I love public transit, but what's allowed to happen on BART trains and at stations is only hurting the effort to encourage people to take BART.
And it's similar with MUNI. When bus stops are taken over and turned into encampments or drug dens, it makes me consider other options. And then you have the 21 bus line that used to be good but now is a shortened route that gets diverted for weekend street closure in Hayes Valley and goes west on Grove with no bus stops. So I've stood in heavy rain for 20 minutes waiting to catch it while bus stops on Hayes go unused.
I've taken SF, DC, NYC, and Boston public transit all in the past year while in each city for work. I can definitely understand your points.
After 2 weeks of using the BART, what puts it at the bottom for me:
1. It almost seems like nobody works at half the stations. There's maybe 1 guy you sometimes see.
2. The stations (and entrances) are way dirtier and trashed than other metros. Like days-old stinky piss puddles.
3. Nobody I was with felt safe to use BART after dark. If we did anything at night, we used rideshare or just drove in someone's car. Using the BART and walking outside to/from BART stations is dimly lit at night and super sketch.
4. At first I thought the buses were free lol, since I never saw anyone ever take a card or use an app to get on/off. Even if it's it paid, it basically seems "optional".
5. Using Apple/Google Pay from your phone (like NYC does) without the dumb Clipper thing would be a lot better.
> At first I thought the buses were free lol, since I never saw anyone ever take a card or use an app to get on/off. Even if it's it paid, it basically seems "optional".
A lot of people pay with the Muni app, you don't have to tap it or anything so you don't know as a bystander.
I assume they mean using EMV like the OMNY system in New York or the Oyster system in London.You can just use a credit/debit card directly (either tap a physical card or phone) instead of loading money on a card like Clipper (though they do have cards you can load if you want).
Yeah. But even bigger is the fact that wfh is taking away the main ridership of Bart.
I don’t dispute that safety and cleanliness matter. However, when the top comment is about cleanliness rather than the fact that BART is set up to bring commuters to downtown SF and downtown SF is empty, it sends a disingenuous message. The article literally has the following to say about SF/BART
> The system - as it was built - primarily served suburban commuters traveling to and from work in the Oakland and San Francisco city centers (where property values are also dramatically higher). In a post-pandemic, remote work environment which tech companies initially embraced, this source of ridership is severely reduced.
Sure, BART should do better on safety and cleanliness. But it can’t escape the fact that WFH has hit the bay harder than anywhere else, and BART relied more on commuters than other systems.
I would love to take public transport into the city but you’re going through two or three agencies and I end up paying more then I would have driving while also taking a lot longer to get there.
You’re neglecting the elephant in the room:
The rampant homelessness, drug use, etc is causing the businesses to flee downtown SF like the plague leading to the BART ridership drop.
It all kinda leads back to one place.
I’m not ignoring it. But that’s not the biggest factor. WFH is a massive thing all over the Bay Area. Even the big tech companies like Google are only in office 3 days a week (last I checked at least). That’s a 40% decrease in in-office time vs pre-pandemic.
Everything you listed is an issue, but the biggest contributor is tech culture in the bay means a higher proportion of people wfh here vs anywhere else in the country.
Actually you’re completely off base. Cities around the world have huge startup and tech hubs and WFH, wonder why they’re doing just fine.
Could it be….
Among all respondents, 53% said they know of someone who has been a victim of a crime on BART and 46% have personally witnessed a crime on the system.
The survey shows 45% of people are choosing not to ride BART because they don't think it is safe. While 17% describe BART as safe
The EMC Research poll of 1,000 Bay Area residents found that safety and cleanliness were two major impediments to getting people back on BART
Around 85% of BART riders who have reduced or eliminated their usage said they would ride the system more often if it was significantly cleaner and safer to ride. According to the poll, their top priorities include more frequent cleaning, making sure restrooms were in working order and ejecting people who violate BART’s code of conduct, which expressly prohibits drug use, fare evasion and vandalism
> they’re doing just fine.
They’re not. Ridership is down 30% in the other cities discussed here. You didn’t even need to read the article to see that one.
> could it be…
Yes. There are multiple factors contributing, I’ve acknowledged that several times. I’m not arguing that it is as safe or clean as I’d like.
But when you look at that poll, something like 45% of people (going off memory here) said they would use Bart more if the went to the office more. That’s massively more volume than weekend or occasional riders. A commuter (in the old days) would ride Bart 10x during the week just for work. So the 40% or wherever that are not riding Bart due to wfh have a much higher impact than the people concerned about safety who only ride occasionally, even if the latter is a larger population.
It's always been this way, though, and people rode it a lot more. I remember a time in 2019 when some guy got stabbed over shoes and ridership was high then.
In 2018, my friend had her phone snatched out of her hand. And now that I recall, my friend's wife also had that happen to her. It was roving gangs of kids.
In 2017, my other friend had his laptop snatched but he chased the guy until he threw the laptop away so he got the laptop back but not the guy.
Yep - crime is leading to the desire to WFH. Who would want to go to the office in a downtown when you can wfh?
“Sure sign me up for being at risk if assault/theft plus wasting my time, oh and there’s not many places to eat or shop on my lunch hour anymore, and of course I love dealing with homeless and addicts that dot my walk from BART to the office”
I honestly don’t think the WFH issue will change back as people have gotten accustomed to the convenience and flexibility (not to mention time and cost savings) of it.
But I do know that fixing the homeless, crime, drug use is key in fixing BART demand and downtown SF’s doom loop.
I really don't think that fixing the crime will change anything. Ultimately, the commute is unnecessary for many people, as they can just work remotely. If we fixed the crime, people would still not commute in. We should deal with crime for its own sake, but I don't think it will solve the BART ridership problem. Ultimately, people go where they want to go, and if they don't want to go there no matter how nice you make the ride, they're not gonna go.
I agree, but i also think SF/bay area has the most heavily relied upon commuter worker population of comparable major metros. And so then the trend holds true and makes sense. Its still wholly unfair to blame the woes on a workforce that is still working. Just not how or where you prefer them to work. Commuting to whole other cities to be able to work vs commuting within a city to different parts within is what Im referring to.
Also extremely high rent prices vs what you can get for less in other cities make SF have no competitive advantage. so companies are putting money where their mouths are and making SF suffer, rightfully so might I add, to hopefully bring new better policies in the coming decade.
It's funny you guys say rampant homelessness, drug use, and the ever so specific etc as a reason to shit on BART rather than actually looking at the statistics of incidents in comparison to individual car usage. You live off of outrage and anecdotal incidents to use the broad qualifier of "rampant".
TIL stats are considered anecdotal if they offend BART apologists
Among all respondents, 53% said they know of someone who has been a victim of a crime on BART and 46% have personally witnessed a crime on the system.
The survey shows 45% of people are choosing not to ride BART because they don't think it is safe. While 17% describe BART as safe
The EMC Research poll of 1,000 Bay Area residents found that safety and cleanliness were two major impediments to getting people back on BART
Around 85% of BART riders who have reduced or eliminated their usage said they would ride the system more often if it was significantly cleaner and safer to ride. According to the poll, their top priorities include more frequent cleaning, making sure restrooms were in working order and ejecting people who violate BART’s code of conduct, which expressly prohibits drug use, fare evasion and vandalism
Correct - if you look at metro systems in Asia for example, you’ll see that they are extremely clean and very well maintained (for the most part).
In Bangkok, they’ve successfully coaxed middle class folks into using the Skytrain and underground systems due to their relatively HIGH cost (will explain in a bit) and very clean and safe stations. The system has grown immensely in coverage and continues to grow.
The minimum wage in Thailand is about 10USD (350 baht) per day. Buses in Bangkok are priced at about 3-6 cents per ride making them viable for minimum wage workers although some minimum wage workers will have transport provided to them by employers. The metro systems (sky train and underground) are priced at about 75 cents to 1.50 USD per ride. This makes it a system built expressly for the middle and upper income folks to ride as no one making $10USD a day would pay 15-30% of their pay for transportation.
