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. Since the rail alignment of BART can't be changed now, we'll probably settle on a new normal with BART.
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.
When I looked recently, Boston was still at just over 50% of pre-COVID transit utilization though some commuter rail and subway lines were a bit better--and bus lines were a bit better yet. Anecdotally traffic at rush hour is at least as bad as ever so it at least appears that some people switched back to (or started) driving who hadn't before.
Boston has had some well-publicized transit issues due to long-delayed transit maintenance but, at least short- to mid-term, it's lost a bunch pre-COVID commuting which has switched to driving.
If its miles total, I would chock it up to people doing more leisure travel, seeing family etc.
I don't think RTO is in full swing in such force that its commuter miles, so I'd say you're seeing a big uptick in leisure travel right now, which makes sense, as more and more people are becoming comfortable with this again
Well it can't be ONLY wfh. I think they meant "primarily". But more commuters choosing to drive is impacted by fewer people driving in due to WFH. The traffic was light, so they drove. Now traffic is normal again.
I'm not 100% on my reasoning, so I welcome alternate explanations. I suspect that a lot of part-time or odd-hour positions were most impacted by WFH. I'm guessing many of these have gone remote. Moreover, headway was cut back during the pandemic so folks who absolutely had to go into their positions may have invested in a car and don't feel the need to get back on transit because traffic off-peak is not too bad.
Speaking for myself, I rarely go to downtown SF now and go out mostly in downtown Oakland these days. The businesses are just as, if not more, vibrant and I have more transit options (BART, bus, BRT, bike) than being forced to take BART across the Bay. Before the pandemic SF downtown had a much more vibrant scene but Oakland has caught up if not exceeded the SF scene. This is just myself though.
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.
I was wondering the same. Perhaps peak is all about people on fixed schedules like shop assistants amd the like, whereas those jobs that have switched to WFH Havre far mow flexible hours and many were using that flexibility was to avoid peak hours?
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.
> 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.)
True - the majority of the BART maintenance cost is the rolling stock not the track. How much does the average commuter spend on car maintenance and fuel? Or even the capital expenditure in the first place, if that commute is the difference between needing a(nother?) car for the household in the first place.
And costs like the drivers and station workers is just split over the 1-per-car drivers across an equivalent road. I don't know anyone who enjoys that commute, likely arriving more stressed rather than less, and you can't read or prep for your real work in any way when driving.
It's a common fallacy to ignore relatively small per-person costs, even if the total adds up to a massive amount due to the numbers of people.
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 Eastern span of the Bay Bridge.
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.
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.
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.
>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.
Not if you compare to commuter rail. I'm further out but if you look at commuter rail parking, the train itself, and subway if I need to take it, I'm $35 to commute into Boston for the day. (If I do it every day, the pass is a bit cheaper.)
Yes, if I don't need to park at the subway and don't need to take commuter rail, it's about $5 but that's not really the norm for a lot of people coming in from the suburbs.
Commuter rail from N. Leominster to Porter is 24.50 round-trip + $4 for parking + ~$5 round-trip for the T. That's still cheaper than driving in for a day which would be about $50 round trip using IRS rates plus parking which could easily be $30+. (I'll drive in the evening or weekend when driving/parking are easier/quicker and the commuter rail really isn't very practical for an evening event.)
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.
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.
> 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.
Any source for that?
For BART numbers:
1. Is it traffic across the bay?
2. Or total traffic?
Edit: Digging up some data, I think it is #2, which seems a weird number to use.
BART total per day: ~400k
Bay Bridge per day: ~200k
I don't think this is unique to BART. My local news regularly highlights what an S-hole our subway system is. It has become a good place for the homeless to spend their day and no one has found a satisfactory fix for now. Right now you only ride the Subway if you absolutely don't have an alternative.
Low ridership feeds on itself since low ridership leads to even less ridership and the accompanied decrease in the budget to run it.
Farebox recovery is so damn low that I can only think the fares remain as an excuse to kick homeless and other undesirables off who aren’t technically breaking any rules or laws.
It's a pretty new topic in the US and studies are being conducted on this. AC Transit recently did one (I can link it if there's interest.) Indeed, farebox recovery is low enough that one of the main arguments for fare enforcement is to kick problem riders off. This is most impactful for operators who have to deal with the passengers in a way we riders do not.
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.
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.
