The electric Caltrain is so wonderful. It’s way quieter, the cars have nicer interiors, and it is running faster and more frequently than before.
Between this, the new BART cars (also much quieter!), and Muni hitting a reliability & satisfaction records, there’s really a transit renaissance going on in the Bay Area. I really hope we can keep this going!
Agreed largely, though IMO BART is holding the bay area back. Unlike Caltrain and Muni, BART management is completely incompetent and more focused on spending their money on random things than actually running their transit system.
Fun fact: BART police has a large fleet of SUVs, with the highest vehicle-to-officer ratio in the bay area (if only there were some other way for them to get around!)
Fun exercise: compare the cleanliness of a Muni Bus/LRV to a BART car (even a new one at the start of the day). There is a huge difference.
I think BART struggles with who it's meant to serve now, since it was clearly designed for ultra-peak weekday commute traffic. Recovery for weekend ridership is way better than weekday.
I also agree that the governance structure for BART is weird and overly complex. Why do I elect a BART director? Why are they in their own special BART districts completely discontinuous from the 10 other ways we have sliced up the Bay Area?
All that being said, BART has done some good stuff too. The new cars really are way better, and they were not easy to procure since BART has its own weird, non-standard rail gauge. They have increased frequency and shortened trains on weekends to respond to the ridership changes.
Most of all, BART remains the only form of Bay Area transit genuinely faster than driving in real-world circumstances: it averages above 60mph in parts of the east bay, and goes from downtown Oakland to downtown SF in 11min, which is often 2-3x faster than driving. It's the primary transit system that can compete head-to-head with driving. For that reason, I do hope they keep increasing frequency (shortening trains if necessary).
It’s kind of sad that BART’s first mover advantage means it’ll forever be a second-class railway. They’ll never do the “correct” thing and shut it down long enough to replace everything with standard equipment and gauge.
It has been said the broader gauge was chosen at the time to make trains able to run safely over Golden Gate Bridge with strong side winds. My physics is not good enough to calculate whether that argument makes sense. And I have no idea how realistic that route ever was.
I don't think the gauge is a major problem. Train orders are always a custom project, few urban networks use exactly the same standards. Railroad manufacturers are used to different gauges.
In particular the track gauge is a long way from being the only consideration. Structure gauge and Loading gauge are also crucial. When I first moved here despite this being an important port city a Victorian arch bridge carrying road traffic over the railway meant every single freight train carrying containers from the port to the rest of the country needed to either go on a circuitous route or use special low wagons with reduced capacity, which hold a container below axle height so as to fit under that bridge.
In that case blocking the road and dropping in a new road bridge was affordable given the economic value but generally you put up with what you've got.
True, when it comes to loading gauge one can no longer even about a standard. Most countries have several different loading gauges even for the same track gauge.
In practice I am not convinced the BART is severely impacted by their "weird" gauge (whatever is meant by that, not sure what their loading gauge is, for passenger trains the distance to and height of the platforms would be most relevant).
Stadler KISS series used by Caltrain is built at least in 3 different widths.
Auckland, NZ had (not sure whether still in use) rolling stock from the UK, converted from 1435 mm to 1067 mm track gauge, the loading gauge obviously was close enough.
Finland has engines (Sr3, Dr20) and railcars (Dm12) designed for smaller central European loading gauges. They look a bit tiny compared to other stock, but they are fully usable.
It shouldn't be, though. There is way too much democracy in California localities.
There should be no elected school board, transit districts, utility boards, assessors, sheriff, and so much more. No one is properly informed about candidates for these positions.
For that matter, the Board of Supervisors should have no power other than oversight and impeachment. The Mayor should basically be a local dictator, with the power to do anything the State authorizes the municipality to do, at their sole discretion, with the oversight of an elected board.
Americans seem to have a view that if you get a part of an unengaged electorate to mark an x in a box every few years that’s democracy, and more is thus better.
Instead it removes accountability from public servants who can simply hide behind the “elected” excuse.