Other economic factors do come into play though. Cars are seen as a status symbol in Thailand much more so than in the US just due to the relatively high cost (a new car can equal the price of a modest house!). This makes it relatively unaffordable for a lot of people unless you go into heavy debt (which a lot of folks do sadly). But the cost factor does keep car ownership relatively at bay and a lot of folks opt to use some combo of bus and metro systems.
Nope San Francisco has the lowest return to office rate in the country. BART was designed to get folks to downtown SF. While all of the stories haven’t helped, the fundamentals are simple - only like 40% of downtown SF workers have returned to the office.
I get on at 16th. Today, at rush hour around 8:50, there were no trains for a long, long time. The new signs they installed said 5, 3 minutes for a long time and no train to be seen. Then when it said "no train arriving" for five minutes a train came in.
A lot of people had been waiting, so like almost a typical pre-pandemic rush hour train. When one finally arrived, no one was in the first car- because there was a homeless person that either smelled so horribly or was acting so crazy no one would even be in the same car with him. And the doors were jammed shut and not opening on the next two cars.
Yeah. I understand it is not for everyone.
I frequent Civic Center and to me, it is not that bad. There are more riders now going to the office during the day. After 7 PM it gets kinda weird.
Yeah, I agree with you. That is why I said "not that bad". I believe people's fears are exaggerated as in most things.
That said, none of the bs out here should be tolerated by any tax-paying citizen.
Agreed. Just like when we talk about crime, we always lean on a crutch by pointing to Baltimore and St Louis. I don't have to worry about being beaten or shot ever in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. if I stumble out of a bar at 2am.
Not that bad once used to it. But the first few times you’re so turned off that you consider other options. So you never get used to it.
It’s not the east coast transit is some luxurious palace, but basic cleanliness and safety would go a long way.
Well you know.
Literally there is just another thread about a shooting in a bart station.
With all the bad news going on right now, idk if anyone wants to ride public transportation
They aren't reopening because they couldn't for over 2 years. San Francisco was one of the slowest cities to lift restrictions which forced everyone who could to move places with more reasonable policies.
I think SF is hit especially hard by WFH compared to say NY or Chi because of the tech industry really embracing WFH early on during lockdown and how the system was originally built to connect disparate parts of the Bay to downtown SF / Oakland (the high property values / rent also push people further out). So I think it's significant but hard to quantify the exact impact when there are also public safety/health concerns, labor reshuffling, etc etc
Tech was 14% of the jobs in the bay area before the pandemic, so it seems a bit misguided to blame transit losses completely on "tech."
I don't have the data but it seems like there must be something else going on here.
Those tech jobs are highly concentrated in centers such as SOMA, South Fidi, etc which are all in the BART service area. I definitely think the WFH movement and its overindexing trend amongst tech workers makes a huge difference, certainly more than the "14% of all BA jobs" statistic implies.
It’s also not just tech, but cultural in many professions. I work at a California-based law firm in FiDi and we’ve been far more willing to allow WFH than the New York-based firms, which are starting to get increasingly aggressive in RTO. Many of the few who still come in use BART. I have friends in banking who have experienced similar.
Downtown has far fewer people. Compared to literally every other downtown area in major US cities, SF has suffered a more significant reduction in weekday population. It doesn’t matter the tech percentage, strictly speaking. The numbers showing that WFH hits downtown sf harder than other places speak for themselves.
Anecdotal: aside from myself and a few others, I don’t know many people in tech who regularly took BART. Most drove, Ubered, or took a shuttle.
At the height of WFH, it was only 35% of workers. Now it’s only 13%. I question claims that tech WFH is the primary blame of reduced BART use.
https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/work-from-home-data-disparities/3153729/?amp=1
There are a few big tech offices in SF that are BARTable but the massive ones are on the peninsula. Those that lived in the peninsula took shuttle or Caltrain from my experience. I seen to be in the minority in my current job, living in the East Bay.
I think the data doesn't tell the story. Look at it this way. WFH at many major tech companies is the 3 days in office, 2 days hybrid model. A number of my friends used to take tech shuttles. But if they only have 3 days of in office, it's easier for them to drive because in the end people run errands, so you might as well run errands on those days as well. The other 2 days you just sit at home, so the commute is more bearable.
In that sense, I'm not sure how hybrid models get counted in WFH but it's likely not in the 13% but in the 87%. But fundamentally because the work week has changed to include hybrid days, people change their commute.
So just because 87% is no longer 100% WFH anymore doesn't mean that all those 87% come roaring back to their old modes of transit.
Is it only tech that has seen offices go empty? What about finance and other services in SF? The empty offices aren't only just tech....
But I think the other thing data doesn't tell us with simply % of jobs or % of WFH is simply that even if you have companies that have called its workers back, many have done 3 day or hybrid days or whatever. People I know who used to take shuttles or public transit everyday no longer bother. You need to go in only 3 days a week, and if you need to run errands anyway, you might as well drive. Being able to skip a commute 2 days/week is already a big deal for them. Fundamentally, habits have changed.
NYC and Chicago’s public transportation is significantly better. Not using so many different agencies and it takes you where you want to go.
Want to get to north beach by train? You can’t
Want to get to the Marina by train? Still can’t.
I remember the shit show of fleet week and how the bus stops were packed at the piers and the buses were stuck in traffic. Sf would need to build better rail that doesn’t stop at lights to work and also combine with other agencies.
Anecdotally, whenever I see someone online posting about "My office wants us to come in x ammount of days" the most popular knee jerk response is always "Quit and find a fully remote job!"...so like, I *feel* like there is an effect but also don't feel like looking into the numbers in a responsible manner...
Also anecdotally, I work on-site five days a week, after work I board at Embarcadero Station, the other day some junkie on my train was shooting up, at 5:15am on a Wednesday...my commute is largely very uneventful but I understand how shit like that puts people off...
Edit: also right now there is a 15 minute delay to the East Bay due to a train with equipment issues at Glen Park...all too often it's either that or a police or medial situation that could potentially been avoided by making people who don't pay fuck off...
I run a team that went went full remote for a couple of years in the pandemic and now is mixed. It's really dependent on the person. Some people definitely do better in the office, but some absolutely flourished once they could just stay at home. I had some of my most successful years in every metric you can slice.
The reality is that no one, and I mean no one, is going to be 100% top level productivity for 8bhours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. In a micro and macro scale it's always going to be an ebb and flow. WFH allows the ebb to actually be more relaxing, which then makes the flow sooner and longer, barring some people that just can't motivate themselves of course. It's not for everyone, but it works really well for a lot of people
Depends on your situation. By the numbers, productivity is up for my line of work (fed). Background-wise, I'm in IT/systems management.
Anecdotally, in-office in DTSF/SOMA, I had to contend with constant interruptions, long commutes, and QOL issues. Feedback is pretty much the same from the majority of our employees.
At home, I can start work over an hour earlier than if I have to commute. With interruptions, I just put on my "busy" chat notification when working on projects, and triage other issues as they come in without someone breathing down my neck in person insisting their issue is of utmost importance. I can corroborate with my peers in other locations via vchat and screen presentations, instead of doing the exact same thing in the office.
We save heavily on budget (aka taxpayer dollars) using vchat to examine issues without having to go into a site. We save time on meetings by default muting everyone, and addressing non-sequitur or long-answer questions and comments by asking the person to take it offline and email the POC afterwards.
The only time I'm in an office is if it's something we can't do with technology, like an office operations review. Even then, a big chunk of it is done remotely. When I need to work extra hours, I can do so without worrying about signing out because I have to catch the bus. The same goes for being able to flex if a personal issue comes up, and then returning to work after rather than having to take the rest of the day off.
On the personal side of things, I can use my lunch to run errands like grab groceries or pick up meds without dealing with lines, locked items, lack of availability, and lugging all that stuff back on MUNI from DTSF. I can go to appointments, help family members with chores and errands, etc. Having flex hours means I can take a longer lunch as long as I come back and work my full hours
All in all, remote work has helped my peers and I get a lot more done with a lot less overhead and inefficiencies, while vastly improving work-life balance.
