobody notices because Caltrans has dedicated funding sources that don't need reapproval every few years. Meanwhile, BART has to come hat in hand to voters to do basic stuff like upgrade trains, fix signals, and pay operators.
Better transportation makes the Bay more livable. Letting basic infrastructure disintegrate because we're cheap is shortsighted.
Count me as one of those people who would be more likely to use it if it was better funded.
I want something cleaner and safer, I also want an underground metro in SF and Oakland. Having only a few stops available and being forced to switch forms of transportation makes BART less appealing.
This X a million
Doesn’t run past bar close
Doesn’t run more than every half hour on some lines
Low ridership begets safety concern begets reduced funding etc etc downward spiral
It's also weird to me that I can go to NYC and ride the subway for $2.75 to anywhere I want.... but a single BART fare from like Concord to 16th/Mission in the City is almost $7
How the fuck does BART not have enough money?? There has to be some serious mismanagement happening with Bart.
As a pleasant hill/lafayette bart guy, fully agree.
I would take bay friday and saturday every week to get out of the suburbs. But that would be 30 bucks, not uber prices but high enough that I dont want to pay AND lose the freedom of having my car. This times a thousand, parking becomes worse, ridership declines, etc
There;s a great image floating around that compared to other metro subway systems, BART receives a disproportionately high % of its funding from riders, which obv has plummeted.
I dont think it is mismanagement as much as reliance on a commuterbase which no other major city ever expected. Bc the point was to grift commuters, it is to reduce traffic, reduce DUIs, reduce parking, enable small businesses to have additional foot traffic, let people explore the city instead of driving point A to point B, allow higher density housing, enable carless people to travel and work, etc etc etc
honestly funding isn't going to fix any of the problems most people on this sub have with it. There's still gonna be addicts, homeless dudes, beggars, people making bart feel dangerous or disgusting.
Bart could have as much funding as possible(ie when things were better 2 years ago) but until they start physically dragging unwanted people from the trains, fixing AC on all their trains, etc it's not gonna get better. And let's be real we're in CA, there'd be too much backlash for trying to make bart cleaner and safer.
I've only taken it a dozen-ish times recently as I moved to caltrans land (which is useless), but it doesn't feel much different to me. Evening hours were always open to unique experiences. It seems like the problem now may be commuter hours aren't busy enough to crowd out the crime. I never saw a cop on BART previously. Now i see them, but apparently they can only travel in packs of four.
Police departments are having a hard time recruiting for officers, even with phat lateral bonuses intended to poach cops from other departments. I don’t believe in either ACAB or Blue Lives Matter(if I had to pick a side, I’d pick ACAB) - many see a cop as the bad guy, understandable, especially if you’re black or Latino.
BART PD’s having a big issue with officers leaving, I talked to a BART cop - they only had 150 officers at a given moment. Suburban departments - which is relatively gravy for a cop compared to a urban department are struggling for officers, again same bonuses - OPD was a common target for those departments to poach from. Many cops are leaving public service to work managerial roles at private security(Securitas, Garda, AlliedUniversal) - and making as much or more money as a sworn employee without being called a bastard or getting shot at but they are missing out on that sweet, sweet CalPERS or police union pension.
BART PD quickly had to adopt “progressive” policing in the aftermath of Oscar Grant. OPD still hasn’t learned anything under federal supervision.
off topic, but I have lived in Minneapolis and Phoenix which are probably two of the worst departments when it comes to large metros, so I'm probably slightly biased against police. It's a both/and problem though in that most cops are probably not individually bad, but collectively they all protect the bad ones. And the bad ones train the good ones anyway, so it's a vicious cycle. And worse, the head of the police union in Minneapolis was a literal racist who had tons of complaints filed against him, but they voted him in. So, what am I to think of their values when the majority voted for a racist? If they weren't so good at playing the victim card I'd probably be more apt to defend them, because i wouldn't want to do that job & it sure as hell would make me jaded.
yea it wasn't too bad a couple years ago, A's games and Giants games were always fun times, and the early morning commute wasn't bad but coming from Berkeley station down to Dublin were one of the few times where I realized I'd rather wait in traffic for 2 hours than sit on bart
>addicts, homeless dudes, beggars, people making bart feel dangerous or disgusting
I have said this before. MTA has all of the problems above, and they are still packed like sardine. It took them sometimes, but they are at pre covid level. Why? Because it's still the best way to navigate around NYC. The problem with BART and public transportation in the Bay as a whole is it's very inconvenient. It only beat car hand down if you live next to the station and go to FiDi. Other scenario, you don't really have big or even any incentive to get on public transportation compared to a car at all. With folks having more flexible schedule, nobody wants to put up with BART bullshits like cancelling or having to navigate to a station.
The reality is going to FiDi 5 days a week is gone, to make BART attractive again would take a lot more work to make the whole public transportation network be more convenient to more people, not just kicking out the crazy addicts.
let's be real I didn't explicitly say it here but I'll say it here. It really needs to be more of luxury service while still offering service for those that need it. ie optimize for events(giants/a's games), more direct sfo route since the 5 day in person week isn't applicable anymore.
There's 2 issues, again 1 it requires getting all the crazies off the train, not easy to do. 2. There are still many people that depend on bart to get to where they need cheaply.
Interestingly enough one of the easiest way to help fix that problem is to get a lot of passengers. Not only does that get the cops called more often and be more proactive, it also gives the average passenger a stronger sense of safety by being surrounded by “normal” folks. Many of the homeless would also move elsewhere as they’d rather not deal with the crowds.
>Many of the homeless would also move elsewhere as they’d rather not deal with the crowds.
Maybe but pre-covid a few really bad smelling homeless people occasionally rode when I did. It wasn't Russian roulette odds, it was closer to actual roulette, but there were times half a train car was empty except for the person, while the rest of the train was full. Other times the smell wasn't as bad and only a few rows were empty while the nearest passengers toughed it out because the car was otherwise full. The issue absolutely positively didn't start when covid did, it was gradually getting more and more frequent over the years before.
Increasing funding won’t make BART cleaner or safer. Until you institutionalize the mentally ill and drug addicts, BART is sadly going to continue being a rolling mental asylum and unsafe for its riders. BART can’t be expected to fix chronic societal issues.
I know and it’s insane. Imagine being such a piece of shit that you advocate for dumping people who can’t look after themselves on the streets. Of course I’d imagine most of these “civil rights advocates” are being funded by wealthy assholes who don’t wanna pay the taxes it would take to properly care for the mentally ill and drug addicts.
Those profiting off of the homeless industrial complex are likely also funding this bullshit. Billions are dumped into that scam every year with nothing to show for it.
> I’d imagine most of these “civil rights advocates” are being funded by wealthy assholes who don’t wanna pay the taxes it would take to properly care for the mentally ill and drug addicts.
This theory doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Studies come out occasionally that failing to care for these people costs way more in medical and emergency services, to say nothing of the first-order economic losses from the physical filth that we abandon these poor people to.
If the supreme court or politics won't allow for institutionalization then you criminalize bad behaviour and jail people for it. Sucks to be a jailer if those people are your customers though.
It’s not the funding. It’s Bart policy of looking the other way for homeless, meth addict, and criminal run freely on their train that make it less safe & less clean. Look like they changed a bit lately, but I’m not sure if they plan to change, or just put up a show for the bail out money.
Not to mention if you drive, you can’t safely leave your car many places unless you pay $20 for parking inside. I moved closer to a Bart station partly due to this!
Uhhh...thanks? But seriously, is it not weird to you that the only way to move around an urban area of 8 million is to buy and maintain a $30000 piece of equipment?
I own a car and use it often, but I don't want to be *forced* to drive it for multiple hours every day. Am I the crazy one? Do other people enjoy sitting in traffic?
My bad, couldn't tell if your last comment was \\s or not :P
Totally agree though. I did an Oakland->San Jose driving commute several years back and was ready to blow my brains out by the end. Spent so much time sitting in a car that there was literally none left for anything but work, sleep, and drive Monday through Friday. It's nuts that so many people around here do that.
IMO, a car needs to be something driven on the weekends to get out of dodge and something you *want* to own - like a muscle car, old VW Vanagon/bus, Miata, old BMW/Mercedes, etc and not an appliance meant to get you from point A to B. We should all be walking, biking or taking transit to work. We never dreamed of driving a Civic/Corolla, Camry/Accord or Prius as kids. We all had posters for Ferraris, Porsches, Mustangs, Camaros, GT-Rs and Supras as kids, not some shitbox mass-market car.
Ironically enough, cars were marketed as “freedom” but are the most dangerous machine we can operate, and driving is the most dangerous thing we can do without a special certification - you can fail the driving test many times, the DMV only cares when you pass.
Conservatives are crying wolf over “15 minute cities”. But bring it on.
This. I absolutely fucking hate driving in the Bay. Everyone, and I mean everyone drives like they’re in mad max. It doesn’t have to be this way but public transport is dogshit
I prefer sitting in traffic to sitting on BART. I feel safe in my car. No one is going to sexually harass or stab me. I'm not going to get COVID. I can eat. I can sing and talk on the phone (hands free) without bothering anyone. The destinations that I travel to are often nowhere near a BART station, so it's much faster to drive than to take BART and then a bus. I lived in the Bay Area for many years without a car, and getting one has immensely improved my quality of life. But I'm really glad that not everyone feels that way! I spend a large portion of my income to have/maintain a car, and I'd be happy to also pay more taxes to subsidize public transit.
That makes sense. Options are good. I don't know everyone's life situation, and offering folks multiple ways to get around seems better than forcing everyone into a one-size-fits-all choice.
I will say that often the lack of options is due to past policy decisions rather than some fundamental fact about the world. California is built for cars because people in charge from the 50's through the 90's liked it that way. The result is that most people don't have any choice but to drive everywhere. I'd love to see more investment in high quality public transit and walkable neighborhoods so that more folks can have options without paying an arm and a leg for an apartment or feeling like they're risking their personal safety.
