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Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad?

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Re: Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad?

#91

Post by aaron-lebo »

jostmey wrote: post #78
mapgrep wrote: post #76

There is some great history here but I wish he were not so dismissive of BART. I complain about it all the time -- yes trains get delayed sometimes -- but in the big scheme of things BART is simply magnificent. There's nothing quite like it in the country -- a high speed inter-city under-water under-ground train system. New York has the LIRR to Long Island and the Acela to DC, but it's got nothing on BART. Yes, BART…

What is so sad is that your are right. BART is a wonderful way to get around when you compare it against the mass transit options of other cities in the US. And yet there is so much room for improvement with BART. I just want to throw this in: Dallas has some of the worst mass transit options. Many of the trains won't even run on Sunday. And every time you cross the street you feel like you are about to run down by s…

What is up with the Dallas hate in this thread?

It doesn't have public transit comparable to Chicago, New York, or even San Francisco, but it is a much younger city than those and has much different dynamics both historically (was really built out in the 50s and 60s with suburbs in mind) and politically (fiscal conservatives are huge here).

I typed pretty much the following paragraph in another comment, so forgive me for being annoying but I want to stress it:

Despite that, and despite that the DART rail to to the best of my knowledge didn't exist 20 years ago, you can take the rail to the far northwestern suburbs (Carrolton), the far northern suburbs (Plano), the northeastern suburbs (Rowlett), the west (DFW airport), and all of the lines reach into different parts of South Dallas and connect areas like Oak Cliff, Fair Park, Deep Ellum. The TRE connects Irving and Fort Worth. Buses cover a much wider area.

The trains do run a less frequent weekend service, but they still run to every single one of those areas. Considering the political culture here and the fact that DART loses money I'd say that is a damn miracle.

You can make the comments you want about the car culture here, but that is true for any suburban city in America. People will say the same thing about LA drivers.

I wish Dallas was better but it is doing damn well for itself.

Re: Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad?

#92

Post by spike021 »

closetnerd wrote: post #73
spike021 wrote: post #31

Strange. I honestly wouldn't say it's bad at all. I can easily get from downtown SF to SoMa, Stonestown Galleria, Chinatown, the Cannery Area/Pier 39, Golden Gate Park, etc using just a handful of Muni buses/lightrails and probably no more than 2 transfers. That's just using Muni. For the rest of the Bay Area, I travel from San Jose to the northern Peninsula very often via some combination of Caltrain, Bart, and Vall…

Dude seriously? San Francisco is a couple of miles wide and yet it take as long to get from one side to the other using public transportation as it does for me to drive 10 times the distance.

Yeah, seriously. I'm not really sure how you can compare public transportation and driving a car in San Francisco.

Re: Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad?

#93

Post by gcr »

suprgeek wrote: post #9

Coming to SF and Expecting world beating infrastructure is a very naive expectation to begin with. Keep in mind the kind of politics (and hence policies) that SF is known for. It is not know for ruthless efficiency and well oiled policies, it is instead the "WORST run big city in the US" http://www.sfweekly.com/2009-12-16/news/the-worst-run-big-ci... Do not expect things to get better either unfortunately.

Moreso than Detroit?

Re: Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad?

#94

Post by EdwardDiego »

discardorama wrote: post #70

There are multiple reasons, not just one. Each of them, like drops in a bucket, contributed to fill the bucket. As has been alluded by the OP, till the 1940s SF actually had competing train operators. They would advertise their performance ("shortest time to inner sunset!"), for example, and riders voted with their dollars. Then all but 1 got consolidated/wiped-out, and we ended up with the MUNI (aka SFMTA). The prob…

> we ended up with the MUNI (aka SFMTA). The problem is: as a monopoly, and a government-subsidised one to boot, they have absolutely no incentive to improve service.

Germany's trains are also monopolies, yet the U-Bahns I'm familiar with are reliable and relatively clean - at least compared to the BART I rode.

Re: Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad?

#95

Post by mercutio2 »

mblakele wrote: post #87

Low density. Without enough population density it's impossible for transit to be economically viable. Tokyo has it. London has it. NYC has it. SF is... simply not dense enough to support a good transit infrastructure.

Huh? SF's population density is 17k per square mile. Only 60% as dense as all of NYC, but still extremely dense.

If you meant the SF Bay Area, then yes, it's not dense at all.