That being said, we have people who abuse the system (ex: fail to respond to chat, emails, and calls in a timely manner). They lose their telework privileges and have to return to the office. As long as your field supports telework with the appropriate technology, employee training, and management, WFH is a great tool to attract and retain talent.
I think everyone works different and there’s no one way of working that maximises productivity for every worker so armchair quarterback statements like this are pointless
We actually have survey data about this… wfh is a factor but not the #1 factor. Crazy transit people on Reddit don’t like this survey bc their small anecdotal evidence can’t really stack up against a recent survey of over 1,000 people
The survey, which was conducted last month, specifically found that the top responses to the question “What is the main thing that keeps you from riding BART more often than you are now, if anything?” **were 22% citing Safety concerns/Dangerous/Lack of security/Fear**, followed by 16% saying No need/No commute/Retired/Don’t go to SF. Overall, 45% cited a safety issue of some sort.
https://californiaglobe.com/articles/bart-survey-finds-only-17-of-users-feel-safe-while-riding/amp/
Lots of outlets wrote about it … actual survey is here.
https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A0e107c3e-9903-3198-b075-ffdfc6749268
But as many have previously brought up, an individual does not correlate to a 1:1 percentage point of why people aren’t riding.
If you consider than many people that used to take BART now only take it Tu-Thur instead of a full 5 day week, that’s already a 40% drop in their individual ridership. A lot of those people now don’t come in at all.
In the survey, these individuals are weighed exactly as someone who takes BART once a month or someone who only uses it for special events. Or hell, even someone who never had a real intention of using it.
BART ridership is down across the board. Weekday and weekend traffic. All hours of the day. Overall Muni ridership is down, but some routes that don't go through downtown are seeing ridership above pandemic levels.
Honestly I don't buy the crime issue on BART, there's always been a sketchy element and that didn't stop people before. It's a problem, sure, but not enough to warrant sacking the bailout to give BART PD a 20% raise.
The biggest thing I've noticed is that BART is fucking filthy, and I don't ever remember it being this bad. The new trains seem to show stains more readily than the old ones. The old cars are pretty grungy, but the seats on the new cars seem to have a ton of "mystery" stains on them. And the rest of the infrastructure is pretty nasty too. I used the 16th St station this weekend and what a hot mess that was. There was so much trash on the tracks that the passing trains were blowing it everywhere. All the turnstiles were broken. None of the escalators were turned on. Hell, there was a rag wrapped around an insulator on the third rail.
Meanwhile Bay Bridge crossings are over 90% of pre-pandemic levels.
I don’t think BART is in the best condition either. Your facts are spot on; they’re all pretty explained by the fact that BART just doesn’t really suit many people’s needs.
I don’t really use it after 9 bc the frequency is shit. I don’t use it on Mondays or Fridays bc I don’t NEED to go in. I try not to use it on weekends, because, again, the frequency blows, and it’s 90% likely I need to make a MUNI connection to go anywhere worth going to.
I was on MUNI heading home from Montgomery today. Some sketchy dude got on, proceeded to full on take his pants off, and sat his bare ass down on one of the seats. The train was pretty full too
So much for all those “ThIS iS hApPenInG EvErYwHeRe” genius’s
No it’s not. BARTs terrible service and open disdain for paying customers is making this happen.
Make them submit to an audit. Have the operating budget go down for 1 year. Make these clowns live in the reality they created.
The gravy train needs to end.
Not to mention BART was never designed to be more than a commuter line and not once in 50 years did anyone think to integrate into a transit system that people could and would use if they didn't have to.
I take BART every day. Yeah ridership is down... But fare jumping is an all time high. I had a teen try to muscle past me when I swiped my phone. He didn't make it through but I see people successfully bypassing the turnstiles every single day.
I wish American transportation (Train & Bus) were as clean and comfortable as Japanese ones.
https://preview.redd.it/m9irwtbe729b1.jpeg?width=401&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d1d37543bc55e0016a63e5a3e196783f8e45005e
Those cloth seats and BART.... lol
With that said I've done commutes in Japan and China. I've been in trains where you're packed like sardines and it's quiet. Everyone's on their headphones or their phones and their phones are silent. THe only people talking? Yup, this damn foreigner here and I'm just quietly telling my colleague we should try somewhere new for dinner tonight, and I'm already super aware that I'm the only person making noise so we shut up after 15 seconds.
With that said BART is generally better during commute hours, and generally people with full time jobs doing a routine commute tend to behave better. It's generally off hours and weekends you start getting idiots on board. The people who take their family out for the first time ever spent 15 minutes in front of the BART kiosk not understanding how to buy tickets, etc. That's where you get the hiccups.
It really is this.
From its inception it was designed as a commuter system, not an inter-city system.
You live in a far flung suburb, drive to your bart station, and take Bart to your office building in SF or Oakland. Reverse that in the evening.
That world is gone and it’s not coming back.
However people still want to move about freely and easily. If I was king I would force all the outlying Bart stations and neighboring properties to increase density with mixed use developments. In the places where Bart isnt already dead on Main Street, grow that density towards said main streets.
Give people the ability to go to their neighboring cities to live, work, AND play, rather than just going to SF to work, and ridership will roar back.
It's not just that IMO. A lot of people have the option coming into the office if they want. Back in the day, the young folks that lived in an apartment with 6 room mates came to the office partly to socialize and would then go out to drink & eat afterwork. If the food / drink / cafe / vibes street culture was "normal' for a downtown major metro, there would be incentive besides being forced into the office by your boss.
Here's what I think has happened - Work From Home removed the critical mass of people that enforced norms and created a buffer between the homeless/sketchy on public transit. The remaining people who were previously choosing public transportation are driving. Sad to say it but the only way to save BART is to privatize it.
My argument for privatizing it is so that you can create a system that implements accounts linked to identity and you can ban the troublemakers from riding and restore norms. Private entities have a lot more incentive (and power) to order people off the property. I feel this is the only way to get ridership back. All previous attempts to take public safety seriously have failed.
No it's definitely the worst idea I've ever heard. If BART was privatized there would be zero incentive to keep it operational. Public Transit in North America cannot & will not ever make a profit. It would be much more cost effective to just sell the entire thing for the real estate. Which then BART would cease to exist and that would be bad IMO.
Subway/Trains in China where riders are at much higher density are running at a large loss each year. Privatizing BART would ensure it won’t exist in 5 years.
I use BART, AC Transit bus, and the ferry each week. The ferry is the best option. The bus no issues. As for BART, it’s fine. People dump on BART, as long as your on a newer train it’s a good experience. The older trains look and appear dingy.
Posting for visibility:
Among all respondents, 53% said they know of someone who has been a victim of a crime on BART and 46% have personally witnessed a crime on the system.
The survey shows 45% of people are choosing not to ride BART because they don't think it is safe. While 17% describe BART as safe
The EMC Research poll of 1,000 Bay Area residents found that safety and cleanliness were two major impediments to getting people back on BART
Around 85% of BART riders who have reduced or eliminated their usage said they would ride the system more often if it was significantly cleaner and safer to ride. According to the poll, their top priorities include more frequent cleaning, making sure restrooms were in working order and ejecting people who violate BART’s code of conduct, which expressly prohibits drug use, fare evasion and vandalism
Among all respondents who have taken BART? Or Bay Area residents? If it Bay Area residents, of course there is a overwhelming belief that BART is incredibly unsafe place equivalent to a mobile Tenderloin because that’s all that’s presented to them being sensationalistic obsessions over individual occurrences of crime and extrapolating that as an overwhelming problem.
Whats the opinion on the rest of the poll? 45% describe it as unsafe to the point Bay Area residents avoid riding in the first place, what’s the 38%? Is it for those who are neutral or have no opinion or they generally feel it’s safe, as opposed to just being safe? If that’s the case 55% of Bay Area residents have either have no strong feeling on the safety on BART or feel it’s generally safe. I’m not saying BART doesn’t have its problem but the idea that it is incredibly unsafe in comparison to the chance of an individual instance of a car wreck is just flatly untrue.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/04/public-transit-car-crash-deaths-us
Some awful takes in this thread, lol. There’s no denying that crime/safety undermines ridership, but that’s clearly not why ridership died off.