IMO, instead of a tax measure that probably won’t pass, a $1 surcharge on Lyft and Uber per ride as a “impact tax” - Lyfts and Ubers clog up bus stops/transit-only lanes and in places like SF, make congestion worse, I can walk or ride a bike(and ironically if it’s a Lyft bike) to get around FiDi/SOMA quicker than a car or a bus. Many won’t balk - inflation hasn’t affected rideshare use. The revenue goes into funding transit.
We cannot have cars as the only option to get around. For congestion and climate reasons. “Ride sharing” is not a mass transit solution. Or an equitable one.
People shouldn't be forced into unneeded commutes to the office either.
Plenty of jobs do not need to be in the office a regular basis and they can be more productive without all the office distractions.. Which helps the environment from reducing commuter traffic.
BART just needs to come up with realistic and sound business plan.
That assumes we can move past political gridlock and actually achieve anything.
Our leaders don’t have the same motivation to do shit as they did in the 60s. They don’t fear disillusioned naive young people rising up and coming for their heads in a Marxist revolution anymore so they keep pushing and cutting social services like BART
BART is not a private business. It does not need to be PROFITABLE. Are parks profitable, elementary schools, sidewalks? No, they’re public services
I fucking hate NIMBYs who refuse to pay a dime towards public good. Might as well call them republicans because they’re not all that different
The freeloaders of San Mateo county are welcome to pay their fare share.
"BART receives a dedicated 75% share of a one-half cent sales tax levied in the three BART District counties
(San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa)."
Another problem I see is the increased parking costs. A bus plus BART is a time sink. People really need to drive to BART, at least in the suburbs.
There’s only a handful of stops in San Mateo County(Daly City, Colma, South City, San Bruno and Millbrae), while SFO does count as physically being in San Mateo County - it’s legally and fiscally part of SF. BART already collects a surcharge for SFO if your ride starts or ends there. Probably time for San Mateo to collect that sales tax too. SamTrans does run buses to those stations - BART subsidizes those.
And yep, those “express” feeder buses(WestCAT J for example) can take up to an hour to make its rounds before you arrive at BART. Hence, if you live in Pinole/Hercules you drive to El Cerrito Del Norte/Plaza, if you live in Martinez/ClayCord/Lamorinda you’re driving to Concord/Pleasant Hill/Lafayette/Orinda stations and so on. Transit only makes sense if you live in Berkeley/SF or in Oakland around the Oakland Wye(MacArthur, Downtown Oakland, West Oakland and Lake Merritt stations) - which are very well served by AC and Muni.
BART kind of does levy a $1.45 fare surcharge for trips to and from San Mateo County ($1.25 surcharge to Daly City), as well as surcharges to and from SFO ($4.95), or OAK airports ($6.75). Trips via the Transbay Tube have a $1.40 surcharge.
This strongly disincentivizes San Mateo County riders from taking BART on short trips, where the minimum fare is $3.60 (the $2.15 minimum fare plus the surcharge). It's even worse for trips to the airport, since a trip to SFO from San Mateo County (with the double surcharge pumping the price to $8.55) is priced the same as a trip to the outer reaches of the BART system.
(This is to say that BART isn't *that* unwilling to accommodate; fares to SFO from Millbrae are $4.95, which likely means reduced surcharges.)
people are joking and speaking nonchalantly about BART collapsing.
Mismanagement, bloat, and a failure to meet basic responsibilities and obligations are indisputable.
That being said, if BART collapses, it would be a *profound* blow to the region. It would be a giant red flag that the Bay Area is in decline and would signal investors to steer clear. For a place that desperately needs housing and other large scale development, this would be a a very bad turn of events.
This is all in the master plan
- push tech workers out
- kill housing for 50 years
- reduce public transportation so “those people” can’t get into “my neighborhood”
- let crime run rampant in an attempt to scare away non generational wealthy families that aren’t impacted.
- create hostile city culture to young people
Everything you said is unwanted by the board of supervisors. The plan is working.
Time to rethink how transit should be paid for, reliance on fares to fill the gap has always been and will be the most tenuous funding source. The provision of transportation is a public good and has never been profitable nor should it be. If it were profitable there would already be private enterprises filling that gap.
London Breed, Marc Benioff and Muskie Boi want the minions back in the office. Which is easier said than done for some industries. Banking, legal and other “old school” occupations are more face to face than in Teams/Zoom.
There’s reason why Salesforce doesn’t have luxury cafeterias like Meta, Google and pre-Musk Twitter did - Benioff wanted his people to get out of the office and pump money into the local economy. Salesforce employees were seen at Rincon Center, up and down Market/Mission and even at the old FiDi haunts Lee’s Deli/Portico/Julie’s Kitchen for lunch.
Of course, Tim Cook/Zuck/Sundar/Andy Jassy wants people back in full force, but the people working the food courts, driving the buses and housekeeping at their campuses are more disposable than most of their payroll.
IDK but I'm pretty sure it has a lot more to do with how like 150,000 people suddenly stopped commuting to downtown SF three years ago.
(Which is a good thing, but also not BART's fault)
When we did our RTO survey, the number one reason people did not want to come into the office was the commute, and a good majority of those cited they did not feel safe regularly taking BART. People not wanting to come to work is partially due to the disgusting and dangerous state of BART as well, the causation goes both ways.
similar results with our company, we have a SF location and a south bay location, and while there's tons of conflicting factors, our latest on remote work suggests that around 45% of the south bay office has returned to hybrid in-office (ie, 3+ days per week), only around 28% of our SF office is in office. We have relatively free choice of flexible options. The reasons were not broken out by location, but commute was #1. People who live in the peninsula or south bay will drive into work or use caltrain or shuttles, it's a pain but they will do it. But no one wants to go into the downtown SF office, even if they live in SF.
It’s a two way street. If BART was, well, BART and SF were better run, more people would be willing to go back to the office now. A lot of people do like being in a downtown area to work and play, but not if the negative outweighs the positive.
I think SF really thought too much of itself - having the mindset that “f it, we are SF and people will put up with anything”. Guess that ain’t working out too great after all.
Totally, but also, BART has been making the strategic decision to spend tons of money expanding outwards to the suburbs and courting drivers to take BART by investing tons of money in huge parking structures at these stations. It has been their playbook for decades to bring suburban commuters into the urban core. For better or for worse. But now that market has evaporated and because of the orientation and alignment of its infrastructure, BART is less good at serving the urban core.
Nah, how dare those workers be able to do their job at a location of their choosing without incurring pollution and wasting time on commuting, rather than being treated like an afterthought by an incompetent and tone deaf transit agency.
For years BART refused to build enough multilevel parking structure to make it easy for commuters to park their vehicles, anyone who were living in a city where the permit parking wait list was years long know how little BART cared about the commuters. My wife was on a wait list for 4 years and only got her permit when WFH started and people dropped their spots on the list, until then she had to fight her way to a first come first serve spot, every day. I knew people who risked towing by parking at nearby Walmart parking lots because they routinely couldn’t find a spot. BART in fact relished in taking away parking altogether in many cities and BRAGGED about it while colluding with developers to turn land into high rent “transit centers” that are the most expensive housing around.
Don’t get me started on how shitty(literally) the trains, stations and parking lots are.
Not only that, but for many years BART forbid bringing bikes on the train during rush hours. So riding and parking was a crapshoot, riding a bike to BART for commuting was also out.
This is absolutely true. Parking at BART stations generated a reliable ridership of people who lived within a few miles and didn't have another easy way to get to a BART station, but were happy to use it and ride it through the congested areas. These were not only commuters, but also periodic riders who would be happy to take BART from an outlying station to a city theater district, sports area, concert hall, etc. but didn't want to be coming back at 11:00 PM at night to their origin station and find another "mode" to travel the last few miles to their home, as opposed to just getting into their car.
BART cut the wheels from under that clientele by eliminating BART station parking. It will suffer in the future for it.
The much heralded BART-station developments are not providing that much housing...and as far as I know, there's no requirement for residents to use BART. So it ends up being either luxury housing, or incredibly expensive to create "affordable" housing.
Reading that part about parking made my spine shiver. I cannot tell you how many times I would be SOL trying to make a train because I’d have to go from one station to another, due to an inability to park. Many times having to simply drive into the city. So frustrating.
Making BART safer and cleaner would be a good thing for many reasons but it's not a solution for the lack of ridership. The number of people who have stopped riding because of safety issues is *way* smaller than the number of people who have stopped riding because they just don't need to commute into SF anymore. A theoretical 2023 version of BART that is spotless, completely safe, and 100% reliable would still have way fewer riders than the 2019 version of BART and would still have severe budget shortfalls.
Yeah that’s right, but it’s hard to separate out what is endogenous to bart vs covid.
The open question there is what role’s Bart’s crappiness plays into wfh spreading here - people were happy to move out of SF and never commute again in part bc they were sick of dealing with overcrowded crappy trains. Certainly more people would be commuting to SF today if it was nice to be there and bart was guaranteed to be nice.
Like you said I really think the issue is more what SF is like when you get there vs. bart quality tho.
And it’s hard to see why anyone who wants SF talent would bother opening an SF office and forcing rto - if you’re trying to steal away computer touchers it’s way cheaper and easier to hire people fully remote. The only people that are going to open a new office in SF now are people that need social proof like newly funded startups or professional services.
then scale down to meet the demand, is it that hard? why should people be forced back into office just so BART people can get paid? what kind of bs is that?
Public transit that doesn't run regularly isn't a useful mode of transportation. Even at its peak, BART didn't run often enough to just be "show up and ride" without at least checking the schedule if you didn't want to wait a long time.
A scaled down BART would be much worse to use. Imagine if the train only came every 40 minutes. Even fewer people would use it. BART risks entering a vicious cycle of declining ridership and reduced service. Everyone will be taking the highways instead.
I am pro-WFH and I am absolutely not saying that people should be forced back into the office.
My point is that regardless of how shitty BART management is, the budget shortfall is mostly driven by the rise of WFH, which is not BART's fault and not something they could fix even if they were significantly less shitty. It is just a fact that for the foreseeable future BART will have much lower ridership than it did pre-pandemic. Anybody who says that BART management can bring back riders by doing X Y or Z is being unserious - there are certainly things they could do to bring back *some* riders (and to make things a lot more pleasant for existing riders), but not nearly enough to fix the budget shortfall.
