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BART ridership is still down nearly 70% from pre-Covid levels

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Re: BART ridership is still down nearly 70% from pre-Covid levels

#11

Post by jeffbee »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #5

I live in Oakland and am frightened of taking BART after hearing many horror stories from friends. If I, a healthy man in his 20s, am afraid to take BART, imagine how intimidating it must be for women and the elderly.

Ok but this is not the reason. People don’t ride BART because half of working professionals now work at home and don’t need it. You can clearly see this in the fact that weekend BART riders is most of the way back to pre-COVID levels. Riders are not afraid of the system. It just doesn’t serve their weekday needs right now.

By the way freeway shootings in the Bay Area tripled to more than one every day and plenty of people still use the freeway.

Re: BART ridership is still down nearly 70% from pre-Covid levels

#12

Post by jncfhnb »

loaph wrote: post #6
gautamcgoel wrote: post #5

I live in Oakland and am frightened of taking BART after hearing many horror stories from friends. If I, a healthy man in his 20s, am afraid to take BART, imagine how intimidating it must be for women and the elderly.

I road BART on Tuesday and it wasn't scary. You repeating what you heard might just create an echo chamber that amplifies something that isn't true and gets other people to believe it.

Which area did you ride it in?

Re: BART ridership is still down nearly 70% from pre-Covid levels

#13

Post by Karrot_Kream »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #5

I live in Oakland and am frightened of taking BART after hearing many horror stories from friends. If I, a healthy man in his 20s, am afraid to take BART, imagine how intimidating it must be for women and the elderly.

I live here and take BART all the time. My partner has some car crash trauma so unless I'm driving, she's using transit to get around and she generally feels safe. It can get sketchy at night on the weekdays but otherwise neither of us have had problems on BART.

FWIW people complain about sketchy people and odd comments on BART, but I've also been followed by a driver I merged in front of who circled the block, cut me off, tried to follow me home, then flashed a knife on me and threatened to shank me. Last year someone got mad at me on the freeway then brake checked me at an exit. People run reds here all the time too, which is scary on both car, bike, and foot. As long as I use BART before 11 PM on weekdays I never really feel more unnsafe than I do when driving, but I also am not the type that likes to live away from people. I enjoy cities.

Re: BART ridership is still down nearly 70% from pre-Covid levels

#14

Post by liveoneggs »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #5

I live in Oakland and am frightened of taking BART after hearing many horror stories from friends. If I, a healthy man in his 20s, am afraid to take BART, imagine how intimidating it must be for women and the elderly.

14 years ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXqGT74vBKk

Re: BART ridership is still down nearly 70% from pre-Covid levels

#15

Post by renewiltord »

gautamcgoel wrote: post #5

I live in Oakland and am frightened of taking BART after hearing many horror stories from friends. If I, a healthy man in his 20s, am afraid to take BART, imagine how intimidating it must be for women and the elderly.

I took BART the other day to go watch the As v Yankees (missed the perfect game yesterday by one day god damn it). Anyway, it was safe both ways and quite pleasant.

Embarcadero Coliseum both ways.

Re: BART ridership is still down nearly 70% from pre-Covid levels

#16

Post by rektide »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #3

I don't think this is unique to BART. My local news regularly highlights what an S-hole our subway system is. It has become a good place for the homeless to spend their day and no one has found a satisfactory fix for now. Right now you only ride the Subway if you absolutely don't have an alternative. Low ridership feeds on itself since low ridership leads to even less ridership and the accompanied decrease in the bud…

DC areas metro is facing a good 3/4 billion$ shortfall too, with federal support ending.

We have the added shitshow of being a metro system spanning three different states. No one wants to pay, no one feels responsible; it's a mess.

Re: BART ridership is still down nearly 70% from pre-Covid levels

#17

Post by ghaff »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #2

As the article states, the reason why BART is so heavily impacted is because it was mostly designed as commuter rail. BART is unique in that historically it paid most of its costs in farebox revenue. While peak-hour (morning and evening commute) ridership is catching up again (BART publishes numbers so you can check the work here), usage outside of peak hours is at an all-time low because of the increase of WFH jobs.…

When I looked recently, Boston was still at just over 50% of pre-COVID transit utilization though some commuter rail and subway lines were a bit better--and bus lines were a bit better yet. Anecdotally traffic at rush hour is at least as bad as ever so it at least appears that some people switched back to (or started) driving who hadn't before.

Boston has had some well-publicized transit issues due to long-delayed transit maintenance but, at least short- to mid-term, it's lost a bunch pre-COVID commuting which has switched to driving.

Re: BART ridership is still down nearly 70% from pre-Covid levels

#18

Post by jandrese »

In my area the subway system has still not recovered from pre-pandemic ridership levels. It has made me wonder if the kind of people who rode the subway were more likely to work from home. But at the same the the roads are also less busy than they were, at least judging from the amount of congestion delays we experience on a day to day basis. This is good and bad. The good is that I can almost always get a seat on a train that used to be packed shoulder to shoulder standing room only. The bad is that the fare went from $3.10 to $5.50 each way.

Re: BART ridership is still down nearly 70% from pre-Covid levels

#19

Post by jandrese »

bquinlan wrote: post #10

In my social circle there is a perception that the BART is increasingly unsafe and some people who previously used the BART to commute from East Bay to SF are now driving. Their perception seems to be born out by the data: From the Bay Area Rapid Transit Police Department [1] Aggravated Assault (2019): 112 Aggravated Assault (2022): 114 Relative increase (2019 -> 2022) adjusted for ridership: 114/112/0.3 = 3.39x [1]…

Is it possible that the amount of assault is relatively unrelated to total ridership? Like the number of criminal assholes in the community is about the same regardless of how many people use mass transit?

Re: BART ridership is still down nearly 70% from pre-Covid levels

#20

Post by danhak »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #2

As the article states, the reason why BART is so heavily impacted is because it was mostly designed as commuter rail. BART is unique in that historically it paid most of its costs in farebox revenue. While peak-hour (morning and evening commute) ridership is catching up again (BART publishes numbers so you can check the work here), usage outside of peak hours is at an all-time low because of the increase of WFH jobs.…

I’m a little confused by the reasoning here.

You state that peak (commute) traffic is recovering but off-peak is still low, due to WFH?

Wouldn’t WFH be impacting peak hours, with off-peak at all-time-low due to other things like leisure travel?

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