What terrifies me the most are elections for judges. I am not a legal scholar and I rely upon local bar associations for qualification ratings (and I’m not convinced I made the right call all the time); to my horror I’ve had educated colleagues tell me they just pick cool sounding names.
I love these kinds of true snippets of general security history:
It was estimated that "possibly 85 percent of the more than 7,000 BART train cushions damaged since August 1979" was the work of this company, the Examiner reported at the time.
All said and done, BART had paid the company $115,000 for the repairs, a total of about $339,128 in today's money.
Yep, BART is pretty reviled by all the other transit authorities, and for good reason, based on what my friends who work some of the other authorities have said.
Are you saying that they need vehicles to get to the crime locations faster? Are vehicles really faster than them being at the BART station on foot?
If anything that statistic you cited shows that their existing policies are not a deterrent. Perhaps because they are in their vehicles instead of on train cars where the crimes are happening.
> Are vehicles really faster than them being at the BART station on foot?
So you're sure you can create a deployment plan that will have the correct amount of officers on station at all times? What if they need backup? What if two incidents happen at once?
> their existing policies are not a deterrent.
I'm sure their vehicle strategy has little to do with deterrence. Or are you suggesting this is the _reason_ why there is more crime?
> instead of on train cars where the crimes are happening.
Crimes also happen on the platform, the turnstiles, and the curtilage. I get that people want to be "mad the vehicles exist" but this is not sensible.
Actually, train systems having its own assigned branches of police is common enough that there's a Wikipedia article[1]. Unique part is that the US doesn't have an umbrella national or state agency that such branches would be part of.
They're not actually "assigned branches" of the police, they're private police. The US/Canadian railway police are not government employees, they're employees of the Class I railways and deputized with general law enforcement powers. They're spiritual successors to the old timey Pinkertons.
Two of the biggest are Canadian National Police and Canadian Pacific Kansas City Police -- and those two are deputized, in both Canada and the US, with Federal, State and Provincial police powers. Despite being railway employees they can cite you for, e.g. speeding if they catch you doing so. Either on or off railway property.
BART exists in 5 counties (San Francisco, San Mateo, Alameda, Contra Costa, and Santa Clara) and multiple cities (SF, Oakland, San Jose, and multiple smaller ones).
Having people who have jurisdiction in any bart station is useful. And for example, consistent foot patrols are valuable to BART but not necessarily valuable to the city of Hayward, or whatever. As a concrete example, BART has more or less a goal to be able to put an officer on the car within a stop or two if you report on the app. That's logistically challenging for like a half dozen reasons if the bart police wasn't it's own org.
That's a good question, any I have no idea of the answer, but the port authority of NY and NJ has it's own police. I always figured it was because it spanned jurisdictions, but perhaps there are other reasons
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railroad_police are actually a thing! It's not just transit either. Most of the big US railroads have their own private police forces. The officers are deputized by the state, and then by federal law their powers are valid in any state that railroad has track. They even have arrest powers.
Hm, maybe CPD has a CTA detail then? I thought there was (or used to be) a CTA police division that had their own uniforms, cars, etc. I seem to also remember a CHA police for the housing projects, but it's been a long time since I lived there.
Presumably because police usually only have jurisdiction within their employer’s city limits, and sheriffs’ employees only have jurisdiction within their counties, so if mass transit moves between multiple jurisdictions, then their police can have jurisdiction wherever the mass transit goes (even across state lines, because a lot of metropolitan regions served by the same mass transit system span two or more states).
Most city police and sheriffs officers have jurisdiction anywhere in their state, AFAIK. They typically stay in their area, but if they’re pursuing a suspect they don’t break off if they cross the city limits.
It's pretty common around the country. If it isn't a separate entity you end up having a department of the normal local police doing it separately anyway. Also BART goes through several different police jurisdictions and trains... move. I can imagine the mess and disagreements about which police department was responsible for answering a call or riding in a car as it moved between cities/counties.
