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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

#91

Post by prawn »

GrifMD wrote: post #88
prawn wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

This sounds exactly like the sort of walk my wife and I end up doing when abroad. "Doesn't look that far on the map. Let's just walk it, get our steps up. It'll be fun!" End up choking on fumes the entire way...

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

#93

Post by wnissen »

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?

Suburban pedestrian infrastructure in all of California is bad. Maybe not Florida bad, but pretty bad. Intersections are set up for vehicles, pedestrians have to wait a long time and cars are going to be zipping around the corner without looking to see if anyone is in the crosswalk. Motor fumes, risk of collision, and it takes forever.

I love to walk in urban and wilderness settings, but it's not too much of an exaggeration to say that people walking in the suburbs can't afford an alternative.

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

#94

Post by janalsncm »

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…

So what. The Bay Area is one of the most economically productive places on the planet. Tax payers are more than capable of handling it.

The public transit system is frankly an embarrassment across the country. If Morocco can have bullet trains, the Bay Area can have a safe, smooth intercity transit system.

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

#95

Post by aledalgrande »

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?

It's an absolute random walk in residential streets and across a highway in a land not built to walk. So probably all of that.

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

#96

Post by ignormies »

emmetG wrote: post #47
jeffbee wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 p…

[flagged]

I frequently see people on their laptops on BART, and I've done it myself.

It's certainly lower than other commuter rail (it's a metro after all), and especially lower than Caltrain, but definitely not out of the question.

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

#97

Post by jrockway »

cyberlurker wrote: post #59
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 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.

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

#98

Post by mistrial9 »

MikeTheRocker wrote: post #62
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…

I can corroborate this experience. Last time I rode BART, someone lit up a joint while we were in the airtight car under the waters of the San Francisco Bay. The time before that, I had a crazy guy screaming the whole ride.

five middle school kids, one of them with a baseball bat, stalking fast through the train.. mid-day, weekday, at the SF tube

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

#99

Post by aledalgrande »

Tiktaalik wrote: post #85
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 wf…

There is also to say that riding in Vancouver is much nicer than in SF.

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

#100

Post by midoridensha »

geraldwhen wrote: post #83
TheBigSalad wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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