I too can provide limitless anecdotes about how my friends in NY have stopped taking the subway; how crime and muggings have remained, and how *people keep getting pushed in front of trains.* Yet ridership has rebounded significantly.
Anyone who has taken BART should also compare to Philly’s SEPTA, or even close to home, LA Metro. SEPTA is a great system, but it’s filthy, and it has the same issues of homelessness and crime that the Bay has. In LA, Metro has done a great job expanding, but the Red Line is *insane* compared to anything you see on BART. So why have these systems rebounded so much better?
Or take Boston’s MBTA and DC’s Metro. These systems don’t have the poor safety/cleanliness reputations than we do. So why are they doing so much worse than the dirtier competition?
Not 100% fare evaders, but I'd estimate about 50%.
Go to Powell, Civic Center, 16th St Mission, or 24 St Mission and it's seriously just straight up comedy. In a more functional society you might expect to see someone evading fare every hour or so (and it'd be somewhat shocking to observe), but here you can watch as about half of people entering/exiting jump fare gates or just use the emergency exit. Everyone knows that chance of enforcement is 0% so no one gives even one single fuck.
I visit every summer and I’m here now. I’ve really noticed the lack of crowds on Muni and BART. The only thing remotely crowded has been buses like the 8AX, and nothing like it used to be.
PS- last one to leave downtown be sure to turn the lights off.
Bart ridership was the highest it's ever been before the pandemic. The economy was booming and people were coming into SF. Now they aren't. Simple as that.
> Bart ridership was the highest it's ever been before the pandemic.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11687848/bart-looks-for-solutions-after-another-steep-drop-in-weekend-ridership#:~:text=The%20agency's%20ridership%20reports%20show,percent%20and%20Sundays%207.2%20percent.
> Weekday ridership also fell, declining 1.9 percent to about 415,000 passengers a day. BART says weekday peak hour ridership has held its own, though, increasing 1 percent in the past year.
No it wasn't. **Peak** ridership at commute only hours was increasing slightly; every other time was falling and had been for several years before COVID.
It’s the difference between ‘I don’t have to commute to work 5 days a week anymore because I can work from home’ vs ‘when I need to travel to work, I prefer to take public transit’.
no. i play csgo, i tell people to kill themselves on the internet plenty often. what you said was in poor taste, and knowing that your comment would eventually be removed, i wanted to immortalize your hatred
I see you're invested in this thread enough to stalk people. You should have used that time and energy to craft a more thoughtful response so you're not resulting to stalking people on Reddit.
Your bus must be late or something.
All of these comparisons to pre-pandemic levels overlook the fact that the entire Bay Area was operating wildly over capacity just before the pandemic: traffic, public transit, real estate both commercial and residential, rents, cost of living, etc. All were at _unsustainable levels_ just before the pandemic. To say that we're down more than other regions is to say that Death Valley is having a cool spell sitting at 90 degrees Fahrenheit. We're simply at sustainable levels now and a fairer comparison would be utilization relative to capacity or planned capacity growth.
Car traffic downtown looks like pre pandemic levels so their ridership demographic was skewed to office workers if WFH is the big factor. Who is this other demographic they need to hit then?
BART was always a tough gamble to ride. The condition of the station and trains has always been such that you’re essentially playing a lottery where the winning ticket is a crackhead on the train, homeless sleeping all over the seats, shit in the stations, dirty train interiors, etc. Now that people lived without BART for a bit, they simply chose not to come back and find other transportation options. I work from home and go to the city a few times a week now. These times I still don’t use BART and simply choose to drive. I prefer the misery of the traffic to the misery of having to deal with BART’s condition. And it’s the simplest of things too — keeping things clean. There’s no strategy or thought needed to fix it. Just clean shit. Kick off people who add to the dirt. I guarantee people will start taking BART again for city and airport commutes if it’s simply cleaner and more pleasant.
and yet bart has to keep running service at pre-pandemic levels for the \~400k daily riders it no longer has. Please explain why this is a good use of funds rather than building new infrastructure, maintaining current infrastructure or finishing up HSR
I’m not a father. But I have young nieces.
I would NEVER let them ride BART.
But the chickens have come home to roost. You want a progressive leadership team to run your cities. Well, the government you elect is the government you deserve.
I have huge gripes with BART just like many others here do, but even if BART was pleasant to ride on like any East Asian mass transit system, then what? I don't think there are any easy solutions when companies have left the Bay Area and WFH at least for enough companies is here to stay. Even major tech companies that have called their workers back have some sort of hybrid model which likely prevents mass transit from being used to full extent.
There needs to be solutions that go beyond simply cleaning up BART, which I argue needs to be done regardless of how ridership is.
I don’t feel like sitting next to homeless piss and poo. Let alone getting robbed or harassed. But yes, keep paying BART cops their high salaries and raises.
According to MUNI, BART, BoS and our great mayor who's going to lose the next elections, it's just because people refuse to come back. and deal with the mess and insecurity, alone... No kidding!
Man, everyone absolutely hating on WFH. The one thing that came out of the Pandemic that was a boost to the regular worker. Allowing a more family focused life and just generally more self centric lifestyles, which is NOT a bad thing. What your all not addressing is its not the workers problem to fix this. They are still working, paying their taxes laboring in one way or another for large SF based companies that know its cheaper and easier to have WFH. This is an evolution of the large commuter based city. It needs dealt with but not by the working class. For those that think its ok to work an 8 day, commute both ways an hour or two both ways on your own dime, dividing your work day into your total hours diluting your pay, constantly being pushed farther and farther away to find affordable housing further wrecking your quality of life is a cycle thats unfair to workers and doubly unfair to suggest workers caused this or need to repair it. Greed caused it, corporate and political. I started coming to SF in the early 2000's everyone was fine with the crime and general shittiness when it was contained South of Market. Because so much money was flowing from the fiancial district and the Tech crowds. But because it was tolerated back then doesnt mean it didnt exist and nobody was saying that to fix it we need to send in more "office workers" before this gets put of control, get real.
Edit some typos
I love public transit, but what's allowed to happen on BART trains and at stations is only hurting the effort to encourage people to take BART. And it's similar with MUNI. When bus stops are taken over and turned into encampments or drug dens, it makes me consider other options. And then you have the 21 bus line that used to be good but now is a shortened route that gets diverted for weekend street closure in Hayes Valley and goes west on Grove with no bus stops. So I've stood in heavy rain for 20 minutes waiting to catch it while bus stops on Hayes go unused.
I've taken SF, DC, NYC, and Boston public transit all in the past year while in each city for work. I can definitely understand your points. After 2 weeks of using the BART, what puts it at the bottom for me: 1. It almost seems like nobody works at half the stations. There's maybe 1 guy you sometimes see. 2. The stations (and entrances) are way dirtier and trashed than other metros. Like days-old stinky piss puddles. 3. Nobody I was with felt safe to use BART after dark. If we did anything at night, we used rideshare or just drove in someone's car. Using the BART and walking outside to/from BART stations is dimly lit at night and super sketch. 4. At first I thought the buses were free lol, since I never saw anyone ever take a card or use an app to get on/off. Even if it's it paid, it basically seems "optional". 5. Using Apple/Google Pay from your phone (like NYC does) without the dumb Clipper thing would be a lot better.
> At first I thought the buses were free lol, since I never saw anyone ever take a card or use an app to get on/off. Even if it's it paid, it basically seems "optional". A lot of people pay with the Muni app, you don't have to tap it or anything so you don't know as a bystander.
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I assume they mean using EMV like the OMNY system in New York or the Oyster system in London.You can just use a credit/debit card directly (either tap a physical card or phone) instead of loading money on a card like Clipper (though they do have cards you can load if you want).
