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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

#81

Post by mcpackieh »

TheBigSalad wrote: post #70
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…

Face forward, no eye contact. Rookie.

Are you sure you're not shell shocked? It shouldn't have to be like this.

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

#82

Post by mcpackieh »

jonathankoren wrote: post #51
jb12 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that with a constant amount of assaults, and fewer potential victims, you are more likely to be a victim.

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

Right, people with small statures who look like pushovers will face a disproportionate amount of the abuse. Big mean looking guys like me usually don't have much to fear, but why should anybody have to put up with it just because they're small and meek?

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

#83

Post by geraldwhen »

TheBigSalad wrote: post #70
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…

Face forward, no eye contact. Rookie.

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.

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

#84

Post by PaulHoule »

aidenn0 wrote: post #65
DiggyJohnson wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always thought that the jobs most “susceptible” to WFH are the traditional, 9-5 white collar jobs. Am interested to know if this is correct (outside of software industry, especially).

Just a theory, but white-collar jobs that now offer WFH as a perk probably offered flexible hours as a perk pre-COVID. This is conducive to commuting during off-peak hours.

I worked for about a year for a startup based in L.A. where I was the only remote and it seemed they worked roughly 10:30-6:30 to shift their commutes off-peak.

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

#85

Post by Tiktaalik »

jrockway wrote: post #31

I think BART is the perfect storm of commuter railroads that aren't going to recover. San Francisco is tech heavy, and tech still seems pretty work-from-home heavy. A problem I always wondered about is whether or not BART was the right system for San Francisco, as it seems a lot of the big companies are out in the suburbs and never had public transportation. I walked from the Mountain View train station to the Google…

> I don't know what other cities look like.

Vancouver's downtown has a lot more residential than most cities and it seems to have fared much better that SF and other places.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/translink-ri...

Though even here, we can see that transit recovery is slowest in the downtown area and strongest in other parts of the region.

I'd agree with your analysis that this is a tech and wfh related problem where SF is particularly hurt hard.

In the area of this regional map of strongest recovery are the warehouses where working people need to be on site to do work.

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

#86

Post by OkayPhysicist »

jandrese wrote: post #19
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?

I suspect this is exactly the phenomena in action. You've got a relatively constant-sized population of deranged individuals who ride the trains a lot. When there's a lot of people on the train, they disappear into t.

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

#87

Post by bombcar »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #67
bombcar wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always thought that issuing free passes to all appropriate taxpayers/residents would be a great way to go. Then you can raise the non pass price to soak those tourists!

They're there! AC Transit runs a program called Clipper Start. The problem is, low income folks just don't take advantage of it, and it's (without further study) unclear why. This was identified during the session on fare enforcement and exactly as you say, there's interest in promoting it more heavily and trying to jack up the price on tourists or high-income leisure riders.

It can't be "apply in" because low income folks often have hard times learning about programs, let alone successfully applying them.

You have to do something like tag all driver licenses/IDs in the "area" with "free ride".

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

#88

Post by GrifMD »

prawn wrote: post #71
jrockway wrote: post #31

I think BART is the perfect storm of commuter railroads that aren't going to recover. San Francisco is tech heavy, and tech still seems pretty work-from-home heavy. A problem I always wondered about is whether or not BART was the right system for San Francisco, as it seems a lot of the big companies are out in the suburbs and never had public transportation. I walked from the Mountain View train station to the Google…

"I walked from the Mountain View train station to the Googleplex once. Nobody does that twice." Why's that? Long, boring, no footpaths, dangerous?

I looked it up out curiosity, it's over 2 miles along a major road that crosses a major freeway. There is a suburban route that has a dedicated bike lane crossing of the freeway (101). Yikes.

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

#90

Post by ars »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #48
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.)

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.

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