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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

#121

Post by db48x »

midoridensha wrote: post #100
geraldwhen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The first rule of self defense is to not go places you need to defend yourself. See a crazy person? Cross the street. Notice every ride on BART is dangerous? Don’t use BART. Simple pattern matching can save your life.

Exactly: notice that there's constant danger and violence in America? Don't travel to or live in America.

This is a misperception. There are a few hotspots that make the news regularly, but most people in America don’t face “constant danger and violence”.

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

#122

Post by TMWNN »

jrockway wrote: post #97
cyberlurker wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had high hopes for NYC when they hired the new MTA guy before Covid. But then he got pushed out by Cuomo and it seems like he was prevented from carrying out the reforms needed to fix the subway properly. I highly doubt the state, which controls the budget, will ever make the subway free. I am doubtful they will even pony up the cash to perform the maintenance the system truly needs.

Yeah, Andy Byford. He was great. He ended up going back to London and opening up Crossrail which is an amazing system.

People at /r/nycrail talk about Byford like King Arthur, someday to return to save the realm.

He returned to the US (for his kids), and is now running Amtrak high-speed rail.

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

#123

Post by hanslovsky »

ars wrote: post #25
jandrese wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but they just jacked up the prices to encourage ridership. So it should be all good now.

I rode the DC metro with family because I was warned about parking and traffic in DC. BIG MISTAKE! On the second day I took a car, and it took 1/3 the time, and 1/10 the cost EVEN with searching and paying for parking. Public transit should be free.

I live in the burbs and barely ever take the metro into DC

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

#124

Post by hitsurume »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #113
hitsurume wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> Your comment is really misguided. I think you're reading something into my comment that isn't there, probably because the nature of this site lends itself to reply opposition. I'm not against police enforcement. I'm trying to say, this desire you speak of isn't visible . While what you say is true about lower income residents, plenty of community groups who perform outreach to lower income communities show up and c…

> Fundamentally low-income people are just being spoken for. On this site it's high-income people who claim to know what low-income people think

That line is spot on. Your comment on the data in the original comment felt like it was trying to paint that low income people don't want police. I think if we take a step back, we both agree that the data itself might not be an actual representation of how people in their area/district/transportation system actually feel.

I do think Bart, San Francisco, and of the like are going to now need to think of how to make people want to use and be active in the systems they created. They use to have the privledge of people being forced to use what was provided and didn't care about the quality or level of service it needed to have. But now people have a choice. AThey don't need to ride bart to go to work and feel uneasy around unsafe people. They don't need to go shopping in downtown SF because they can just amazon everything they need and don't need to interact with shady people outside the west field mall. People are speaking with their actions and hopefully governence are paying attention to why.

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

#125

Post by ars »

Anechoic wrote: post #110
ars wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was not me who made the comparison, that's the person I replied to.

They were comparing number of people crossing the bridge to the total number of people using the entire BART system.

If anything what you say just makes BART look even worse, since a 2 mi stretch of bridge carries a half as many people as a hundred mile long BART system.

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

#126

Post by mint2 »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #118
ramesh31 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

I like when people complain about metro fares. What would the equivalent cost (and speed!) of driving be? Remember that you will need to pay for parking. The answer: Much more than 10 USD, and much longer than BART. Also, I checked the fare between Powell Station and 12th / Oakland, it is 3.85 USD one way. So, 7.70 USD round trip. Crossing the bay twice at 100 km/h is pretty cheap at that price.

Well the bay bridge toll is $7 heading to sf, and the trip probably costs over $3 of wear + fuel for the vehicle

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

#127

Post by 22c »

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #66
jonathankoren wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Only if you assume random victims of assault. That’s a pretty big assumption

How is this not probabilistic victim blaming?

I don't think it's victim blaming, it's a valid point.

Are you more likely to be shot on the streets of Chicago compared to Boise? Probably, yes, however you're MUCH more likely to get shot on the streets of Chicago if you're involved in gang related activities.

There are probably similar qualifiers for assault on the BART.

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

#128

Post by ars »

jeffbee wrote: post #112
ars wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> BART along the same alignment still moves 2x more people than the Bay Bridge does though, which is something to remember as non-users of BART clamor for its defunding. How much does BART cost per year (or per decade) vs the Bay Bridge? A huge advantage of roads vs public transit is you don't need staff. (Maintenence is needed on both, but even then I suspect roads are cheaper to maintain.)

Uh, the other (correct) way to look at it is the Bay Bridge requires a staff of 1000 people to move 1000 people across the Bay. Just because you externalize the costs doesn't mean you eliminated them.

Some people might get work done on a train, but not many. Most just waste their time.

So those 1000 people spent that time either way, makes little different if they are passengers or drivers. However driving gets you there faster, so the costs are lower.

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

#129

Post by jrockway »

TMWNN wrote: post #122
jrockway wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Andy Byford. He was great. He ended up going back to London and opening up Crossrail which is an amazing system.

People at /r/nycrail talk about Byford like King Arthur, someday to return to save the realm. He returned to the US (for his kids), and is now running Amtrak high-speed rail.

"Train Daddy", yeah. r/nycrail is like that.

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

#130

Post by midoridensha »

db48x wrote: post #121
midoridensha wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly: notice that there's constant danger and violence in America? Don't travel to or live in America.

This is a misperception. There are a few hotspots that make the news regularly, but most people in America don’t face “constant danger and violence”.

There's mass shootings almost every day in America now, and they can be anywhere: shopping malls, schools, workplaces, Walmart, wherever. Yes, most people in America really do face constant danger and violence. People in civilized countries don't have these problems on such a huge scale.
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