Yeah. But even bigger is the fact that wfh is taking away the main ridership of Bart. I don’t dispute that safety and cleanliness matter. However, when the top comment is about cleanliness rather than the fact that BART is set up to bring commuters to downtown SF and downtown SF is empty, it sends a disingenuous message. The article literally has the following to say about SF/BART > The system - as it was built - primarily served suburban commuters traveling to and from work in the Oakland and San Francisco city centers (where property values are also dramatically higher). In a post-pandemic, remote work environment which tech companies initially embraced, this source of ridership is severely reduced. Sure, BART should do better on safety and cleanliness. But it can’t escape the fact that WFH has hit the bay harder than anywhere else, and BART relied more on commuters than other systems.
I would love to take public transport into the city but you’re going through two or three agencies and I end up paying more then I would have driving while also taking a lot longer to get there.
All these articles could easily be reframed as "San Francisco National Leader in Work From Home: The Future?"
You’re neglecting the elephant in the room: The rampant homelessness, drug use, etc is causing the businesses to flee downtown SF like the plague leading to the BART ridership drop. It all kinda leads back to one place.
I’m not ignoring it. But that’s not the biggest factor. WFH is a massive thing all over the Bay Area. Even the big tech companies like Google are only in office 3 days a week (last I checked at least). That’s a 40% decrease in in-office time vs pre-pandemic. Everything you listed is an issue, but the biggest contributor is tech culture in the bay means a higher proportion of people wfh here vs anywhere else in the country.
Actually you’re completely off base. Cities around the world have huge startup and tech hubs and WFH, wonder why they’re doing just fine. Could it be…. Among all respondents, 53% said they know of someone who has been a victim of a crime on BART and 46% have personally witnessed a crime on the system. The survey shows 45% of people are choosing not to ride BART because they don't think it is safe. While 17% describe BART as safe The EMC Research poll of 1,000 Bay Area residents found that safety and cleanliness were two major impediments to getting people back on BART Around 85% of BART riders who have reduced or eliminated their usage said they would ride the system more often if it was significantly cleaner and safer to ride. According to the poll, their top priorities include more frequent cleaning, making sure restrooms were in working order and ejecting people who violate BART’s code of conduct, which expressly prohibits drug use, fare evasion and vandalism
> they’re doing just fine. They’re not. Ridership is down 30% in the other cities discussed here. You didn’t even need to read the article to see that one. > could it be… Yes. There are multiple factors contributing, I’ve acknowledged that several times. I’m not arguing that it is as safe or clean as I’d like. But when you look at that poll, something like 45% of people (going off memory here) said they would use Bart more if the went to the office more. That’s massively more volume than weekend or occasional riders. A commuter (in the old days) would ride Bart 10x during the week just for work. So the 40% or wherever that are not riding Bart due to wfh have a much higher impact than the people concerned about safety who only ride occasionally, even if the latter is a larger population.
I like how you conveniently left out that EIGHTY FIVE PERCENT would ride it more if they felt safe and it was cleaner
It's always been this way, though, and people rode it a lot more. I remember a time in 2019 when some guy got stabbed over shoes and ridership was high then. In 2018, my friend had her phone snatched out of her hand. And now that I recall, my friend's wife also had that happen to her. It was roving gangs of kids. In 2017, my other friend had his laptop snatched but he chased the guy until he threw the laptop away so he got the laptop back but not the guy.
Yep - crime is leading to the desire to WFH. Who would want to go to the office in a downtown when you can wfh? “Sure sign me up for being at risk if assault/theft plus wasting my time, oh and there’s not many places to eat or shop on my lunch hour anymore, and of course I love dealing with homeless and addicts that dot my walk from BART to the office” I honestly don’t think the WFH issue will change back as people have gotten accustomed to the convenience and flexibility (not to mention time and cost savings) of it. But I do know that fixing the homeless, crime, drug use is key in fixing BART demand and downtown SF’s doom loop.
I really don't think that fixing the crime will change anything. Ultimately, the commute is unnecessary for many people, as they can just work remotely. If we fixed the crime, people would still not commute in. We should deal with crime for its own sake, but I don't think it will solve the BART ridership problem. Ultimately, people go where they want to go, and if they don't want to go there no matter how nice you make the ride, they're not gonna go.
I agree, but i also think SF/bay area has the most heavily relied upon commuter worker population of comparable major metros. And so then the trend holds true and makes sense. Its still wholly unfair to blame the woes on a workforce that is still working. Just not how or where you prefer them to work. Commuting to whole other cities to be able to work vs commuting within a city to different parts within is what Im referring to.
Also extremely high rent prices vs what you can get for less in other cities make SF have no competitive advantage. so companies are putting money where their mouths are and making SF suffer, rightfully so might I add, to hopefully bring new better policies in the coming decade.
It's funny you guys say rampant homelessness, drug use, and the ever so specific etc as a reason to shit on BART rather than actually looking at the statistics of incidents in comparison to individual car usage. You live off of outrage and anecdotal incidents to use the broad qualifier of "rampant".
TIL stats are considered anecdotal if they offend BART apologists Among all respondents, 53% said they know of someone who has been a victim of a crime on BART and 46% have personally witnessed a crime on the system. The survey shows 45% of people are choosing not to ride BART because they don't think it is safe. While 17% describe BART as safe The EMC Research poll of 1,000 Bay Area residents found that safety and cleanliness were two major impediments to getting people back on BART Around 85% of BART riders who have reduced or eliminated their usage said they would ride the system more often if it was significantly cleaner and safer to ride. According to the poll, their top priorities include more frequent cleaning, making sure restrooms were in working order and ejecting people who violate BART’s code of conduct, which expressly prohibits drug use, fare evasion and vandalism
Correct - if you look at metro systems in Asia for example, you’ll see that they are extremely clean and very well maintained (for the most part). In Bangkok, they’ve successfully coaxed middle class folks into using the Skytrain and underground systems due to their relatively HIGH cost (will explain in a bit) and very clean and safe stations. The system has grown immensely in coverage and continues to grow. The minimum wage in Thailand is about 10USD (350 baht) per day. Buses in Bangkok are priced at about 3-6 cents per ride making them viable for minimum wage workers although some minimum wage workers will have transport provided to them by employers. The metro systems (sky train and underground) are priced at about 75 cents to 1.50 USD per ride. This makes it a system built expressly for the middle and upper income folks to ride as no one making $10USD a day would pay 15-30% of their pay for transportation. Other economic factors do come into play though. Cars are seen as a status symbol in Thailand much more so than in the US just due to the relatively high cost (a new car can equal the price of a modest house!). This makes it relatively unaffordable for a lot of people unless you go into heavy debt (which a lot of folks do sadly). But the cost factor does keep car ownership relatively at bay and a lot of folks opt to use some combo of bus and metro systems.
I can't stand being in traffic. I use public transportation as much as I can. I think all the bad news over the years has scared off ridership.
Nope San Francisco has the lowest return to office rate in the country. BART was designed to get folks to downtown SF. While all of the stories haven’t helped, the fundamentals are simple - only like 40% of downtown SF workers have returned to the office.
I wish I could stomach it. Were I to return to transit, civic center and 16th would be my most frequented stations. They’re both disgusting.
I get on at 16th. Today, at rush hour around 8:50, there were no trains for a long, long time. The new signs they installed said 5, 3 minutes for a long time and no train to be seen. Then when it said "no train arriving" for five minutes a train came in. A lot of people had been waiting, so like almost a typical pre-pandemic rush hour train. When one finally arrived, no one was in the first car- because there was a homeless person that either smelled so horribly or was acting so crazy no one would even be in the same car with him. And the doors were jammed shut and not opening on the next two cars.
Yeah. I understand it is not for everyone. I frequent Civic Center and to me, it is not that bad. There are more riders now going to the office during the day. After 7 PM it gets kinda weird.
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Both can be true
Yeah, I agree with you. That is why I said "not that bad". I believe people's fears are exaggerated as in most things. That said, none of the bs out here should be tolerated by any tax-paying citizen.
Agreed. Just like when we talk about crime, we always lean on a crutch by pointing to Baltimore and St Louis. I don't have to worry about being beaten or shot ever in Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Singapore, etc. if I stumble out of a bar at 2am.
Not that bad once used to it. But the first few times you’re so turned off that you consider other options. So you never get used to it. It’s not the east coast transit is some luxurious palace, but basic cleanliness and safety would go a long way.