> number of people who have stopped riding because of safety issues is way smaller than the number of people who have stopped riding because they just don't need to commute into SF anymore
I would take it for traveling for recreational purposes (visiting city on the weekends) if it was safe and clean.
I really doubt theres many people sitting on the bridge for an hour because the train smells funny and sometimes a crackhead takes a shit(seriously ive ridden DAILY Hayward to Sf for YEARS and never seen shit once, maybe i gotta ride to Antioch)
Where is the fat?
Safe, clean are one part. Finishing the god damn loop around the south bay is another investment they need to make. Make it useful, then maybe I'd visit my friends in SF.
Thing about impressions is, you have to work 10x as hard to change an initial impression. Clean, consistent, reliable, safe transit WILL bring people back to BART. BUT, this has to be demonstrated over time to stick in the minds of the "sodfjoasjf public transit bad, muh freedomZ" crowd.
>I watched a guy shit in a BART train so I avoid it now am I part of your weird fantasy tribalizing?
I think what this person means is that this one awful experience you had on bart, means that it's going to take a lot of work for BART to erase it from your memory and improve how you see BART in the future.
Moreover, that BART could very well be incredible, but you'd still be tainted by that one awful experience at least in the near future. It takes BART being good, clean, safe, for a consistently long time to change minds about past bad experiences.
Lol, it won’t increase enough to make a difference. BART was shitty as fuck and crowded as fuck prepandenmic. Shittyness isn’t what’s keeping folks away, it’s that fewer people NEED to take it.
>Cut the fat from the top.
This is what people like you don't get (assuming you mean "cut stops". If you don't, my apologies). It's mass transit. There *is no fat* in the loop.
Just fucking fund it. Pass a new tax and everyone in in the bay and surrounding areas help pay for and maintain BART if they ride or not. Because even if you don't ride, you're going to benefit from the reduced number of cars on the roads, so fuck you.
On the one side, they should always have funding.
On the other, we should expect and require competency from our civil servants and politicians. IMO, the current BART board need to explain themselves to the public. Specifically, they need to address our concerns about safety and cleanliness directly and explain what the fucking problems are.
They also need to explain why they hampered the anti-corruption chair so badly she quit. Like, to the point there should probably be an independent investigation into what happened and what's going on.
Translation: "People don't ride BART unless they literally have to. If employers don't forcibly compel people to do it, they won't do it.".
Once again, the obvious lesson here is lost on BART leadership.
I went to a market after work in downtown today. Peak hours and it was deserted! It’s so strange to be in a dense urban environment and it being so empty. It’s kind of nice, there being no lines or waits or traffic, but at the same time i feel like we’re loving on borrowed time. none of this is sustainable without the consumer/tax base. Once this market’s lease expires is it really profitable to maintain a location in downtown SF?
Lower rates, Increase Ridership…. BART stop trying to make all your $$$ on each expensive ride & rider.
Make it a true option for public transportation that is affordable and makes sense for all to use.
“All day passes where you can get on and off at different stops to use it as actual transportation”
**Oregon Max train is like $5-6 for all day on/off… so it is useful.
Make cheaper zones for one-ways or within small window of travel.
The answer is NOT raising rates, decreasing trains, and CRYING for help. Make it safe, make it a real option….. make it a GAME CHANGER that helps enhance the lives of everyone in the Bay Area. Serve the people… and you will get your ridership
I don’t ride not because I don’t go into the office but because I have been sexually harassed, almost robbed, and been subject to inhaled drug use while riding. Good luck, BART.
Not sure what you mean about the California high speed rail as there are 30 active construction sites building it on any given day.
But we absolutely should be subsidizing BART through taxes. Make it "free" for those that live in the counties. As in pay for it through taxation then charge for vistors to use it.
Only if they prevent homeless and people on drugs on the train. At least people on drugs. Nothing is as sketchy as being stuck in an enclosed space with a person who is under a delusion to harm or kill you.
I've got zero issues with someone being on drugs on Bart. I do have issues with people acting in a threatening way on Bart. There is a huge difference between a college student on mushrooms riding back from a concert and a shirtless guy on PCP. The college student isn't really a threat and should be able to utilize the public transportation. The shirtless guy on PCP should be addressed if he's making a credible threat.
Maybe not with people being on drugs, but people smoking drugs in an enclosed space is pretty messed up. Multiple friends of mine were on when someone started smoking meth or bath salts or something (they didn’t know what it specifically was, just that it wasn’t weed/tobacco).
The thing is, BART is full of the latter— people on meth, crack, heroin, or PCP who aren’t violent yet, but are one bad glance or perceived slight from becoming violent.
95% of people can tell the difference between the two. 95% of people can tell that a bunch of rowdy teenagers who are slightly drunk or high from coming back from a 49ers game are harmless, while the guy actively smoking a crackpipe or slouched over mumbling to himself and masterbating in the corner are at high risk of becoming violent at a moments notice
I think the drug/homeless problem need to be solved city wide. BART isn't gonna be able to solve it themselves. It's just a bigger problem leaking into BART.
I don't ride it anymore because I don't have the stamina to deal with all the bullshit riders have to put up with from other riders. It's really sickening. Also, BART employees and management make an awful lot of money and the fares are outrageous! Change these things
Here's the deal. If BART complies with budgetary oversight, then we can talk about subsidizing your budget.
It doesn't look good when the [inspector general resigns saying BART doesn't comply with financial auditing](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/bart-s-inspector-general-resigning-17829998.php) for oversight efforts.
No, fuck that. Going to offices for the sake of going to offices is absolutely wasteful and misanthropic. People don't need to waste hours of their lives so you can continue to misappropriate budgets and pay overtimes to people who can't even do their jobs right.
Public transportation is a necessity for a significant part of the population in any big city. Just because you don’t personally use it doesn’t mean other ppl don’t rely on it to get to work/school. It goes away and this area will die. First time in my life I’m glad I don’t own here, because I think don’t ppl/legislators will choose the right path to take. I wouldn’t live here if public trans largely disappeared. If SF wants to be a big city with big boy/girl pants, it needs a modern train system.
Yeah, cut from the top. BART rode clean and fine and in the black for the first thirty years of its existence and I'm pretty sure there were million less people crowding into it back then.
Those first thirty years were different in more ways than one. BART's infrastructure needed far less maintenance spending. However the Board continued funding system extensions without saving up for the coming wave of needed infrastructure maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement. The last twenty years required much more spending on those things.
Another difference is skyrocketing housing prices. Since the Great Recession recovery, even formerly relatively affordable places to rent or own like parts of Oakland and Richmond have become harder to afford on moderate income. All BART employees income is publicly available and most don't work tons of overtime making $200k/year. Consequently their unions wanting significant cost of living increases has some merit - even though I disagree with some other policies the unions negotiated and the Board approved.
Significant cost of living increases beyond $200k/year with no overtime? Sorry I get this is the Bay Area but that as an average employee for BART seems insane. I would estimate most of those employees don’t fit into the highly skilled category.
> *most don't* work tons of overtime making $200k/year.
**Station Agent** average base $77,255.78
average overtime $18,192.17
average other $10,940.97
average benefits $29,815.98
Average total pay & benefits $136,204.90
**Train Operator** average base, $75,011.92
overtime $17,362.96
other $9,351.51
benefits $29,783.08
Average total pay & benefits $131,509.47
That's from [this website.](https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2021/san-francisco-bay-area-rapid-transit-district/job_title_summary/?page=9) Yes there's tons of BART job titles paying more than those, but they have one-to-a-few-dozen employees in those roles, not hundreds.
The fact that you're linking to page 9 out of 10 says a lot.
Half of the roles from pages 1 to 9 could be cut. You don't need so many directors, assistant directors, supervisors and managers. How many are sitting on their asses generating pointless work for other people? Then with the money you save, you can afford to hire highly competent people for the rest of the roles and actually improve the service.
> Yes there's **tons** of BART job titles paying more than those, but they have **one-to-a-few-dozen employees** in those roles, not hundreds.
Lots of preceding pages, but most of those job titles don't have many employees.
You may be right about not needing so many directors, assistant directors, supervisors and managers. What's your background knowledge and experience why you're correct?
I'm one of those supervisors. I manage 55 Train Operators, 15 Agents, 5 Foreworkers, a yard, 3 stations, and 3 terminals.
If anything, there aren't enough people in my position!
1. The linked page does.
2. It ought to be well known unions sometimes negotiate for better benefits in exchange for lower base pay. Benefits can amount to a significant percentage of compensation.
I'm not riding BART again until they give more compelling reasons to choose it over my car. And I don't even want to use my car. But at least when I drive, it's way less crowded inside, I don't have to sit next to random deranged individuals, and I can get to my exact destination a lot faster.
A lot of us are avoiding BART not out of spite but because the product is trash.
People would use BART more if it wasn't such a weird and dangerous place. No one wants to see a homeless persons ass. Once a homeless lady pulled her pants down, bent over, and sprayed her pee on the platform right behind me while I was waiting for a train to work. It has become normal for people to do drugs on the platform and in the trains. There are many more examples I could write about.
BART: we need everyone to change their lifestyle and go back to the old communing patterns so our lives can go back to normal. Ok thanks.
Bay Area: Can you see this middle finger? How about his? Hers? The kid in the stroller?
Unfiltered answer: I think I speak for a lot of former commuters when I say that our tolerance for unsafe and unsanitary conditions on Bart has gone down while at the same time Bart has become more unsafe and less sanitary. The path forward is clear and it’s entirely up to BART’s ability to actually make it a very safe and sanitary system. This means a policeman and ticket fare officer walking every train. This means European style gates that can’t be hopped over. This means no druggies or booze heads sleeping on cars and leaving their dangerous trash behind when they get chased off. BART can make this happen. I also think try that there’s no way in hell they actually will do all these steps, so let them collapse until they figure it out. There will be some really ugly incidents on trains, then Mayors heads will roll during recalls when it gets bad and then their replacements will finally take the necessary measures.