I live in Oakland and am frightened of taking BART after hearing many horror stories from friends. If I, a healthy man in his 20s, am afraid to take BART, imagine how intimidating it must be for women and the elderly.
I road BART on Tuesday and it wasn't scary. You repeating what you heard might just create an echo chamber that amplifies something that isn't true and gets other people to believe it.
Counter anecdata, I rode Bart last night from 16th mission at ~9PM. First I waited 45mins for a train, then all the available seats on that car were covered in piles of trash, and panhandlers hassled the elderly couple next to me.
I think BART is generally tolerable, but you're dismissing how obviously fucking terrible the BART experience can be and regularly is. A lot of people aren't willing to deal with that roulette, nor should they have to. Other transit systems aren't this bad.
That's true. Even if I intellectualize a trip on BART as risk-free, it's still anxiety inducing and involves inconvenience I would volunteer to avoid if I had a car.
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 people still use the freeway.
I live here and take BART all the time. My partner has some car crash trauma so unless I'm driving, she's using transit to get around and she generally feels safe. It can get sketchy at night on the weekdays but otherwise neither of us have had problems on BART.
FWIW people complain about sketchy people and odd comments on BART, but I've also been followed by a driver I merged in front of who circled the block, cut me off, tried to follow me home, then flashed a knife on me and threatened to shank me. Last year someone got mad at me on the freeway then brake checked me at an exit. People run reds here all the time too, which is scary on both car, bike, and foot. As long as I use BART before 11 PM on weekdays I never really feel more unnsafe than I do when driving, but I also am not the type that likes to live away from people. I enjoy cities.
Why is there so much rage there? I can't understand how anyone has the spare time (and willingness to needlessly burn fuel) over petty traffic incidents like that.
Heh I don't know, but I was shook. The shanking incident, I was driving with my partner which made it more shocking. We ended up driving in circles a bit to make sure they couldn't follow us to our home.
I took BART the other day to go watch the As v Yankees (missed the perfect game yesterday by one day god damn it). Anyway, it was safe both ways and quite pleasant.
Highway traffic on my commute never got back to as bad as it was pre-COVID. I imagine a lot of transit expansion projects won't make sense anymore. (Or less sense than they did before re: induced demand.)
I think the analysis here tends a bit pessimistic. Bart just had its biggest day in years at Pride and its recovery is in line with the other agencies in the bay. If you're a fan of BART, I'd also like to invite you to the premiere of my movie about BART, playing at July 18th, 630pm at the Roxie. Here's a trailer: https://youtu.be/7eH3FfIGp8w, and you can grab tickets at https://roxie.com/film/tunnel-vision.
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:
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 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.
Nobody is saying that there are no random assaults, they are saying that without data on what percentage of the attacks were completely random, we can't make assumptions that an increase in total number of assaults equates to an increase in total number of random assaults.
> 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.
You made the argument that attacks are targeted using an analogy without having data.
I am not arguing that the increase of assaults on the BART are targeted. I am arguing that that without data to prove it, we are making an assumption by saying that an increase in the number of assaults on the BART means that you are more likely to be a victim of assault as a random commuter on the BART. I used an analogy of Chicago shootings because these numbers are well understood, I suspect the BART numbers are not as well understood (most of what either of us can find are anecdotes).
The logical fallacy here is the fallacy of composition. We've only been given the statistics as they relate to ALL riders of the BART (of which "random commuters" only comprise some portion of ALL riders of the BART). We can't draw conclusions about the likelihood of assault against commuters based on this data alone.
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?
I suspect so. I think in large part (but not all) the perception that San Francisco has gotten more unsafe since the pandemic is because our horrific social problems are now even more visible with fewer crowds around.
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.
This follows a general trend of roads becoming unsafer since COVID.
Traffic Fatalities in CA:
2019 -> 2020: +3.4%
2020 -> 2021: +7.6%
Unclear about 2021 -> 2022, I'd have to run the SWITRS data myself. Keep in mind these are just fatalities. I'm guessing crash data will show an even larger effect.
In my area the subway system has still not recovered from pre-pandemic ridership levels. It has made me wonder if the kind of people who rode the subway were more likely to work from home. But at the same the the roads are also less busy than they were, at least judging from the amount of congestion delays we experience on a day to day basis. This is good and bad. The good is that I can almost always get a seat on a train that used to be packed shoulder to shoulder standing room only. The bad is that the fare went from $3.10 to $5.50 each way.