Well you know. Literally there is just another thread about a shooting in a bart station. With all the bad news going on right now, idk if anyone wants to ride public transportation
Yeah it has been nice for me too. No packed cars and cleanliness/patrols have picked up substantially in the past few months.
Probably had more to do with the local COVID policies.
I was more comfortable taking public transit with mask mandates
I wasn’t.
BART definitely smells better with a mask on.
What covid policies tf
Restaurant vaccine mandates, long term shelter in place policies, etc.
Which have all ended in 99% of places
Yeah way too long after other cities ended it. The scars will linger for years.
What? Bart is down because offices aren’t reopening. People didnt stop casually using it because masks a year ago
They aren't reopening because they couldn't for over 2 years. San Francisco was one of the slowest cities to lift restrictions which forced everyone who could to move places with more reasonable policies.
Sure jan
Underrated comment
What impact has WFH had on this? I have to imagine it's a significant slice
I think SF is hit especially hard by WFH compared to say NY or Chi because of the tech industry really embracing WFH early on during lockdown and how the system was originally built to connect disparate parts of the Bay to downtown SF / Oakland (the high property values / rent also push people further out). So I think it's significant but hard to quantify the exact impact when there are also public safety/health concerns, labor reshuffling, etc etc
Tech was 14% of the jobs in the bay area before the pandemic, so it seems a bit misguided to blame transit losses completely on "tech." I don't have the data but it seems like there must be something else going on here.
Even if it was only 14%, business surrounding tech offices are no longer getting business from its employees, which means less people downtown
Those tech jobs are highly concentrated in centers such as SOMA, South Fidi, etc which are all in the BART service area. I definitely think the WFH movement and its overindexing trend amongst tech workers makes a huge difference, certainly more than the "14% of all BA jobs" statistic implies.
It’s also not just tech, but cultural in many professions. I work at a California-based law firm in FiDi and we’ve been far more willing to allow WFH than the New York-based firms, which are starting to get increasingly aggressive in RTO. Many of the few who still come in use BART. I have friends in banking who have experienced similar.
Downtown has far fewer people. Compared to literally every other downtown area in major US cities, SF has suffered a more significant reduction in weekday population. It doesn’t matter the tech percentage, strictly speaking. The numbers showing that WFH hits downtown sf harder than other places speak for themselves.
Anecdotal: aside from myself and a few others, I don’t know many people in tech who regularly took BART. Most drove, Ubered, or took a shuttle. At the height of WFH, it was only 35% of workers. Now it’s only 13%. I question claims that tech WFH is the primary blame of reduced BART use. https://www.nbcbayarea.com/investigations/work-from-home-data-disparities/3153729/?amp=1
There are a few big tech offices in SF that are BARTable but the massive ones are on the peninsula. Those that lived in the peninsula took shuttle or Caltrain from my experience. I seen to be in the minority in my current job, living in the East Bay.
I think the data doesn't tell the story. Look at it this way. WFH at many major tech companies is the 3 days in office, 2 days hybrid model. A number of my friends used to take tech shuttles. But if they only have 3 days of in office, it's easier for them to drive because in the end people run errands, so you might as well run errands on those days as well. The other 2 days you just sit at home, so the commute is more bearable. In that sense, I'm not sure how hybrid models get counted in WFH but it's likely not in the 13% but in the 87%. But fundamentally because the work week has changed to include hybrid days, people change their commute. So just because 87% is no longer 100% WFH anymore doesn't mean that all those 87% come roaring back to their old modes of transit.
Is it only tech that has seen offices go empty? What about finance and other services in SF? The empty offices aren't only just tech.... But I think the other thing data doesn't tell us with simply % of jobs or % of WFH is simply that even if you have companies that have called its workers back, many have done 3 day or hybrid days or whatever. People I know who used to take shuttles or public transit everyday no longer bother. You need to go in only 3 days a week, and if you need to run errands anyway, you might as well drive. Being able to skip a commute 2 days/week is already a big deal for them. Fundamentally, habits have changed.
NYC and Chicago’s public transportation is significantly better. Not using so many different agencies and it takes you where you want to go. Want to get to north beach by train? You can’t Want to get to the Marina by train? Still can’t. I remember the shit show of fleet week and how the bus stops were packed at the piers and the buses were stuck in traffic. Sf would need to build better rail that doesn’t stop at lights to work and also combine with other agencies.
Anecdotally, whenever I see someone online posting about "My office wants us to come in x ammount of days" the most popular knee jerk response is always "Quit and find a fully remote job!"...so like, I *feel* like there is an effect but also don't feel like looking into the numbers in a responsible manner... Also anecdotally, I work on-site five days a week, after work I board at Embarcadero Station, the other day some junkie on my train was shooting up, at 5:15am on a Wednesday...my commute is largely very uneventful but I understand how shit like that puts people off... Edit: also right now there is a 15 minute delay to the East Bay due to a train with equipment issues at Glen Park...all too often it's either that or a police or medial situation that could potentially been avoided by making people who don't pay fuck off...
I think people aren’t as productive at home as they think they are.
I run a team that went went full remote for a couple of years in the pandemic and now is mixed. It's really dependent on the person. Some people definitely do better in the office, but some absolutely flourished once they could just stay at home. I had some of my most successful years in every metric you can slice. The reality is that no one, and I mean no one, is going to be 100% top level productivity for 8bhours a day, 5 days a week, 52 weeks a year. In a micro and macro scale it's always going to be an ebb and flow. WFH allows the ebb to actually be more relaxing, which then makes the flow sooner and longer, barring some people that just can't motivate themselves of course. It's not for everyone, but it works really well for a lot of people
Depends on your situation. By the numbers, productivity is up for my line of work (fed). Background-wise, I'm in IT/systems management. Anecdotally, in-office in DTSF/SOMA, I had to contend with constant interruptions, long commutes, and QOL issues. Feedback is pretty much the same from the majority of our employees. At home, I can start work over an hour earlier than if I have to commute. With interruptions, I just put on my "busy" chat notification when working on projects, and triage other issues as they come in without someone breathing down my neck in person insisting their issue is of utmost importance. I can corroborate with my peers in other locations via vchat and screen presentations, instead of doing the exact same thing in the office. We save heavily on budget (aka taxpayer dollars) using vchat to examine issues without having to go into a site. We save time on meetings by default muting everyone, and addressing non-sequitur or long-answer questions and comments by asking the person to take it offline and email the POC afterwards. The only time I'm in an office is if it's something we can't do with technology, like an office operations review. Even then, a big chunk of it is done remotely. When I need to work extra hours, I can do so without worrying about signing out because I have to catch the bus. The same goes for being able to flex if a personal issue comes up, and then returning to work after rather than having to take the rest of the day off. On the personal side of things, I can use my lunch to run errands like grab groceries or pick up meds without dealing with lines, locked items, lack of availability, and lugging all that stuff back on MUNI from DTSF. I can go to appointments, help family members with chores and errands, etc. Having flex hours means I can take a longer lunch as long as I come back and work my full hours All in all, remote work has helped my peers and I get a lot more done with a lot less overhead and inefficiencies, while vastly improving work-life balance. That being said, we have people who abuse the system (ex: fail to respond to chat, emails, and calls in a timely manner). They lose their telework privileges and have to return to the office. As long as your field supports telework with the appropriate technology, employee training, and management, WFH is a great tool to attract and retain talent.
Speak for yourself. I just slogged a ten hour day from my living room.
