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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

#101

Post by PaulHoule »

killjoywashere wrote: post #26
rektide wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm in DC today, come here regularly for business but live in the bay area, moved into bay area in August 2020. Can't imagine DC without the metro and heard just today they actually fixed the new cars during the pandemic, so net win here. Even before the pandemic the BART helped convince me to not live in the City.

I love the DC Metro system. Last year my wife and I were invited to a graduation party in the suburbs and we stayed in a hotel a few blocks from the furthest out station and rode into the city to enjoy the National Mall and the shops and restaurants around Union square.

I used to go to conferences in downtown SF a lot and I would wind up riding the BART from SFO, I would always meet Europeans doing the same thing but all the other Americans I met would take the SuperShuttle or an Uber. I thought the BART was great.

I ride the bus from rural Tompkins County to Cornell, the one problem is that you have to plan your schedule around just a few trips, but it drops me off right by the cafe on the way to work, if I drove I’d have to spend another 15-20 min finding a parking space and walking to my office and might need to move my car mid day or pay for parking.

The bus has been in bad shape lately, we used to get a full size bus (often electric) now often it is a mini-bus, sometimes a mini-bus where 1/3 of the seats have been replaced by a wheelchair elevator that gets used once a month. A few years back there was a utopian proposal to not charge fares, it seems to have become a reality because some vendor screwed up and now 90% of the fare boxes are busted. I think the service is great but it surprises me how few people use it because it stops at some very transit friendly development.

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

#102

Post by hitsurume »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #77
c_crank wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot more of the lower income segment is more pro-cop than higher income segments. Those individuals may not trust the police, but they still typically prefer their presence to a lack of it.

That's not what comes out in public meetings, and local government makes decisions based on who speaks up at public meetings or who takes the time to contact their local representatives. I was listening in on the Oakland Budget negotiations that happened the other day and multiple speakers talked about how they mistrust the police and do not want to offer them additional funding. The pro-police crowd almost always co…

Your comment is really misguided. Anyone in lower income does not have time to attend meetings or pay attention to local politics. Think about it this way, crime does not happen in affluent areas because they will more often generate much more attention to police their neighborhood for safety. Lower income areas are ALWAYS where the crime is because the population there does not have the time or resources to form a safe community, nor do they even believe they will be listened to because they are always neglected by government action.

A few years back the city of San Francisco was trying to buy a local hotel in Japantown to use as a lower income housing / shelter. They tried to sneak fast track the process but were still required to have community meetings. I was in these meetings as its my neighborhood and ALL the people who were PRO on this project were OLDER people who were retired or in good places in their lives and wanted to interject their good feelings on a neighborhood they DONT EVEN LIVE IN. All the people against the project were all people who LIVE in or work in the area. It was just incredibly infuriating hearing these people who had no business being there but wanted to give their woke justice opinion.

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

#103

Post by sagarm »

ars wrote: post #90
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a fun one to point to. Replacing the Eastern span of the Bay Bridge happened recently, and has been one of the most expensive Californian infrastructure projects to date. It started with a price tag of $250 mil but it ended up costing $6.5 bil. In the meantime, BART has performed modifications on their tracks and has begun switching to new rolling stock, but it's been a lot cheaper than replacing the…

Looks like the bridge opened about 100 years ago - so that's $6.5 bil/100 years. So that's one data point. Wikipedia says BART costs about $0.6 bil/year. Which is 10 times as expensive as the bridge. I need figures on yearly maintenance cost for the bridge to make this accurate though. But so far it's not looking good for BART.

Great comparison! Let's stop maintaining the bay bridge or servicing the bonds. Then rebuild it in 100 years.

That way everyone can use BART :)

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

#104

Post by RoyGBivCap »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #77
c_crank wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot more of the lower income segment is more pro-cop than higher income segments. Those individuals may not trust the police, but they still typically prefer their presence to a lack of it.

That's not what comes out in public meetings, and local government makes decisions based on who speaks up at public meetings or who takes the time to contact their local representatives. I was listening in on the Oakland Budget negotiations that happened the other day and multiple speakers talked about how they mistrust the police and do not want to offer them additional funding. The pro-police crowd almost always co…

Think about who has time to go to public meetings.

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

#105

Post by RC_ITR »

danhak wrote: post #20
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?

BART used to be so busy that people getting on in downtown stations would back-track to Civic Center/The Mission to actually get a seat across the bay.