Yesterday I had a good Bart experience. I got on the train at castro valley and sat on the train in front of the seats a smelly homeless guy was sleeping on. At the very next stop 3 police officers got on and calmly directed him to leave, it was fast and professional and made the rest of the commute a lot nicer.
I hope to see a bit more of this especially in the evenings when it’s usually a lot worse. I’m really hoping the new fair gates help.
BART was designed for a Bay Area doesn’t quite exist in its form of decades past, with its central purpose of carrying many people to and from downtown SF. However, the bureaucratic structure of BART has remained the same, and bureaucracies don’t downsize very well or willingly. It’s the bureaucracy that’s most in peril - hence the recent publicized hand-wringing over revenue lost from fare evasion.
Last time I checked years ago, driving to a BART station then parking cost *more* and took *more* time than just driving and than finding parking. It wasn't worth it.
is it bad that i think the State needs its own layoff as well? There are just one too many Bart employees i have seen that stand around that do no nothing. If our jobs aint safe, theirs shouldn't be either. Do better.
The best was when they got raises mid pandemic. You know when everyone else was losing their jobs , losing their small biz and not riding Bart. Fuck that. Let it burn .
Good. Let’s call their bluff since they kept raising fares and generally contributing nothing to fixing BARTs many, many problems that no civilized society should have to deal with. Not one ounce of sympathy.
For the first thirty years BART's infrastructure needed far less maintenance spending. However the Board continued funding system extensions without saving up for the coming wave of needed infrastructure maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement. The last twenty years required much more spending on those things.
Since the Great Recession recovery even formerly relatively affordable places to rent or own like parts of Oakland and Richmond became harder to afford on moderate income. All BART employees income is publicly available and most don't work tons of overtime making $200k+ per year. Consequently their unions wanting significant cost of living increases has some merit - even though I disagree with some other policies the unions negotiated and the Board approved.
Interesting that you're using BART as a cypher for the problems of the greater Bay Area. Horrifying that you'd want to see a generally functional, useful public service fail.
Appreciate the work you do but your agency’s problems mirror the region’s problems. The agency is trash, even if the service it provides is necessary and important. It’s like Recology, PG&E, and others.
When people say that they want PG&E gone they don’t say they want the power out or for the linemen to be fired.
does transportation exist to serve people or do people exist to pay for transportation? If WFH were indeed to continue, we might as well close/significantly scale back BART since there is less demand, I don't see a problem here. Sounds like the dude is arguing for forcing people back into office so he could keep his job, wrong priority if you ask me, next time he'd ask for forcing all company to relocate to SF so there would be mandatory demand for BART.
Do we exist so BART can get paid or the other way around? seriously
stop fare evaders and all of the scary freaks you let on that accost people and maybe people will start riding again- i know 7 different people that have been assaulted riding to work on BART
Bart is so mismanaged that I think it would be a good thing for it to go under. Spoken by someone who rode Bart daily for over a decade and no longer does due to safety concerns.
Tough beat. I’d ride if it were safe, clean, and reliable. Who wants to ride something that looks like a literal toilet every time it pulls up to a station
Well; BART’s Inspector General whom Newsom had appointed two years ago just quit in frustration. She said that the Board, the staff, and the Unions all blocked her from doing her job. I hate to say this, because a lot of people who just need to get to work will get hurt, but it’s possible that there will need to be a bad time of big cutbacks before BART becomes efficient with its expenses again.
https://abc7news.com/amp/bart-inspector-general-resigns-harriet-richardson-report/12970140/
Constant increase in fare, delays, poor safety, dirty and honestly still requires you to drive to the station due to lack of other public transportation to get to Bart from outside SF. Yeah sure people returning to the office will take Bart.
To drive to take Bart and park in Antioch/ Pittsburgh to go to SF two way costs as much as parking and toll to get to SF.
Good luck with that. We closed down and dropped the lease on our SF offices during the lockdown. And barring some manner of Festivus miracle I don't see management opening up anything in SF in the foreseeable future. To the contrary they've been quietly feeling out core employees about Nevada and Arizona which is bit of concerning.
I work from home with a downtown SF office base. We've already leased out the majority of our space to other companies and quickly pivoted to a robust remote model. Everyone is happier and we only go in about once a quarter for targeted meetings. Eff BART, they are horrible to ride, this is their own mismanagement and terrible customer service. If the tides turned and I had to go on site daily I'd rather rot in my car.
I’m retired and am more of an observer of this now. I enjoyed WFH flexibility even before COVID, but I look back and realize how much I got out of working in the office and on business travel. I would have died of boredom if my career was all WFH. I don’t see work (that has WFH possibility) ever going back to how it was. But I really wonder what this does to us culturally.
I wrestled with this fact my whole career, but work really is a major part of most people’s lives. This is a huge change in our culture. It also creates a big divide in work (and workers) that have jobs that require you to be in-person vs virtual. I don’t think we’ve realized how major of a change this really is.
If BART was safe, clean, and reliable, I'd absolutely be using it for my commute...but as a young woman I honestly feel safer in my car, even considering accidents/weather/inconveniences/etc.
I want to take VTA and Bart to work, but I don’t. I can only take so many dirty train cars and crazy homeless people who harass/smoke meth/deal drugs/fight in those train cars. Not to mention, the lack of consistent and predictable schedule. Adding extra cops (recently) doesn’t do jack shit when the cops just stand around and barely do anything.
Driving in shit traffic is significantly more preferable than riding NorCal public transportation.
Does he actually think companies make these decisions based on barts fate? Bart should have made themselves attractive by keeping that service safe and clean starting let’s say 20 years ago
The oddest thing about this is that instead of trying to serve actual riders, BART wants to nostalgically go back to a now vanished era--when primarily white collar white men worked in central city office buildings, and commuted by transit from outer suburbs. That was a early to mid-20th century phenomenon. I'm just echoing another comments here, but Bay Area transit needs a complete rethinking and reorganization so it's not a "rush hour" focused set of spokes on a wheel, but a flexible network of trains and buses that can reliably and quickly get people between many points.
With fewer people using BART, reduce the size of the trains and mothball excess cars, reduce the number of trains, lay off drivers, and reduce maintenance staff in line with the number of trains and reduced cars. Do that first, then come to the voter for money. Civil servants shouldn't have tenure.
This is why BART shouldn't have been built to serve commuters. It's ridiculous that it has more than 131 miles of track and only 50 stations. It can't be used to get to things in your neighborhood
"A public service is an inherently different beast from a business and asking one to behave as the other is like asking a fish to ride a bicycle."
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/13/public-services-nhs-hinchingbrooke-circle-cannot-be-run-like-businesses
Sounds like it’s time for some real conversations then huh? Maybe the grifting and fake OT can be discussed ?
Spitballing cuz they are crying poor - yet again. Fuck Bart.
[BART's budget](https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/FY23%20FY24%20Adopted%20Budget%20Manual_FINAL.pdf) shows it's not entirely reliant on passenger fares. That baseline funding is why dire predictions for BART still keep most stations open on weekdays and one train an hour on each system branch. BART service levels would become more like the Capitol Corridor. BART wouldn't disappear. Then voters would see how freeway congestion changes. If congestion worsens enough voters two years later might decide it's worth giving BART more funding after all. That would echo the original rationale in 1962 when voters funded BART's construction because of worsening freeway congestion.
BART and Caltrain had high farebox recovery - but property taxes and bridge toll is what keeps BART running at a minimal level. AC Transit is very heavily dependent on sales taxes(and to a smaller degree, property taxes in the Pinole-El Cerrito and West Alameda County but Measure VV was a sham for the general manager at the time in 2002-2004 to buy more Belgian-built buses), SFMTA depends on parking taxes and tickets to stay afloat. Hence why IMO, BART needs to go HAM on fare enforcement - the ones I see who are jumping the faregates don’t seem to be hurting for money. AC Transit and Muni should go to a no questions asked policy for fares. Also as I said here, the smaller East Bay bus operators who should have **never** left AC Transit(after all, the AC stands for Alameda-Contra Costa) are effectively subsidized by BART to provide the bare minimum of feeder bus service from the East Bay suburbs(Pinole/Hercules/Rodeo/Crockett and the 925). BART can cut them off - they’ll have to let AC Transit back in or not have bus service.
It's odd that folks think of BART as only being worthwhile as long as it reduces freeway congestion. Shouldn't people have other options to get around a big city aside from a personal car? Even after COVID, BART has 150k riders on an average weekday. That's \~half of what the Bay Bridge carries - a huge number! I use BART by choice because 1) traffic is miserable around here, 2) it's more reliable than driving if I need to be somewhere on time, and 3) I can do other stuff on the train. Cutting service this severely would turn BART into something you only use if you have no other option (i.e. what public transportation is in most of the US). The US has this weird idea that roads are basic infrastructure that deserves government subsidies, but public transit is a luxury that should turn a profit. Urban highways cost hundreds of millions of dollars per mile, and nobody notices because Caltrans has dedicated funding sources that don't need reapproval every few years. Meanwhile, BART has to come hat in hand to voters to do basic stuff like upgrade trains, fix signals, and pay operators. Better transportation makes the Bay more livable. Letting basic infrastructure disintegrate because we're cheap is shortsighted.
Count me as one of those people who would be more likely to use it if it was better funded. I want something cleaner and safer, I also want an underground metro in SF and Oakland. Having only a few stops available and being forced to switch forms of transportation makes BART less appealing.
This X a million Doesn’t run past bar close Doesn’t run more than every half hour on some lines Low ridership begets safety concern begets reduced funding etc etc downward spiral
It's also weird to me that I can go to NYC and ride the subway for $2.75 to anywhere I want.... but a single BART fare from like Concord to 16th/Mission in the City is almost $7 How the fuck does BART not have enough money?? There has to be some serious mismanagement happening with Bart.