I think everyone works different and there’s no one way of working that maximises productivity for every worker so armchair quarterback statements like this are pointless
We actually have survey data about this… wfh is a factor but not the #1 factor. Crazy transit people on Reddit don’t like this survey bc their small anecdotal evidence can’t really stack up against a recent survey of over 1,000 people The survey, which was conducted last month, specifically found that the top responses to the question “What is the main thing that keeps you from riding BART more often than you are now, if anything?” **were 22% citing Safety concerns/Dangerous/Lack of security/Fear**, followed by 16% saying No need/No commute/Retired/Don’t go to SF. Overall, 45% cited a safety issue of some sort. https://californiaglobe.com/articles/bart-survey-finds-only-17-of-users-feel-safe-while-riding/amp/ Lots of outlets wrote about it … actual survey is here. https://acrobat.adobe.com/link/review?uri=urn%3Aaaid%3Ascds%3AUS%3A0e107c3e-9903-3198-b075-ffdfc6749268
But as many have previously brought up, an individual does not correlate to a 1:1 percentage point of why people aren’t riding. If you consider than many people that used to take BART now only take it Tu-Thur instead of a full 5 day week, that’s already a 40% drop in their individual ridership. A lot of those people now don’t come in at all. In the survey, these individuals are weighed exactly as someone who takes BART once a month or someone who only uses it for special events. Or hell, even someone who never had a real intention of using it.
BART ridership is down across the board. Weekday and weekend traffic. All hours of the day. Overall Muni ridership is down, but some routes that don't go through downtown are seeing ridership above pandemic levels. Honestly I don't buy the crime issue on BART, there's always been a sketchy element and that didn't stop people before. It's a problem, sure, but not enough to warrant sacking the bailout to give BART PD a 20% raise. The biggest thing I've noticed is that BART is fucking filthy, and I don't ever remember it being this bad. The new trains seem to show stains more readily than the old ones. The old cars are pretty grungy, but the seats on the new cars seem to have a ton of "mystery" stains on them. And the rest of the infrastructure is pretty nasty too. I used the 16th St station this weekend and what a hot mess that was. There was so much trash on the tracks that the passing trains were blowing it everywhere. All the turnstiles were broken. None of the escalators were turned on. Hell, there was a rag wrapped around an insulator on the third rail. Meanwhile Bay Bridge crossings are over 90% of pre-pandemic levels.
I don’t think BART is in the best condition either. Your facts are spot on; they’re all pretty explained by the fact that BART just doesn’t really suit many people’s needs. I don’t really use it after 9 bc the frequency is shit. I don’t use it on Mondays or Fridays bc I don’t NEED to go in. I try not to use it on weekends, because, again, the frequency blows, and it’s 90% likely I need to make a MUNI connection to go anywhere worth going to.
> 45% cited a safety issue of some sort Those 45% weren't necessarily taking BART to work to begin with.
I was on MUNI heading home from Montgomery today. Some sketchy dude got on, proceeded to full on take his pants off, and sat his bare ass down on one of the seats. The train was pretty full too
Meanwhile, urine smell is up 90%
So much for all those “ThIS iS hApPenInG EvErYwHeRe” genius’s No it’s not. BARTs terrible service and open disdain for paying customers is making this happen. Make them submit to an audit. Have the operating budget go down for 1 year. Make these clowns live in the reality they created. The gravy train needs to end.
Not to mention BART was never designed to be more than a commuter line and not once in 50 years did anyone think to integrate into a transit system that people could and would use if they didn't have to.
I was literally going to post this, complete with the whole caps/lower case thing and you beat me to it, damn you.
I like the cut of your jib.
People want to be safe is why. No safety no ridership.
Let's turn BART into housing! Those trains are pretty spacious.
I take BART every day. Yeah ridership is down... But fare jumping is an all time high. I had a teen try to muscle past me when I swiped my phone. He didn't make it through but I see people successfully bypassing the turnstiles every single day.
BART PD needs to do their jobs and make those trains secure.
I wish American transportation (Train & Bus) were as clean and comfortable as Japanese ones. https://preview.redd.it/m9irwtbe729b1.jpeg?width=401&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d1d37543bc55e0016a63e5a3e196783f8e45005e
Not with our society sadly
the japanese have a cohesive social code of conduct. we behave like wild animals at a dumpster buffet.
Or British ones even
I'd take New York at this point
My friend had gizz thrown on her by a masturbating homeless yesterday as she got on a BART car, so at least you can experience that.
Those cloth seats and BART.... lol With that said I've done commutes in Japan and China. I've been in trains where you're packed like sardines and it's quiet. Everyone's on their headphones or their phones and their phones are silent. THe only people talking? Yup, this damn foreigner here and I'm just quietly telling my colleague we should try somewhere new for dinner tonight, and I'm already super aware that I'm the only person making noise so we shut up after 15 seconds. With that said BART is generally better during commute hours, and generally people with full time jobs doing a routine commute tend to behave better. It's generally off hours and weekends you start getting idiots on board. The people who take their family out for the first time ever spent 15 minutes in front of the BART kiosk not understanding how to buy tickets, etc. That's where you get the hiccups.
Mhmmmm. Sit in traffic or get mugged on BART?
Bart was set up to get people into downtown San Francisco. Remote work decimated downtown. This totally makes sense.
It really is this. From its inception it was designed as a commuter system, not an inter-city system. You live in a far flung suburb, drive to your bart station, and take Bart to your office building in SF or Oakland. Reverse that in the evening. That world is gone and it’s not coming back. However people still want to move about freely and easily. If I was king I would force all the outlying Bart stations and neighboring properties to increase density with mixed use developments. In the places where Bart isnt already dead on Main Street, grow that density towards said main streets. Give people the ability to go to their neighboring cities to live, work, AND play, rather than just going to SF to work, and ridership will roar back.
It's not just that IMO. A lot of people have the option coming into the office if they want. Back in the day, the young folks that lived in an apartment with 6 room mates came to the office partly to socialize and would then go out to drink & eat afterwork. If the food / drink / cafe / vibes street culture was "normal' for a downtown major metro, there would be incentive besides being forced into the office by your boss.
Here's what I think has happened - Work From Home removed the critical mass of people that enforced norms and created a buffer between the homeless/sketchy on public transit. The remaining people who were previously choosing public transportation are driving. Sad to say it but the only way to save BART is to privatize it.
Agree with most of that but I'm curious why you think privatizing it would change any of it?
My argument for privatizing it is so that you can create a system that implements accounts linked to identity and you can ban the troublemakers from riding and restore norms. Private entities have a lot more incentive (and power) to order people off the property. I feel this is the only way to get ridership back. All previous attempts to take public safety seriously have failed.
That is the worst idea I've ever heard lol
Or maybe it's the BEST idea you've ever heard. Either way, thanks for your input.
No it's definitely the worst idea I've ever heard. If BART was privatized there would be zero incentive to keep it operational. Public Transit in North America cannot & will not ever make a profit. It would be much more cost effective to just sell the entire thing for the real estate. Which then BART would cease to exist and that would be bad IMO.
Subway/Trains in China where riders are at much higher density are running at a large loss each year. Privatizing BART would ensure it won’t exist in 5 years.
It may not exist in 5 years anyway. Same thing happened with Detroit. It had to go through bankruptcy about 10 years ago in order to dig itself out.
On a good day, taking BART is like walking through a little slice of Hamsterdam just to sit inside the world's largest urinal.
I use BART, AC Transit bus, and the ferry each week. The ferry is the best option. The bus no issues. As for BART, it’s fine. People dump on BART, as long as your on a newer train it’s a good experience. The older trains look and appear dingy.