SF itself could afford a much better transit system, and, as the article mentions, the situation may actually improve in the next decade or so!

Re: Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad?

#96

Post by beachstartup »

dba7dba wrote: post #14

> Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad? You should try Los Angeles. Btw, decades ago, Los Angeles had a perfectly good commuter line system (aka Red Cars which was electric trolley car) that went EVERYWHERE including right on the beach. The bike lane on the famous Venice beach was actually where the rail used to be. One pic I saw showed the rail didn't run to the beach at a perpendicular angle. The rail…

LA's public transit system (subway, light rail, express buses) has actually improved significantly in the past 10 years (since 2004 - not that long ago), and will be significantly improving in the next 10 years.

for example, the exposition line is now halfway open and will fully connect downtown SM (the beach) to downtown LA in 2015.

this is actually kind of a big deal. lots of people are looking forward to it, especially sports fans (all of LA's teams play downtown).

and, if they manage to extend the purple line to the west (this is the 10 year horizon), the situation will be very different in LA. it will have basically 50% of a train system built. nowhere near complete, but totally useable especially with services like Uber and Lyft.

http://media.metro.net/projects_studies/westside/images/proj...

Re: Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad?

#97

Post by ulfw »

discardorama wrote: post #70

There are multiple reasons, not just one. Each of them, like drops in a bucket, contributed to fill the bucket. As has been alluded by the OP, till the 1940s SF actually had competing train operators. They would advertise their performance ("shortest time to inner sunset!"), for example, and riders voted with their dollars. Then all but 1 got consolidated/wiped-out, and we ended up with the MUNI (aka SFMTA). The prob…

It's not the monopoly that's the problem, it's the 'i don't give a damn' attitude that's prevailing. Most public transports around the world are either monopolies (MTR Hong Kong) or pseudo-monopolies (e.g. SMRT/SBS Singapore) or just in the public hand (German U-Bahns). Still they are on time. Still they are being expanded. Still they're usually clean. Still they are being modernized (some faster than others).

The difference is wether the objective is to do a public good (get our people from A to B as efficiently as we can) or to maximize profit (let's make sure the system works somehow but god for bid let's not dump good money into it).

Re: Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad?

#98

Post by raldi »

jrockway wrote: post #27

Here's the thing about the bay area, and California in general: everyone that lives there says "not in my backyard" to every infrastructure project ever. Nobody wants more infrastructure. Why is the N so slow? Because it stops every block and runs in traffic. It's a smoother bus, not heavy rail. California firmly embraced the automobile, and that's the state it will be in for a long time.

People say "not in my backyard" everywhere. What makes Californian special is that we empower individuals to obstruct their neighbors too easily. Here, the needs of the few outweigh the needs of the many.

Re: Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad?

#99

Post by ulfw »

sssilver wrote: post #4

> Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad? You should try Dallas.

At least Dallas is automobile-optimized. SF is shitty in terms of public transport but I'd argue even more shitty for driving because of high traffic, odd routings, stopping at every intersection for a stop sign or traffic light and worst of all complete lack of parking. I fondly remembering looking for well over an hour in a 10 by 10 block radius for a spot to join a party one Saturday night in a residential area around Japantown, only to excuse myself and give up and drove back to Mountain View.

Re: Why is San Francisco public transportation so bad?

#100

Post by mblakele »

mercutio2 wrote: post #95
mblakele wrote: post #87

Low density. Without enough population density it's impossible for transit to be economically viable. Tokyo has it. London has it. NYC has it. SF is... simply not dense enough to support a good transit infrastructure.

Huh? SF's population density is 17k per square mile. Only 60% as dense as all of NYC, but still extremely dense. If you meant the SF Bay Area, then yes, it's not dense at all. SF itself could afford a much better transit system, and, as the article mentions, the situation may actually improve in the next decade or so!

So you have 60% of X. If you need X, you have to subsidize the difference. Where does that money come from?

Anyway 60% is probably too high, because it's misleading to compare SF alone with NYC. You might better compare SF with Manhattan, or better still compare the greater Bay Area with greater NYC.

Having used transit pretty extensively in both areas, I also think NYC is less balkanized. If we could reduce the number of different agencies running transit through the greater Bay Area, I think there would be less waste and less misplacement of resources. Today there are multiple agencies even within SF proper.

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