London Underground has reached over 90% of pre-pandemic passenger numbers as of April 2023 [1], and Transport for London expects to achieve an operating surplus in 2023-24.
Notably, while peak-time commuter travel is still down on pre-pandemic levels, weekend passenger numbers on some routes has hit new all-time records.
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 Googleplex once. Nobody does that twice. (These companies have their own transportation networks, which is kind of a shame for visitors.)
I don't know what other cities look like. I've ridden the subway in New York on and off throughout and past the pandemic. This week was the first week that seemed normal to me. I don't commute, but have ridden the subway at commuting times, and it's definitely a little more chill than it used to be. (Easy to get a seat! But the train does eventually fill up as you get farther into Manhattan.) Looking at the commuter railroads, which I think is the fairest comparison to BART, they seem to be 50% of their all-time peak capacity. Not ideal, and I'm not convinced that 50% of the New York metro will be allowed to work from home forever.
It will be interesting to see what congestion pricing does to people that used transit before the pandemic that drive now. When I worked in Manhattan, I had a friend that drove every day. He showed me the spreadsheet that he used to decide between a monthly pass on MNR versus driving, driving was ever so slightly cheaper. With a $20 a day charge to drive into the city coming in the next couple years, that might be the edge that the railroads need to make it a financially viable decision.
I always thought we should make mass transit free and see how the numbers do. If 400,000 people drive into the city every day, and 2,000,000 people take the train, it's clear where the tax dollars should go. But I think as soon as you charge someone that first $1 to take the bus, pretty much everyone decided "fuck it, I'll just drive". The costs are a little more insidious, wear and tear on your vehicle, gas once a week, etc. People count that as free. (For example, do you ever turn on electrical appliances without thinking about the cost of electricity? That's driving.)
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.
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...
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.
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 over in a wheelchair (someone called 911 in that case).
To their credit, the cops on the other end of the Bart watch app respond to almost everything submitted. They don’t have enough officers though to cover the whole system.
How do you fix it? Add more cops. No ticket, no ride. Two cops on every train. One at every other station. Arrest anyone who is there without a ticket more than once. Arrest anyone jumping the gates. Enough with the nonsense.
The San Diego Trolley used (haven’t been there in 20 years) to be crawling with cops; you’d be hard pressed to do a longish ride without seeing at least one.and they responded fast.
The latter being important; if you see a situation, report it, and see it handled it fades away as a memory; if each time you see it it never gets resolved and you just leave, it stays as a bad memory.
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 listen in on any public meeting. Multiple community members and community groups call in to talk about how much they hate the police. Nobody calls in about how much they were helped by the police, unless they live in a wealthy district.
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 come from the wealthier district, and in Oakland it's fairly obvious because a couple districts are much wealthier than the others.
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.
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 comment against the police. Pro-bono law forms, homeless volunteers, soup kitchen folks, they all claim that low-income people dislike the police.
All I'm saying is that this disconnect is frustrating. 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, and in public meetings it's community groups who claim to know what low-income people think. I myself grew up low-income but am high-income now and I'm wary (my skin color is dark) of but overall positive (I mean what's the alternative? Lawlessness?) toward the police, but again I'm a high-income earner in a high-income district.
All I can say with certainty is that cops are expensive and that nobody seems to be excited enough to secure the tax revenue needed to fund them. If the only point of contention here was policing attitudes that would be one thing, but transit agencies don't even have enough money to maintain service let alone hire officers.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
But again, crime is not uniformly distributed across the geography or population of the US. Most people simply do not “face constant danger and violence”. I don’t know where you got that impression, but it is wrong.
You can see that in 2019 the murder and non–negligent homicide rate varied from 23.4 per 100,000 people in the capital city of Washington DC down to just 1.5 per 100,000 in the state of Maine. Note well that DC has just over half the total population of the entire state of Maine, and had 166 murders where Maine had 20. That’s an 800% difference! DC is a little weird though, because it’s a city rather than a state. Suffice it to say that within each state there is a wide variation between different areas of the state.
“Mass shootings” were only 11% percent of homicides in 2019: <https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...>. Note however that not every “mass shooting” is some dramatic spree killing in a public place. This count also includes crimes where one member of a family kills several others in a private place, shootouts between gangs where both sides were armed, etc, etc. All very tragic of course, but not something that you’re likely to be a part of.