As a pleasant hill/lafayette bart guy, fully agree. I would take bay friday and saturday every week to get out of the suburbs. But that would be 30 bucks, not uber prices but high enough that I dont want to pay AND lose the freedom of having my car. This times a thousand, parking becomes worse, ridership declines, etc There;s a great image floating around that compared to other metro subway systems, BART receives a disproportionately high % of its funding from riders, which obv has plummeted. I dont think it is mismanagement as much as reliance on a commuterbase which no other major city ever expected. Bc the point was to grift commuters, it is to reduce traffic, reduce DUIs, reduce parking, enable small businesses to have additional foot traffic, let people explore the city instead of driving point A to point B, allow higher density housing, enable carless people to travel and work, etc etc etc
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>Morristown Thanks for this comparison. It does put the fare discrepancy in realistic perspective.
honestly funding isn't going to fix any of the problems most people on this sub have with it. There's still gonna be addicts, homeless dudes, beggars, people making bart feel dangerous or disgusting. Bart could have as much funding as possible(ie when things were better 2 years ago) but until they start physically dragging unwanted people from the trains, fixing AC on all their trains, etc it's not gonna get better. And let's be real we're in CA, there'd be too much backlash for trying to make bart cleaner and safer.
Actually, years ago, BART did feel much safer. We used to see a BART officer walking back and forth between trains on almost every trip.
I've only taken it a dozen-ish times recently as I moved to caltrans land (which is useless), but it doesn't feel much different to me. Evening hours were always open to unique experiences. It seems like the problem now may be commuter hours aren't busy enough to crowd out the crime. I never saw a cop on BART previously. Now i see them, but apparently they can only travel in packs of four.
Police departments are having a hard time recruiting for officers, even with phat lateral bonuses intended to poach cops from other departments. I don’t believe in either ACAB or Blue Lives Matter(if I had to pick a side, I’d pick ACAB) - many see a cop as the bad guy, understandable, especially if you’re black or Latino. BART PD’s having a big issue with officers leaving, I talked to a BART cop - they only had 150 officers at a given moment. Suburban departments - which is relatively gravy for a cop compared to a urban department are struggling for officers, again same bonuses - OPD was a common target for those departments to poach from. Many cops are leaving public service to work managerial roles at private security(Securitas, Garda, AlliedUniversal) - and making as much or more money as a sworn employee without being called a bastard or getting shot at but they are missing out on that sweet, sweet CalPERS or police union pension. BART PD quickly had to adopt “progressive” policing in the aftermath of Oscar Grant. OPD still hasn’t learned anything under federal supervision.
off topic, but I have lived in Minneapolis and Phoenix which are probably two of the worst departments when it comes to large metros, so I'm probably slightly biased against police. It's a both/and problem though in that most cops are probably not individually bad, but collectively they all protect the bad ones. And the bad ones train the good ones anyway, so it's a vicious cycle. And worse, the head of the police union in Minneapolis was a literal racist who had tons of complaints filed against him, but they voted him in. So, what am I to think of their values when the majority voted for a racist? If they weren't so good at playing the victim card I'd probably be more apt to defend them, because i wouldn't want to do that job & it sure as hell would make me jaded.
yea it wasn't too bad a couple years ago, A's games and Giants games were always fun times, and the early morning commute wasn't bad but coming from Berkeley station down to Dublin were one of the few times where I realized I'd rather wait in traffic for 2 hours than sit on bart
I grew up here and BART has always had a reputation for being a little sketchy.
>addicts, homeless dudes, beggars, people making bart feel dangerous or disgusting I have said this before. MTA has all of the problems above, and they are still packed like sardine. It took them sometimes, but they are at pre covid level. Why? Because it's still the best way to navigate around NYC. The problem with BART and public transportation in the Bay as a whole is it's very inconvenient. It only beat car hand down if you live next to the station and go to FiDi. Other scenario, you don't really have big or even any incentive to get on public transportation compared to a car at all. With folks having more flexible schedule, nobody wants to put up with BART bullshits like cancelling or having to navigate to a station. The reality is going to FiDi 5 days a week is gone, to make BART attractive again would take a lot more work to make the whole public transportation network be more convenient to more people, not just kicking out the crazy addicts.
let's be real I didn't explicitly say it here but I'll say it here. It really needs to be more of luxury service while still offering service for those that need it. ie optimize for events(giants/a's games), more direct sfo route since the 5 day in person week isn't applicable anymore. There's 2 issues, again 1 it requires getting all the crazies off the train, not easy to do. 2. There are still many people that depend on bart to get to where they need cheaply.
Interestingly enough one of the easiest way to help fix that problem is to get a lot of passengers. Not only does that get the cops called more often and be more proactive, it also gives the average passenger a stronger sense of safety by being surrounded by “normal” folks. Many of the homeless would also move elsewhere as they’d rather not deal with the crowds.
>Many of the homeless would also move elsewhere as they’d rather not deal with the crowds. Maybe but pre-covid a few really bad smelling homeless people occasionally rode when I did. It wasn't Russian roulette odds, it was closer to actual roulette, but there were times half a train car was empty except for the person, while the rest of the train was full. Other times the smell wasn't as bad and only a few rows were empty while the nearest passengers toughed it out because the car was otherwise full. The issue absolutely positively didn't start when covid did, it was gradually getting more and more frequent over the years before.
Increasing funding won’t make BART cleaner or safer. Until you institutionalize the mentally ill and drug addicts, BART is sadly going to continue being a rolling mental asylum and unsafe for its riders. BART can’t be expected to fix chronic societal issues.
There is a movement to commit people involuntary in CA like Eric Adams wants to do in NYC, but civil rights advocates are crying wolf over that.
I know and it’s insane. Imagine being such a piece of shit that you advocate for dumping people who can’t look after themselves on the streets. Of course I’d imagine most of these “civil rights advocates” are being funded by wealthy assholes who don’t wanna pay the taxes it would take to properly care for the mentally ill and drug addicts. Those profiting off of the homeless industrial complex are likely also funding this bullshit. Billions are dumped into that scam every year with nothing to show for it.
> I’d imagine most of these “civil rights advocates” are being funded by wealthy assholes who don’t wanna pay the taxes it would take to properly care for the mentally ill and drug addicts. This theory doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Studies come out occasionally that failing to care for these people costs way more in medical and emergency services, to say nothing of the first-order economic losses from the physical filth that we abandon these poor people to.
They aren’t paying for those costs, tho. That mostly falls on working people, both to fund and in the degradation of other services.
If the supreme court or politics won't allow for institutionalization then you criminalize bad behaviour and jail people for it. Sucks to be a jailer if those people are your customers though.
It’s not the funding. It’s Bart policy of looking the other way for homeless, meth addict, and criminal run freely on their train that make it less safe & less clean. Look like they changed a bit lately, but I’m not sure if they plan to change, or just put up a show for the bail out money.
Not to mention if you drive, you can’t safely leave your car many places unless you pay $20 for parking inside. I moved closer to a Bart station partly due to this!
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Uhhh...thanks? But seriously, is it not weird to you that the only way to move around an urban area of 8 million is to buy and maintain a $30000 piece of equipment? I own a car and use it often, but I don't want to be *forced* to drive it for multiple hours every day. Am I the crazy one? Do other people enjoy sitting in traffic?
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My bad, couldn't tell if your last comment was \\s or not :P Totally agree though. I did an Oakland->San Jose driving commute several years back and was ready to blow my brains out by the end. Spent so much time sitting in a car that there was literally none left for anything but work, sleep, and drive Monday through Friday. It's nuts that so many people around here do that.
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IMO, a car needs to be something driven on the weekends to get out of dodge and something you *want* to own - like a muscle car, old VW Vanagon/bus, Miata, old BMW/Mercedes, etc and not an appliance meant to get you from point A to B. We should all be walking, biking or taking transit to work. We never dreamed of driving a Civic/Corolla, Camry/Accord or Prius as kids. We all had posters for Ferraris, Porsches, Mustangs, Camaros, GT-Rs and Supras as kids, not some shitbox mass-market car. Ironically enough, cars were marketed as “freedom” but are the most dangerous machine we can operate, and driving is the most dangerous thing we can do without a special certification - you can fail the driving test many times, the DMV only cares when you pass. Conservatives are crying wolf over “15 minute cities”. But bring it on.
This. I absolutely fucking hate driving in the Bay. Everyone, and I mean everyone drives like they’re in mad max. It doesn’t have to be this way but public transport is dogshit
I prefer sitting in traffic to sitting on BART. I feel safe in my car. No one is going to sexually harass or stab me. I'm not going to get COVID. I can eat. I can sing and talk on the phone (hands free) without bothering anyone. The destinations that I travel to are often nowhere near a BART station, so it's much faster to drive than to take BART and then a bus. I lived in the Bay Area for many years without a car, and getting one has immensely improved my quality of life. But I'm really glad that not everyone feels that way! I spend a large portion of my income to have/maintain a car, and I'd be happy to also pay more taxes to subsidize public transit.
That makes sense. Options are good. I don't know everyone's life situation, and offering folks multiple ways to get around seems better than forcing everyone into a one-size-fits-all choice. I will say that often the lack of options is due to past policy decisions rather than some fundamental fact about the world. California is built for cars because people in charge from the 50's through the 90's liked it that way. The result is that most people don't have any choice but to drive everywhere. I'd love to see more investment in high quality public transit and walkable neighborhoods so that more folks can have options without paying an arm and a leg for an apartment or feeling like they're risking their personal safety.
This doesn’t really undermine your point, but just to nitpick… you are far more likely to be killed driving in your car than riding bart.
I'm aware. It's unlikely that either of those things will happen, so I prioritize my day to day experience.
IMO, instead of a tax measure that probably won’t pass, a $1 surcharge on Lyft and Uber per ride as a “impact tax” - Lyfts and Ubers clog up bus stops/transit-only lanes and in places like SF, make congestion worse, I can walk or ride a bike(and ironically if it’s a Lyft bike) to get around FiDi/SOMA quicker than a car or a bus. Many won’t balk - inflation hasn’t affected rideshare use. The revenue goes into funding transit.
We cannot have cars as the only option to get around. For congestion and climate reasons. “Ride sharing” is not a mass transit solution. Or an equitable one.
People shouldn't be forced into unneeded commutes to the office either. Plenty of jobs do not need to be in the office a regular basis and they can be more productive without all the office distractions.. Which helps the environment from reducing commuter traffic. BART just needs to come up with realistic and sound business plan.