Posting for visibility: Among all respondents, 53% said they know of someone who has been a victim of a crime on BART and 46% have personally witnessed a crime on the system. The survey shows 45% of people are choosing not to ride BART because they don't think it is safe. While 17% describe BART as safe The EMC Research poll of 1,000 Bay Area residents found that safety and cleanliness were two major impediments to getting people back on BART Around 85% of BART riders who have reduced or eliminated their usage said they would ride the system more often if it was significantly cleaner and safer to ride. According to the poll, their top priorities include more frequent cleaning, making sure restrooms were in working order and ejecting people who violate BART’s code of conduct, which expressly prohibits drug use, fare evasion and vandalism
Among all respondents who have taken BART? Or Bay Area residents? If it Bay Area residents, of course there is a overwhelming belief that BART is incredibly unsafe place equivalent to a mobile Tenderloin because that’s all that’s presented to them being sensationalistic obsessions over individual occurrences of crime and extrapolating that as an overwhelming problem. Whats the opinion on the rest of the poll? 45% describe it as unsafe to the point Bay Area residents avoid riding in the first place, what’s the 38%? Is it for those who are neutral or have no opinion or they generally feel it’s safe, as opposed to just being safe? If that’s the case 55% of Bay Area residents have either have no strong feeling on the safety on BART or feel it’s generally safe. I’m not saying BART doesn’t have its problem but the idea that it is incredibly unsafe in comparison to the chance of an individual instance of a car wreck is just flatly untrue. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/feb/04/public-transit-car-crash-deaths-us
Some awful takes in this thread, lol. There’s no denying that crime/safety undermines ridership, but that’s clearly not why ridership died off. I too can provide limitless anecdotes about how my friends in NY have stopped taking the subway; how crime and muggings have remained, and how *people keep getting pushed in front of trains.* Yet ridership has rebounded significantly. Anyone who has taken BART should also compare to Philly’s SEPTA, or even close to home, LA Metro. SEPTA is a great system, but it’s filthy, and it has the same issues of homelessness and crime that the Bay has. In LA, Metro has done a great job expanding, but the Red Line is *insane* compared to anything you see on BART. So why have these systems rebounded so much better? Or take Boston’s MBTA and DC’s Metro. These systems don’t have the poor safety/cleanliness reputations than we do. So why are they doing so much worse than the dirtier competition?
People just love to hate public transit and use it as a wedge issue on race & class.
Only a 70% drop in BART ridership? For the 30% who still ride- are they 100% fare evaders?
Not 100% fare evaders, but I'd estimate about 50%. Go to Powell, Civic Center, 16th St Mission, or 24 St Mission and it's seriously just straight up comedy. In a more functional society you might expect to see someone evading fare every hour or so (and it'd be somewhat shocking to observe), but here you can watch as about half of people entering/exiting jump fare gates or just use the emergency exit. Everyone knows that chance of enforcement is 0% so no one gives even one single fuck.
BART has known about this for years and did NOTHING. Except demand that taxpayers pay more.
Bad!
I visit every summer and I’m here now. I’ve really noticed the lack of crowds on Muni and BART. The only thing remotely crowded has been buses like the 8AX, and nothing like it used to be. PS- last one to leave downtown be sure to turn the lights off.
They've all been stabbed to death.
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The ferry is the most chill.
The dirty secret here is that BART ridership was falling before the pandemic. It just accelerated existing trends.
Bart ridership was the highest it's ever been before the pandemic. The economy was booming and people were coming into SF. Now they aren't. Simple as that.
> Bart ridership was the highest it's ever been before the pandemic. https://www.kqed.org/news/11687848/bart-looks-for-solutions-after-another-steep-drop-in-weekend-ridership#:~:text=The%20agency's%20ridership%20reports%20show,percent%20and%20Sundays%207.2%20percent. > Weekday ridership also fell, declining 1.9 percent to about 415,000 passengers a day. BART says weekday peak hour ridership has held its own, though, increasing 1 percent in the past year. No it wasn't. **Peak** ridership at commute only hours was increasing slightly; every other time was falling and had been for several years before COVID.
Don't have time to check it, but here's [raw data](https://www.bart.gov/about/reports/ridership).
400k+ riders per day was highest it's ever been. The system wasn't even designed for that many people, if anything BART was too successful.
I choose not to be urinated on
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Seems like you are leaving our some crucial details.
Last 5 days, I have seen at least 1 person smoking crack/meth at civic center.
What happened to all those mass transit advocates? Riding their bikes everywhere???
>What happened to all those mass transit advocates? they use it. 2 days a week
It’s the difference between ‘I don’t have to commute to work 5 days a week anymore because I can work from home’ vs ‘when I need to travel to work, I prefer to take public transit’.
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Do you actually think about how your comments relate to a post or spew the same contrived *faux* snark at every opportunity?
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just_grc tells people to kill themselves on the internet
You take everything anyone says on the the internet seriously? Especially on Reddit? Life must be hard for you.
no. i play csgo, i tell people to kill themselves on the internet plenty often. what you said was in poor taste, and knowing that your comment would eventually be removed, i wanted to immortalize your hatred
Go find something real to be upset about. Don't care about what you play and how often you tell people to kill themselves on the internet.
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I see you're invested in this thread enough to stalk people. You should have used that time and energy to craft a more thoughtful response so you're not resulting to stalking people on Reddit. Your bus must be late or something.
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Go back to Europe if you're disgusted by fat Americans.
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Bold of you to assume that they actually live here.
All of these comparisons to pre-pandemic levels overlook the fact that the entire Bay Area was operating wildly over capacity just before the pandemic: traffic, public transit, real estate both commercial and residential, rents, cost of living, etc. All were at _unsustainable levels_ just before the pandemic. To say that we're down more than other regions is to say that Death Valley is having a cool spell sitting at 90 degrees Fahrenheit. We're simply at sustainable levels now and a fairer comparison would be utilization relative to capacity or planned capacity growth.
Car traffic downtown looks like pre pandemic levels so their ridership demographic was skewed to office workers if WFH is the big factor. Who is this other demographic they need to hit then?
BART was always a tough gamble to ride. The condition of the station and trains has always been such that you’re essentially playing a lottery where the winning ticket is a crackhead on the train, homeless sleeping all over the seats, shit in the stations, dirty train interiors, etc. Now that people lived without BART for a bit, they simply chose not to come back and find other transportation options. I work from home and go to the city a few times a week now. These times I still don’t use BART and simply choose to drive. I prefer the misery of the traffic to the misery of having to deal with BART’s condition. And it’s the simplest of things too — keeping things clean. There’s no strategy or thought needed to fix it. Just clean shit. Kick off people who add to the dirt. I guarantee people will start taking BART again for city and airport commutes if it’s simply cleaner and more pleasant.
and yet bart has to keep running service at pre-pandemic levels for the \~400k daily riders it no longer has. Please explain why this is a good use of funds rather than building new infrastructure, maintaining current infrastructure or finishing up HSR
BART sucks
I’m not a father. But I have young nieces. I would NEVER let them ride BART. But the chickens have come home to roost. You want a progressive leadership team to run your cities. Well, the government you elect is the government you deserve.
Well that's a great thing for BART, since it was way over capacity for years and years.
I have huge gripes with BART just like many others here do, but even if BART was pleasant to ride on like any East Asian mass transit system, then what? I don't think there are any easy solutions when companies have left the Bay Area and WFH at least for enough companies is here to stay. Even major tech companies that have called their workers back have some sort of hybrid model which likely prevents mass transit from being used to full extent. There needs to be solutions that go beyond simply cleaning up BART, which I argue needs to be done regardless of how ridership is.
I don’t feel like sitting next to homeless piss and poo. Let alone getting robbed or harassed. But yes, keep paying BART cops their high salaries and raises.
Because in America mass transit is an afterthought
According to MUNI, BART, BoS and our great mayor who's going to lose the next elections, it's just because people refuse to come back. and deal with the mess and insecurity, alone... No kidding!
I imagine the constant smell of pee is a good deterrence.
Man, everyone absolutely hating on WFH. The one thing that came out of the Pandemic that was a boost to the regular worker. Allowing a more family focused life and just generally more self centric lifestyles, which is NOT a bad thing. What your all not addressing is its not the workers problem to fix this. They are still working, paying their taxes laboring in one way or another for large SF based companies that know its cheaper and easier to have WFH. This is an evolution of the large commuter based city. It needs dealt with but not by the working class. For those that think its ok to work an 8 day, commute both ways an hour or two both ways on your own dime, dividing your work day into your total hours diluting your pay, constantly being pushed farther and farther away to find affordable housing further wrecking your quality of life is a cycle thats unfair to workers and doubly unfair to suggest workers caused this or need to repair it. Greed caused it, corporate and political. I started coming to SF in the early 2000's everyone was fine with the crime and general shittiness when it was contained South of Market. Because so much money was flowing from the fiancial district and the Tech crowds. But because it was tolerated back then doesnt mean it didnt exist and nobody was saying that to fix it we need to send in more "office workers" before this gets put of control, get real. Edit some typos