Overall, Americans are more likely to be killed by a family member or acquaintance than by a stranger, and we’re more likely to be killed in a non–felony situation than as a part of a felony. We’re mostly likely to be killed in an argument with a family member, but arguments with acquaintances are a very close second. See <https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...>. But I suppose that if you are a European who has recently moved to the US and has no family here, then you are rather unlikely be murdered by a family member after all. You’d better keep an eye on all those acquaintances instead. :)
I’ll grant you that the average of 5 homicides per 100,000 is higher than the average for most European countries (which run around 1 or 2 per 100,000, iirc), which is a point in favor of Europe. But recall again that not all parts of America are the same. I said before that crime and violence are concentrated in hot spots, and I stand by that: <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Homicide...>. There are definitely parts of America that you would not be advised to move to, but most places are fine. Look closely; all of New York City, the largest city in the US, is green or the lightest tan. LA and Houston, #2 and #4 respectively, are light tan and perfectly fine places to live. Chicago (#2) and Philadelphia (#6) are worryingly pinkish. Maybe move somewhere else. San Antonio (#5), is spread across three counties that range from light green to very slightly pink; a mixed bag but overall pretty nice. San Jose (#10) and the actual location of Silicon Valley is light green.
You could live a lifetime in one of those green counties and never encounter a violent crime, let alone be victim of one. Even most of the light tan places are great places to live, with homicide r...
I agree, it goes beyond danger which I see some people debating elsewhere in the thread. A tweaker might not be dangerous to me but I still won't enjoy being stuck in a tin can with him. Societies generally try to police antisocial behavior for a reason, but I guess some people think anything short of actually violent behavior should be tolerated. And "it's a city" shouldn't be an excuse.
I've ridden BART sometimes recently, and they are much more aggressive about requiring tickets and making freeloaders exit now. Feels like they're cracking down.
I haven't had an unsafe experience yet, while I have been attempted carjacking. Granted that was at midnight, a time I wouldn't try to ride BART. And I would probably avoid most stations at night, especially Civic Center anytime.
I'm one who lives in the east bay (oakland/emeryville area) and don't use BART anymore because I'm WFH now.
I also choose to drive into the city on weekends and off commute hours because the BART always has sketchy people, homeless, some weirdo moving up and down the carts and there's never enough people in the off hours to make it feel safe and worth it.
It's a bummer because I'm down the street from Macarthur and would love to take it more often but I always have to be on guard which is not the travel experience I need in my life right now.
Measuring pixels on the chart it looks like BART is at 40% of pre-Covid levels (so down 60%). Public transit ridership nationally is at 65% and the MTA is at 70%.
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.
Nobody uses this any more. It is effectively not possible to cross the bay with the casual carpool. For the same reason nobody rides BART: those trips are not necessary these days.
If no one else has mentioned it yet this headline is false/misleading. Ridership is down 30% not 70%. That is, all transit systems are operating at about 70% of nominal ridership.
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[ 4.5 ms ] story [ 230 ms ] threadBART 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.
Boston has had some well-publicized transit issues due to long-delayed transit maintenance but, at least short- to mid-term, it's lost a bunch pre-COVID commuting which has switched to driving.
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?
If its miles total, I would chock it up to people doing more leisure travel, seeing family etc.
I don't think RTO is in full swing in such force that its commuter miles, so I'd say you're seeing a big uptick in leisure travel right now, which makes sense, as more and more people are becoming comfortable with this again
If thats when peak hours are
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.
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.
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.)
https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/visuals/bay-bridge...
The BART has to pay for everything out of fares and sundry. The highway authority just has to build and maintain the road not the vehicles.
And costs like the drivers and station workers is just split over the 1-per-car drivers across an equivalent road. I don't know anyone who enjoys that commute, likely arriving more stressed rather than less, and you can't read or prep for your real work in any way when driving.
It's a common fallacy to ignore relatively small per-person costs, even if the total adds up to a massive amount due to the numbers of people.
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.
That way everyone can use BART :)
Not to mention in addition to direct costs, you need to look at externalities.
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.
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.
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.
Yes, if I don't need to park at the subway and don't need to take commuter rail, it's about $5 but that's not really the norm for a lot of people coming in from the suburbs.
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.
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.
Any source for that?
For BART numbers:
1. Is it traffic across the bay?
2. Or total traffic?
Edit: Digging up some data, I think it is #2, which seems a weird number to use.
BART total per day: ~400k Bay Bridge per day: ~200k
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco–Oakland_Bay_Brid...
https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/June18FactShee...