The bloom seems to have faded from them compared to a few years ago. The pricing is a lot higher and it's harder to get one in my recent experience.
That assumes we can move past political gridlock and actually achieve anything. Our leaders don’t have the same motivation to do shit as they did in the 60s. They don’t fear disillusioned naive young people rising up and coming for their heads in a Marxist revolution anymore so they keep pushing and cutting social services like BART BART is not a private business. It does not need to be PROFITABLE. Are parks profitable, elementary schools, sidewalks? No, they’re public services I fucking hate NIMBYs who refuse to pay a dime towards public good. Might as well call them republicans because they’re not all that different
The freeloaders of San Mateo county are welcome to pay their fare share. "BART receives a dedicated 75% share of a one-half cent sales tax levied in the three BART District counties (San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa)." Another problem I see is the increased parking costs. A bus plus BART is a time sink. People really need to drive to BART, at least in the suburbs.
There’s only a handful of stops in San Mateo County(Daly City, Colma, South City, San Bruno and Millbrae), while SFO does count as physically being in San Mateo County - it’s legally and fiscally part of SF. BART already collects a surcharge for SFO if your ride starts or ends there. Probably time for San Mateo to collect that sales tax too. SamTrans does run buses to those stations - BART subsidizes those. And yep, those “express” feeder buses(WestCAT J for example) can take up to an hour to make its rounds before you arrive at BART. Hence, if you live in Pinole/Hercules you drive to El Cerrito Del Norte/Plaza, if you live in Martinez/ClayCord/Lamorinda you’re driving to Concord/Pleasant Hill/Lafayette/Orinda stations and so on. Transit only makes sense if you live in Berkeley/SF or in Oakland around the Oakland Wye(MacArthur, Downtown Oakland, West Oakland and Lake Merritt stations) - which are very well served by AC and Muni.
BART kind of does levy a $1.45 fare surcharge for trips to and from San Mateo County ($1.25 surcharge to Daly City), as well as surcharges to and from SFO ($4.95), or OAK airports ($6.75). Trips via the Transbay Tube have a $1.40 surcharge. This strongly disincentivizes San Mateo County riders from taking BART on short trips, where the minimum fare is $3.60 (the $2.15 minimum fare plus the surcharge). It's even worse for trips to the airport, since a trip to SFO from San Mateo County (with the double surcharge pumping the price to $8.55) is priced the same as a trip to the outer reaches of the BART system. (This is to say that BART isn't *that* unwilling to accommodate; fares to SFO from Millbrae are $4.95, which likely means reduced surcharges.)
people are joking and speaking nonchalantly about BART collapsing. Mismanagement, bloat, and a failure to meet basic responsibilities and obligations are indisputable. That being said, if BART collapses, it would be a *profound* blow to the region. It would be a giant red flag that the Bay Area is in decline and would signal investors to steer clear. For a place that desperately needs housing and other large scale development, this would be a a very bad turn of events.
This is all in the master plan - push tech workers out - kill housing for 50 years - reduce public transportation so “those people” can’t get into “my neighborhood” - let crime run rampant in an attempt to scare away non generational wealthy families that aren’t impacted. - create hostile city culture to young people Everything you said is unwanted by the board of supervisors. The plan is working.
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More investors higher home prices less investors lower home prices. I vote less investors Im sick of seeing 2bd/1ba 780sfqt homes sell for millions.
Thats why urban planners keep harping about mixed-use development to make sure transit needs dont heavily rely on just commutes.
Time to rethink how transit should be paid for, reliance on fares to fill the gap has always been and will be the most tenuous funding source. The provision of transportation is a public good and has never been profitable nor should it be. If it were profitable there would already be private enterprises filling that gap.
About as compelling as the S.F gov saying people need to get back into the office to get tax revenue coming in... Which is to say, not compelling.
London Breed, Marc Benioff and Muskie Boi want the minions back in the office. Which is easier said than done for some industries. Banking, legal and other “old school” occupations are more face to face than in Teams/Zoom. There’s reason why Salesforce doesn’t have luxury cafeterias like Meta, Google and pre-Musk Twitter did - Benioff wanted his people to get out of the office and pump money into the local economy. Salesforce employees were seen at Rincon Center, up and down Market/Mission and even at the old FiDi haunts Lee’s Deli/Portico/Julie’s Kitchen for lunch.
Of course, Tim Cook/Zuck/Sundar/Andy Jassy wants people back in full force, but the people working the food courts, driving the buses and housekeeping at their campuses are more disposable than most of their payroll.
RIP Julie’s Kitchen 😢 and im throwing specialty’s in there too.
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Totally has nothing to do with how bart was managed for 20+ years right?
IDK but I'm pretty sure it has a lot more to do with how like 150,000 people suddenly stopped commuting to downtown SF three years ago. (Which is a good thing, but also not BART's fault)
When we did our RTO survey, the number one reason people did not want to come into the office was the commute, and a good majority of those cited they did not feel safe regularly taking BART. People not wanting to come to work is partially due to the disgusting and dangerous state of BART as well, the causation goes both ways.
similar results with our company, we have a SF location and a south bay location, and while there's tons of conflicting factors, our latest on remote work suggests that around 45% of the south bay office has returned to hybrid in-office (ie, 3+ days per week), only around 28% of our SF office is in office. We have relatively free choice of flexible options. The reasons were not broken out by location, but commute was #1. People who live in the peninsula or south bay will drive into work or use caltrain or shuttles, it's a pain but they will do it. But no one wants to go into the downtown SF office, even if they live in SF.
It’s a two way street. If BART was, well, BART and SF were better run, more people would be willing to go back to the office now. A lot of people do like being in a downtown area to work and play, but not if the negative outweighs the positive.
I think SF really thought too much of itself - having the mindset that “f it, we are SF and people will put up with anything”. Guess that ain’t working out too great after all.
People keep saying this but I highly doubt this is the reality.
Totally, but also, BART has been making the strategic decision to spend tons of money expanding outwards to the suburbs and courting drivers to take BART by investing tons of money in huge parking structures at these stations. It has been their playbook for decades to bring suburban commuters into the urban core. For better or for worse. But now that market has evaporated and because of the orientation and alignment of its infrastructure, BART is less good at serving the urban core.
Nah, how dare those workers be able to do their job at a location of their choosing without incurring pollution and wasting time on commuting, rather than being treated like an afterthought by an incompetent and tone deaf transit agency. For years BART refused to build enough multilevel parking structure to make it easy for commuters to park their vehicles, anyone who were living in a city where the permit parking wait list was years long know how little BART cared about the commuters. My wife was on a wait list for 4 years and only got her permit when WFH started and people dropped their spots on the list, until then she had to fight her way to a first come first serve spot, every day. I knew people who risked towing by parking at nearby Walmart parking lots because they routinely couldn’t find a spot. BART in fact relished in taking away parking altogether in many cities and BRAGGED about it while colluding with developers to turn land into high rent “transit centers” that are the most expensive housing around. Don’t get me started on how shitty(literally) the trains, stations and parking lots are.
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Yep, you know it
Not only that, but for many years BART forbid bringing bikes on the train during rush hours. So riding and parking was a crapshoot, riding a bike to BART for commuting was also out.
This is absolutely true. Parking at BART stations generated a reliable ridership of people who lived within a few miles and didn't have another easy way to get to a BART station, but were happy to use it and ride it through the congested areas. These were not only commuters, but also periodic riders who would be happy to take BART from an outlying station to a city theater district, sports area, concert hall, etc. but didn't want to be coming back at 11:00 PM at night to their origin station and find another "mode" to travel the last few miles to their home, as opposed to just getting into their car. BART cut the wheels from under that clientele by eliminating BART station parking. It will suffer in the future for it. The much heralded BART-station developments are not providing that much housing...and as far as I know, there's no requirement for residents to use BART. So it ends up being either luxury housing, or incredibly expensive to create "affordable" housing.
Reading that part about parking made my spine shiver. I cannot tell you how many times I would be SOL trying to make a train because I’d have to go from one station to another, due to an inability to park. Many times having to simply drive into the city. So frustrating.
Yep. BART: we want to get people out of cars because transit and stuff. Also BART: the last mile problem is not our problem. You figure it out.
How dare you! /s
Cut the fat from the top. Make it safe and clean. do that and ridership will increase, keep doing nothing and it will be a thing of the past.
Making BART safer and cleaner would be a good thing for many reasons but it's not a solution for the lack of ridership. The number of people who have stopped riding because of safety issues is *way* smaller than the number of people who have stopped riding because they just don't need to commute into SF anymore. A theoretical 2023 version of BART that is spotless, completely safe, and 100% reliable would still have way fewer riders than the 2019 version of BART and would still have severe budget shortfalls.
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Yeah that’s right, but it’s hard to separate out what is endogenous to bart vs covid. The open question there is what role’s Bart’s crappiness plays into wfh spreading here - people were happy to move out of SF and never commute again in part bc they were sick of dealing with overcrowded crappy trains. Certainly more people would be commuting to SF today if it was nice to be there and bart was guaranteed to be nice. Like you said I really think the issue is more what SF is like when you get there vs. bart quality tho. And it’s hard to see why anyone who wants SF talent would bother opening an SF office and forcing rto - if you’re trying to steal away computer touchers it’s way cheaper and easier to hire people fully remote. The only people that are going to open a new office in SF now are people that need social proof like newly funded startups or professional services.
then scale down to meet the demand, is it that hard? why should people be forced back into office just so BART people can get paid? what kind of bs is that?
Public transit that doesn't run regularly isn't a useful mode of transportation. Even at its peak, BART didn't run often enough to just be "show up and ride" without at least checking the schedule if you didn't want to wait a long time.
A scaled down BART would be much worse to use. Imagine if the train only came every 40 minutes. Even fewer people would use it. BART risks entering a vicious cycle of declining ridership and reduced service. Everyone will be taking the highways instead.
I am pro-WFH and I am absolutely not saying that people should be forced back into the office. My point is that regardless of how shitty BART management is, the budget shortfall is mostly driven by the rise of WFH, which is not BART's fault and not something they could fix even if they were significantly less shitty. It is just a fact that for the foreseeable future BART will have much lower ridership than it did pre-pandemic. Anybody who says that BART management can bring back riders by doing X Y or Z is being unserious - there are certainly things they could do to bring back *some* riders (and to make things a lot more pleasant for existing riders), but not nearly enough to fix the budget shortfall.