A similar amount of behavior existed of people doing anything to avoid a peak hour BART train.

Now, if you're commuting in, the best times are during rush.

BART numbers will always seem insanely low vs. pre-pandemic because they were unsustainable high back then.

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

#106

Post by giantrobot »

ramesh31 wrote: post #28
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.…

>BART is unique in that historically it paid most of its costs in farebox revenue. Because it's expensive as hell, and the only sane option for commuting into the city during rush hour. A $10 round trip to go 5 miles from the east bay to downtown is absolutely crazy. Easily double the price of any other metro in the US.

Compared to the cost of driving that five miles, parking, tolls, etc that's not that expensive. If you're taking BART to work and back every work day that's $200 a month. The Bay Bridge toll is $7 IIRC. Then you've got to find parking in downtown SF. Street parking is a crap shoot in 1) finding a spot and 2) not having your car vandalized any given day and a paid lot of space is likely to put you over the $10 round trip BART cost.

San Francisco seemingly hates car commuters and just about every aspect of the city demonstrates that fact. Commuting on BART for work is downright cheap compared to driving.

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

#107

Post by sagarm »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #54
camel_gopher wrote: post #35

The core problem is assholes on the trains. People stopped riding because there’s either someone dangerous, someone crazy, or someone tweaked out. Literally on every Bart car, probably 2/3 of the time I ride. I end up using the Bart watch app to report this stuff every other time I ride. One guy tried to light a seat in fire. Another tailgated me through the gates and proceeded to push past me. Another was slumped ov…

Cops are expensive. You can run a bus line all day for the cost of 3 officers. If you want cops everywhere, aside from the fact that the HN demographic is much more open to this than lower income folks, you're gonna have to deal with a much more expensive transit system which will cost taxpayers more. The disconnect is frustrating though. Middle and low income people do not trust the police. Don't believe me? Just li…

Roads are similarly unpoliced -- but the lack of enforcement mostly harms vulnerable road users like pedestrians and cyclists rather than the people driving. This creates a cycle where driving is increasingly the only safe option.

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

#108

Post by arnonejoe »

If you are commuting to SF in the morning from the east bay, there's the community driven east bay casual carpool. There used to be a pickup point at most of the east bay bart stations and the common drop off is at the corner of Fremont and Howard in soma. When I used to commute in, there were a few people in line and it only took a minute or two for the next car to pull up. It's a little weird at first to jump in a car with two random strangers but I never felt unsafe. You get through bay bridge toll plaza in seconds as you are in the carpool lane.

https://sfcasualcarpool.com/

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

#109

Post by simfree »

RC_ITR wrote: post #105
danhak wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

BART used to be so busy that people getting on in downtown stations would back-track to Civic Center/The Mission to actually get a seat across the bay. A similar amount of behavior existed of people doing anything to avoid a peak hour BART train. Now, if you're commuting in, the best times are during rush. BART numbers will always seem insanely low vs. pre-pandemic because they were unsustainable high back then.

Instead of treating public transit as an enterprise that should break even, we should consider what removing barriers to access through fare free public transit can do to serve our citizens more effectively.

Many transit districts in Washington State have already gone fare free. Removing the barrier of paying helps drive more ridership, particularly on non-peak hours that traditionally see much lower ridership.

The rail already exists, increasing it's utilization by will drive economic growth and help municipalities recover and heal the donut hole that was punched in many urban cores by the pandemic.

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

#110

Post by Anechoic »

ars wrote: post #90
Karrot_Kream wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is actually a fun one to point to. Replacing the Eastern span of the Bay Bridge happened recently, and has been one of the most expensive Californian infrastructure projects to date. It started with a price tag of $250 mil but it ended up costing $6.5 bil. In the meantime, BART has performed modifications on their tracks and has begun switching to new rolling stock, but it's been a lot cheaper than replacing the…

Looks like the bridge opened about 100 years ago - so that's $6.5 bil/100 years. So that's one data point. Wikipedia says BART costs about $0.6 bil/year. Which is 10 times as expensive as the bridge. I need figures on yearly maintenance cost for the bridge to make this accurate though. But so far it's not looking good for BART.

You're comparing a 2-mile, $6.5 bridge to a 130-mile, $0.5 bil/year system and you think this looks good for the bridge?

Not to mention in addition to direct costs, you need to look at externalities.

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