Low ridership feeds on itself since low ridership leads to even less ridership and the accompanied decrease in the budget to run it.
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.
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.
You have to do something like tag all driver licenses/IDs in the "area" with "free ride".
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.
I think BART is generally tolerable, but you're dismissing how obviously fucking terrible the BART experience can be and regularly is. A lot of people aren't willing to deal with that roulette, nor should they have to. Other transit systems aren't this bad.
By the way freeway shootings in the Bay Area tripled to more than one every day and plenty of people still use the freeway.
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.
FWIW people complain about sketchy people and odd comments on BART, but I've also been followed by a driver I merged in front of who circled the block, cut me off, tried to follow me home, then flashed a knife on me and threatened to shank me. Last year someone got mad at me on the freeway then brake checked me at an exit. People run reds here all the time too, which is scary on both car, bike, and foot. As long as I use BART before 11 PM on weekdays I never really feel more unnsafe than I do when driving, but I also am not the type that likes to live away from people. I enjoy cities.
Embarcadero <-> Coliseum both ways.
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] https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/2023-01%20Mont...
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.
No, not really. Unless you have data to back that up. Source: I was assaulted outside a BART station randomly.
One more data point:
> Rojas added, "It looks like it was an unprovoked, unwarranted, vicious attack."
https://abc7news.com/bart-stabbing-arrest-john-cowell-lee-oa...
One more
https://www.bart.gov/news/articles/2018/news20180408
You made the argument that attacks are targeted using an analogy without having data.
The logical fallacy here is the fallacy of composition. We've only been given the statistics as they relate to ALL riders of the BART (of which "random commuters" only comprise some portion of ALL riders of the BART). We can't draw conclusions about the likelihood of assault against commuters based on this data alone.
Traffic Fatalities in CA:
2019 -> 2020: +3.4%
2020 -> 2021: +7.6%
Unclear about 2021 -> 2022, I'd have to run the SWITRS data myself. Keep in mind these are just fatalities. I'm guessing crash data will show an even larger effect.
Source: https://www.ots.ca.gov/ots-and-traffic-safety/score-card/ and other OTS resources.
> "the fare went from $3.10 to $5.50 each way"
I suspect there is a cause & effect relationship between these two observations. But which is which?
Notably, while peak-time commuter travel is still down on pre-pandemic levels, weekend passenger numbers on some routes has hit new all-time records.
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-65821633
I don't know what other cities look like. I've ridden the subway in New York on and off throughout and past the pandemic. This week was the first week that seemed normal to me. I don't commute, but have ridden the subway at commuting times, and it's definitely a little more chill than it used to be. (Easy to get a seat! But the train does eventually fill up as you get farther into Manhattan.) Looking at the commuter railroads, which I think is the fairest comparison to BART, they seem to be 50% of their all-time peak capacity. Not ideal, and I'm not convinced that 50% of the New York metro will be allowed to work from home forever.
It will be interesting to see what congestion pricing does to people that used transit before the pandemic that drive now. When I worked in Manhattan, I had a friend that drove every day. He showed me the spreadsheet that he used to decide between a monthly pass on MNR versus driving, driving was ever so slightly cheaper. With a $20 a day charge to drive into the city coming in the next couple years, that might be the edge that the railroads need to make it a financially viable decision.
I always thought we should make mass transit free and see how the numbers do. If 400,000 people drive into the city every day, and 2,000,000 people take the train, it's clear where the tax dollars should go. But I think as soon as you charge someone that first $1 to take the bus, pretty much everyone decided "fuck it, I'll just drive". The costs are a little more insidious, wear and tear on your vehicle, gas once a week, etc. People count that as free. (For example, do you ever turn on electrical appliances without thinking about the cost of electricity? That's driving.)
He returned to the US (for his kids), and is now running Amtrak high-speed rail.
Of course, there's also the option of "fuck it, I'll just stay home."
Why's that? Long, boring, no footpaths, dangerous?
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.
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.
One guy tried to light a seat in fire. Another tailgated me through the gates and proceeded to push past me. Another was slumped over in a wheelchair (someone called 911 in that case).
To their credit, the cops on the other end of the Bart watch app respond to almost everything submitted. They don’t have enough officers though to cover the whole system.
How do you fix it? Add more cops. No ticket, no ride. Two cops on every train. One at every other station. Arrest anyone who is there without a ticket more than once. Arrest anyone jumping the gates. Enough with the nonsense.