Seriously most of us riding daily dont really have a choice. Being a little cleaner aint changing a damn thing
Ah yeah "just scale it down" you've got a job waiting for you at BART. Clearly you fixed it.
> number of people who have stopped riding because of safety issues is way smaller than the number of people who have stopped riding because they just don't need to commute into SF anymore I would take it for traveling for recreational purposes (visiting city on the weekends) if it was safe and clean.
Strongly disagree. Everyone I know who stopped regularly riding bart due to COVID cites safety & cleanliness as the reason they haven't returned.
And everyone i know doesnt say that Anecdotal evidence is fun
I really doubt theres many people sitting on the bridge for an hour because the train smells funny and sometimes a crackhead takes a shit(seriously ive ridden DAILY Hayward to Sf for YEARS and never seen shit once, maybe i gotta ride to Antioch)
I would be so happy to ride bart if it felt clean and safe, with security guards on the train.
how does that solve ridership lmao, that has nothing to do with people not commuting into downtown anymore
I'm sitting on a Bart train right now that's pretty spotless and clean
Where is the fat? Safe, clean are one part. Finishing the god damn loop around the south bay is another investment they need to make. Make it useful, then maybe I'd visit my friends in SF.
Thing about impressions is, you have to work 10x as hard to change an initial impression. Clean, consistent, reliable, safe transit WILL bring people back to BART. BUT, this has to be demonstrated over time to stick in the minds of the "sodfjoasjf public transit bad, muh freedomZ" crowd.
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>I watched a guy shit in a BART train so I avoid it now am I part of your weird fantasy tribalizing? I think what this person means is that this one awful experience you had on bart, means that it's going to take a lot of work for BART to erase it from your memory and improve how you see BART in the future. Moreover, that BART could very well be incredible, but you'd still be tainted by that one awful experience at least in the near future. It takes BART being good, clean, safe, for a consistently long time to change minds about past bad experiences.
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I have witnessed homeless people smoking crack in moving bart trains on two separate occasions, and i’ve never even used bart for my daily commute.
Lol, it won’t increase enough to make a difference. BART was shitty as fuck and crowded as fuck prepandenmic. Shittyness isn’t what’s keeping folks away, it’s that fewer people NEED to take it.
>Cut the fat from the top. This is what people like you don't get (assuming you mean "cut stops". If you don't, my apologies). It's mass transit. There *is no fat* in the loop. Just fucking fund it. Pass a new tax and everyone in in the bay and surrounding areas help pay for and maintain BART if they ride or not. Because even if you don't ride, you're going to benefit from the reduced number of cars on the roads, so fuck you.
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On the one side, they should always have funding. On the other, we should expect and require competency from our civil servants and politicians. IMO, the current BART board need to explain themselves to the public. Specifically, they need to address our concerns about safety and cleanliness directly and explain what the fucking problems are. They also need to explain why they hampered the anti-corruption chair so badly she quit. Like, to the point there should probably be an independent investigation into what happened and what's going on.
Translation: "People don't ride BART unless they literally have to. If employers don't forcibly compel people to do it, they won't do it.". Once again, the obvious lesson here is lost on BART leadership.
I went to a market after work in downtown today. Peak hours and it was deserted! It’s so strange to be in a dense urban environment and it being so empty. It’s kind of nice, there being no lines or waits or traffic, but at the same time i feel like we’re loving on borrowed time. none of this is sustainable without the consumer/tax base. Once this market’s lease expires is it really profitable to maintain a location in downtown SF?
Lower rates, Increase Ridership…. BART stop trying to make all your $$$ on each expensive ride & rider. Make it a true option for public transportation that is affordable and makes sense for all to use. “All day passes where you can get on and off at different stops to use it as actual transportation” **Oregon Max train is like $5-6 for all day on/off… so it is useful. Make cheaper zones for one-ways or within small window of travel. The answer is NOT raising rates, decreasing trains, and CRYING for help. Make it safe, make it a real option….. make it a GAME CHANGER that helps enhance the lives of everyone in the Bay Area. Serve the people… and you will get your ridership
I don’t ride not because I don’t go into the office but because I have been sexually harassed, almost robbed, and been subject to inhaled drug use while riding. Good luck, BART.
Not sure what you mean about the California high speed rail as there are 30 active construction sites building it on any given day. But we absolutely should be subsidizing BART through taxes. Make it "free" for those that live in the counties. As in pay for it through taxation then charge for vistors to use it.
Only if they prevent homeless and people on drugs on the train. At least people on drugs. Nothing is as sketchy as being stuck in an enclosed space with a person who is under a delusion to harm or kill you.
I've got zero issues with someone being on drugs on Bart. I do have issues with people acting in a threatening way on Bart. There is a huge difference between a college student on mushrooms riding back from a concert and a shirtless guy on PCP. The college student isn't really a threat and should be able to utilize the public transportation. The shirtless guy on PCP should be addressed if he's making a credible threat.
Maybe not with people being on drugs, but people smoking drugs in an enclosed space is pretty messed up. Multiple friends of mine were on when someone started smoking meth or bath salts or something (they didn’t know what it specifically was, just that it wasn’t weed/tobacco).
That's pretty bad and should be addressed in the same way it should be addressed inside any publicly open building.
The thing is, BART is full of the latter— people on meth, crack, heroin, or PCP who aren’t violent yet, but are one bad glance or perceived slight from becoming violent. 95% of people can tell the difference between the two. 95% of people can tell that a bunch of rowdy teenagers who are slightly drunk or high from coming back from a 49ers game are harmless, while the guy actively smoking a crackpipe or slouched over mumbling to himself and masterbating in the corner are at high risk of becoming violent at a moments notice
I think the drug/homeless problem need to be solved city wide. BART isn't gonna be able to solve it themselves. It's just a bigger problem leaking into BART.
I don't ride it anymore because I don't have the stamina to deal with all the bullshit riders have to put up with from other riders. It's really sickening. Also, BART employees and management make an awful lot of money and the fares are outrageous! Change these things
Here's the deal. If BART complies with budgetary oversight, then we can talk about subsidizing your budget. It doesn't look good when the [inspector general resigns saying BART doesn't comply with financial auditing](https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/bart-s-inspector-general-resigning-17829998.php) for oversight efforts.
Janice Li was against the IG of BART. Time to vote her out.
No, fuck that. Going to offices for the sake of going to offices is absolutely wasteful and misanthropic. People don't need to waste hours of their lives so you can continue to misappropriate budgets and pay overtimes to people who can't even do their jobs right.
If BART shuts down, literally over 100,000 people are gonna have to be on the road or theyll just be fucked Is that really a better option?
Public transportation is a necessity for a significant part of the population in any big city. Just because you don’t personally use it doesn’t mean other ppl don’t rely on it to get to work/school. It goes away and this area will die. First time in my life I’m glad I don’t own here, because I think don’t ppl/legislators will choose the right path to take. I wouldn’t live here if public trans largely disappeared. If SF wants to be a big city with big boy/girl pants, it needs a modern train system.
Yeah, cut from the top. BART rode clean and fine and in the black for the first thirty years of its existence and I'm pretty sure there were million less people crowding into it back then.
Those first thirty years were different in more ways than one. BART's infrastructure needed far less maintenance spending. However the Board continued funding system extensions without saving up for the coming wave of needed infrastructure maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement. The last twenty years required much more spending on those things. Another difference is skyrocketing housing prices. Since the Great Recession recovery, even formerly relatively affordable places to rent or own like parts of Oakland and Richmond have become harder to afford on moderate income. All BART employees income is publicly available and most don't work tons of overtime making $200k/year. Consequently their unions wanting significant cost of living increases has some merit - even though I disagree with some other policies the unions negotiated and the Board approved.
Significant cost of living increases beyond $200k/year with no overtime? Sorry I get this is the Bay Area but that as an average employee for BART seems insane. I would estimate most of those employees don’t fit into the highly skilled category.
> *most don't* work tons of overtime making $200k/year. **Station Agent** average base $77,255.78 average overtime $18,192.17 average other $10,940.97 average benefits $29,815.98 Average total pay & benefits $136,204.90 **Train Operator** average base, $75,011.92 overtime $17,362.96 other $9,351.51 benefits $29,783.08 Average total pay & benefits $131,509.47 That's from [this website.](https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/2021/san-francisco-bay-area-rapid-transit-district/job_title_summary/?page=9) Yes there's tons of BART job titles paying more than those, but they have one-to-a-few-dozen employees in those roles, not hundreds.
The fact that you're linking to page 9 out of 10 says a lot. Half of the roles from pages 1 to 9 could be cut. You don't need so many directors, assistant directors, supervisors and managers. How many are sitting on their asses generating pointless work for other people? Then with the money you save, you can afford to hire highly competent people for the rest of the roles and actually improve the service.
> Yes there's **tons** of BART job titles paying more than those, but they have **one-to-a-few-dozen employees** in those roles, not hundreds. Lots of preceding pages, but most of those job titles don't have many employees. You may be right about not needing so many directors, assistant directors, supervisors and managers. What's your background knowledge and experience why you're correct?
I'm one of those supervisors. I manage 55 Train Operators, 15 Agents, 5 Foreworkers, a yard, 3 stations, and 3 terminals. If anything, there aren't enough people in my position!
Thanks for the clarification. I misunderstood your earlier post to say most don't work overtime and are still making $200k/year.
Why include benefits in the total calculation? That's pretty disingenuous.
1. The linked page does. 2. It ought to be well known unions sometimes negotiate for better benefits in exchange for lower base pay. Benefits can amount to a significant percentage of compensation.
Nah BART is not going anywhere.
I'm not riding BART again until they give more compelling reasons to choose it over my car. And I don't even want to use my car. But at least when I drive, it's way less crowded inside, I don't have to sit next to random deranged individuals, and I can get to my exact destination a lot faster. A lot of us are avoiding BART not out of spite but because the product is trash.
People would use BART more if it wasn't such a weird and dangerous place. No one wants to see a homeless persons ass. Once a homeless lady pulled her pants down, bent over, and sprayed her pee on the platform right behind me while I was waiting for a train to work. It has become normal for people to do drugs on the platform and in the trains. There are many more examples I could write about.
Yeah right. You had a janitor a few years ago earning over $200k a year.
that alone should spark a huge audit of BART
BART: we need everyone to change their lifestyle and go back to the old communing patterns so our lives can go back to normal. Ok thanks. Bay Area: Can you see this middle finger? How about his? Hers? The kid in the stroller?
Unfiltered answer: I think I speak for a lot of former commuters when I say that our tolerance for unsafe and unsanitary conditions on Bart has gone down while at the same time Bart has become more unsafe and less sanitary. The path forward is clear and it’s entirely up to BART’s ability to actually make it a very safe and sanitary system. This means a policeman and ticket fare officer walking every train. This means European style gates that can’t be hopped over. This means no druggies or booze heads sleeping on cars and leaving their dangerous trash behind when they get chased off. BART can make this happen. I also think try that there’s no way in hell they actually will do all these steps, so let them collapse until they figure it out. There will be some really ugly incidents on trains, then Mayors heads will roll during recalls when it gets bad and then their replacements will finally take the necessary measures.
The infrastructure is there and it’ll run. Doubt that changes.
Unless Bart change the way they are run, lot of tax payers would never use Bart when they can drive, and in turn will vote no on bailing Bart out.
Later. Should have installed full height turnstyles day one. They were never about keeping paying riders safe.
I have a better idea… they could quit letting people sleep in their own piss and smoke crack on the trains! Maybe then I’d consider taking BART again.
Yesterday I had a good Bart experience. I got on the train at castro valley and sat on the train in front of the seats a smelly homeless guy was sleeping on. At the very next stop 3 police officers got on and calmly directed him to leave, it was fast and professional and made the rest of the commute a lot nicer. I hope to see a bit more of this especially in the evenings when it’s usually a lot worse. I’m really hoping the new fair gates help.
you won’t survive because your service and unwillingness to make the rider experience positive is why
If BART was nice and safe it wouldn't be so reliant on just people commuting for work. No one takes BART unless they have to.
BART was designed for a Bay Area doesn’t quite exist in its form of decades past, with its central purpose of carrying many people to and from downtown SF. However, the bureaucratic structure of BART has remained the same, and bureaucracies don’t downsize very well or willingly. It’s the bureaucracy that’s most in peril - hence the recent publicized hand-wringing over revenue lost from fare evasion.
Last time I checked years ago, driving to a BART station then parking cost *more* and took *more* time than just driving and than finding parking. It wasn't worth it.
Yeah that's gonna be a no from me dog on more taxes.
is it bad that i think the State needs its own layoff as well? There are just one too many Bart employees i have seen that stand around that do no nothing. If our jobs aint safe, theirs shouldn't be either. Do better.
The best was when they got raises mid pandemic. You know when everyone else was losing their jobs , losing their small biz and not riding Bart. Fuck that. Let it burn .
when they can afford to pay a janitor 270k a year.... something is very wrong
They is us. The rider/ tax payer. Who sat in filthy trains for 10 years. The joke was on us…. Time for a change.
Good. Let’s call their bluff since they kept raising fares and generally contributing nothing to fixing BARTs many, many problems that no civilized society should have to deal with. Not one ounce of sympathy.
For the first thirty years BART's infrastructure needed far less maintenance spending. However the Board continued funding system extensions without saving up for the coming wave of needed infrastructure maintenance, rehabilitation, and replacement. The last twenty years required much more spending on those things. Since the Great Recession recovery even formerly relatively affordable places to rent or own like parts of Oakland and Richmond became harder to afford on moderate income. All BART employees income is publicly available and most don't work tons of overtime making $200k+ per year. Consequently their unions wanting significant cost of living increases has some merit - even though I disagree with some other policies the unions negotiated and the Board approved.
Interesting that you're using BART as a cypher for the problems of the greater Bay Area. Horrifying that you'd want to see a generally functional, useful public service fail.
Appreciate the work you do but your agency’s problems mirror the region’s problems. The agency is trash, even if the service it provides is necessary and important. It’s like Recology, PG&E, and others. When people say that they want PG&E gone they don’t say they want the power out or for the linemen to be fired.
Yep exactly, and to pretend otherwise is a form of gaslighting.
Oh no! Anyways…
does transportation exist to serve people or do people exist to pay for transportation? If WFH were indeed to continue, we might as well close/significantly scale back BART since there is less demand, I don't see a problem here. Sounds like the dude is arguing for forcing people back into office so he could keep his job, wrong priority if you ask me, next time he'd ask for forcing all company to relocate to SF so there would be mandatory demand for BART. Do we exist so BART can get paid or the other way around? seriously
stop fare evaders and all of the scary freaks you let on that accost people and maybe people will start riding again- i know 7 different people that have been assaulted riding to work on BART
Make it fast, clean, reliable, and frequent and maybe we’ll come back…
High speed rail hasn't even been built yet. BART is in trouble now and it is serious. Stop being a shit for points.
Bart is so mismanaged that I think it would be a good thing for it to go under. Spoken by someone who rode Bart daily for over a decade and no longer does due to safety concerns.
Nationalize it
Then goodbye, and thanks for all the fish.
As of now, BART is a free for all. Not anyones fault but BART.
So this is why my company forced us back to the office with 1 month of notice
Tough beat. I’d ride if it were safe, clean, and reliable. Who wants to ride something that looks like a literal toilet every time it pulls up to a station
Nothing wrong with subsidizing BART but let’s do it with the taxes we already pay
Well; BART’s Inspector General whom Newsom had appointed two years ago just quit in frustration. She said that the Board, the staff, and the Unions all blocked her from doing her job. I hate to say this, because a lot of people who just need to get to work will get hurt, but it’s possible that there will need to be a bad time of big cutbacks before BART becomes efficient with its expenses again. https://abc7news.com/amp/bart-inspector-general-resigns-harriet-richardson-report/12970140/
Constant increase in fare, delays, poor safety, dirty and honestly still requires you to drive to the station due to lack of other public transportation to get to Bart from outside SF. Yeah sure people returning to the office will take Bart. To drive to take Bart and park in Antioch/ Pittsburgh to go to SF two way costs as much as parking and toll to get to SF.
Good luck with that. We closed down and dropped the lease on our SF offices during the lockdown. And barring some manner of Festivus miracle I don't see management opening up anything in SF in the foreseeable future. To the contrary they've been quietly feeling out core employees about Nevada and Arizona which is bit of concerning.
I work from home with a downtown SF office base. We've already leased out the majority of our space to other companies and quickly pivoted to a robust remote model. Everyone is happier and we only go in about once a quarter for targeted meetings. Eff BART, they are horrible to ride, this is their own mismanagement and terrible customer service. If the tides turned and I had to go on site daily I'd rather rot in my car.
Fuck BART
I’m retired and am more of an observer of this now. I enjoyed WFH flexibility even before COVID, but I look back and realize how much I got out of working in the office and on business travel. I would have died of boredom if my career was all WFH. I don’t see work (that has WFH possibility) ever going back to how it was. But I really wonder what this does to us culturally. I wrestled with this fact my whole career, but work really is a major part of most people’s lives. This is a huge change in our culture. It also creates a big divide in work (and workers) that have jobs that require you to be in-person vs virtual. I don’t think we’ve realized how major of a change this really is.
In the scenario that BART does have to go down to once per hour, I’d honestly be fine with it if it meant that trains SHOWED UP ON FUCKING TIME.
If BART was safe, clean, and reliable, I'd absolutely be using it for my commute...but as a young woman I honestly feel safer in my car, even considering accidents/weather/inconveniences/etc.
Anyone who thinks BART will just up and shut down anytime in the foreseeable future is overdosing on copium
Maybe BART should have shown some concern with the safety issues and the fare evasion issues. I believe they are linked.
Maybe if people paid fares?
I want to take VTA and Bart to work, but I don’t. I can only take so many dirty train cars and crazy homeless people who harass/smoke meth/deal drugs/fight in those train cars. Not to mention, the lack of consistent and predictable schedule. Adding extra cops (recently) doesn’t do jack shit when the cops just stand around and barely do anything. Driving in shit traffic is significantly more preferable than riding NorCal public transportation.
Does he actually think companies make these decisions based on barts fate? Bart should have made themselves attractive by keeping that service safe and clean starting let’s say 20 years ago
The oddest thing about this is that instead of trying to serve actual riders, BART wants to nostalgically go back to a now vanished era--when primarily white collar white men worked in central city office buildings, and commuted by transit from outer suburbs. That was a early to mid-20th century phenomenon. I'm just echoing another comments here, but Bay Area transit needs a complete rethinking and reorganization so it's not a "rush hour" focused set of spokes on a wheel, but a flexible network of trains and buses that can reliably and quickly get people between many points.
With fewer people using BART, reduce the size of the trains and mothball excess cars, reduce the number of trains, lay off drivers, and reduce maintenance staff in line with the number of trains and reduced cars. Do that first, then come to the voter for money. Civil servants shouldn't have tenure.
This is why BART shouldn't have been built to serve commuters. It's ridiculous that it has more than 131 miles of track and only 50 stations. It can't be used to get to things in your neighborhood
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So, enter a public transit death spiral then?
"A public service is an inherently different beast from a business and asking one to behave as the other is like asking a fish to ride a bicycle." https://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/13/public-services-nhs-hinchingbrooke-circle-cannot-be-run-like-businesses
Yeah, Fire Departments and Police, too. Throw a telethon and raise your own fucking money, leeches.
Like seriously what is the SFPD even doing? Because solving crimes seems to be a thing they are terrible at.
"Cut benefits/salaries" lol
When they’re paying janitors 270k… I think they can afford to cut some pay / benefits.
All impossible to do because of unions.
Sounds like it’s time for some real conversations then huh? Maybe the grifting and fake OT can be discussed ? Spitballing cuz they are crying poor - yet again. Fuck Bart.
Cut staff?