The latter being important; if you see a situation, report it, and see it handled it fades away as a memory; if each time you see it it never gets resolved and you just leave, it stays as a bad memory.
that will never ever happen.
I remember 15 years ago reading about how much BART police get paid, was supposed to be way up there to the point people got upset about it
The disconnect is frustrating though. Middle and low income people do not trust the police. Don't believe me? Just listen in on any public meeting. Multiple community members and community groups call in to talk about how much they hate the police. Nobody calls in about how much they were helped by the police, unless they live in a wealthy district.
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.
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 comment against the police. Pro-bono law forms, homeless volunteers, soup kitchen folks, they all claim that low-income people dislike the police.
All I'm saying is that this disconnect is frustrating. 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, and in public meetings it's community groups who claim to know what low-income people think. I myself grew up low-income but am high-income now and I'm wary (my skin color is dark) of but overall positive (I mean what's the alternative? Lawlessness?) toward the police, but again I'm a high-income earner in a high-income district.
All I can say with certainty is that cops are expensive and that nobody seems to be excited enough to secure the tax revenue needed to fund them. If the only point of contention here was policing attitudes that would be one thing, but transit agencies don't even have enough money to maintain service let alone hire officers.
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.
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.
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.
Here, just look at this table of crime counts and rates per 100,000 people in various states and regions of the United States: <https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...>.
You can see that in 2019 the murder and non–negligent homicide rate varied from 23.4 per 100,000 people in the capital city of Washington DC down to just 1.5 per 100,000 in the state of Maine. Note well that DC has just over half the total population of the entire state of Maine, and had 166 murders where Maine had 20. That’s an 800% difference! DC is a little weird though, because it’s a city rather than a state. Suffice it to say that within each state there is a wide variation between different areas of the state.
“Mass shootings” were only 11% percent of homicides in 2019: <https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...>. Note however that not every “mass shooting” is some dramatic spree killing in a public place. This count also includes crimes where one member of a family kills several others in a private place, shootouts between gangs where both sides were armed, etc, etc. All very tragic of course, but not something that you’re likely to be a part of.
Overall, Americans are more likely to be killed by a family member or acquaintance than by a stranger, and we’re more likely to be killed in a non–felony situation than as a part of a felony. We’re mostly likely to be killed in an argument with a family member, but arguments with acquaintances are a very close second. See <https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...>. But I suppose that if you are a European who has recently moved to the US and has no family here, then you are rather unlikely be murdered by a family member after all. You’d better keep an eye on all those acquaintances instead. :)
I’ll grant you that the average of 5 homicides per 100,000 is higher than the average for most European countries (which run around 1 or 2 per 100,000, iirc), which is a point in favor of Europe. But recall again that not all parts of America are the same. I said before that crime and violence are concentrated in hot spots, and I stand by that: <https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/27/Homicide...>. There are definitely parts of America that you would not be advised to move to, but most places are fine. Look closely; all of New York City, the largest city in the US, is green or the lightest tan. LA and Houston, #2 and #4 respectively, are light tan and perfectly fine places to live. Chicago (#2) and Philadelphia (#6) are worryingly pinkish. Maybe move somewhere else. San Antonio (#5), is spread across three counties that range from light green to very slightly pink; a mixed bag but overall pretty nice. San Jose (#10) and the actual location of Silicon Valley is light green.
You could live a lifetime in one of those green counties and never encounter a violent crime, let alone be victim of one. Even most of the light tan places are great places to live, with homicide r...
I've ridden BART sometimes recently, and they are much more aggressive about requiring tickets and making freeloaders exit now. Feels like they're cracking down.
I haven't had an unsafe experience yet, while I have been attempted carjacking. Granted that was at midnight, a time I wouldn't try to ride BART. And I would probably avoid most stations at night, especially Civic Center anytime.
I also choose to drive into the city on weekends and off commute hours because the BART always has sketchy people, homeless, some weirdo moving up and down the carts and there's never enough people in the off hours to make it feel safe and worth it.
It's a bummer because I'm down the street from Macarthur and would love to take it more often but I always have to be on guard which is not the travel experience I need in my life right now.
Please remember that we are all one missed paycheck from smoking meth and jerking off on the train
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://sfcasualcarpool.com/
https://www.kqed.org/news/11934347/will-casual-carpool-ever-....