It's a chain of command (i.e. BART police report to BART, Campus police report to the school, way less messy than BART or the school having to convince the jurisdiction how to police the area) and prioritization thing. Bespoke police agencies exist to police their niche to an extent that would be unjustifiable if it were coming your normal police department and taking resources away from their other tasks.
Transit police, campus police, DEA, ATF, etc, etc, etc. Their entire job is to harass people that the equivalent generalist police couldn't justify allocating resources toward.
Irate homeless? SFPD won't show, but BART Police will.
Drunk college kids shenanigans? Normal cops don't care, but campus police does.
Weirdos making machine guns or huge amounts of LSD? FBI don't care as long as you're not trafficking, they got real crime with real victims to chase. ATF and DEA care though.
Wash rinse repeat this pattern for literally every bespoke police agency.
Yeah, jurisdiction can be a theoretical reason for these agencies but once again it's still a priority thing. When agencies care jurisdiction and coordination isn't a problem. Having one agency span multiple only helps if you're chasing stuff so petty it would get dropped.
Except for the last one in your list, the others are quality of life problems. I have no problem if police interfere with either. Even the last one, is at best borderline. If there is a weirdo making machine guns in my neighborhood and I have kids, I sure as hell want police to interfere.
That works in theory, until the police are overrun with things they don't specialize in and don't have the officers to handle the day to day plus illegal arms dealers.
To unlock the true value of these systems the BA needs to be forced to increase density of their cities though. We need SF proper to look more like Manhattan.
It also needs a much bigger emphasis on transit oriented development. In Japan the best place to eat in town is often in the train station or within a few feet of it. In the US the stops are often some of the worst places like parking lots or run down parts of town. Rarely have I seen good shopping/dining/living integrated into BA, or even US in general, transit systems.
Agreed. Caltrain stops are… definitely not that. The SF stations are somewhat out of the way (although the planned extension would bring it all the way to the transit center). I do see a lot more residential units coming up near transit nodes, although its not nearly enough! The San Jose Caltrain is a prime exhibition of what you said: surrounded by parking lots and it feels quite deserted and creepy instead of being a bustling, thriving commercial area (although a few blocks near there is a nice commercial area with a brewery and many eateries, including a whole foods).
My office in Cambridge, Massachusetts is directly in a 12 story tower with ground floor retail directly on top of a transit station. TOD does exist, it’s just rare for whatever reason in NA.
That said, there are lots of other stops in the area that are either overrun with parking, like you said, or are one story business districts with no housing. Lots left to do.
I suspect the problem might be mismatched incentives. ISTR reading that some East Asian transit companies own and develop the parcels on and around their stations, which provides funding and drives ridership.
> My office in Cambridge, Massachusetts is directly in a 12 story tower with ground floor retail directly on top of a transit station
That station (the Google Office MIT/Kendall one I'm assuming) was part of the larger redevelopment that happened in Kendall Square over the last 40 years which displaced a significant portion of Cambridge residents due to eh flawed 1949 Urban Redevelopment Act (the same one James Baldwin historically opposed).
Just go one stop inbound (MGH) or outbound (Central) and that level of synergy goes away.
A lot of this is because the T is just straight up old. Most of the stations are at least a century old if not older and it would take an inordinate amount of money to rebuild stations in a more modern manner.
> I suspect the problem might be mismatched incentives
The Asian as well as the more recent North American metro systems like BART or DC Metro are much newer (built or rebuilt in the last 50-70 years) and were thus able to include that public-private mixture.
It doesn't have to look like Manhattan. Even medium density (5-10 stories) will be enough in terms of housing provided, and is cheaper to build, and doesn't risk making the street level inhospitable (if nothing is human scale and there's no sunlight on the street, there will be less people there, making it feel or become dangerous).
Totally agree, though SF is closer to overall NYC density than you'd expect (NYC 29k, SF 18k ppl/sq mi; Manhattan is 73k).
I think the Bay Area suburbs are also egregious - e.g. North Berkeley BART station is surrounded by single family homes, even though it's 25min from downtown SF by train.
It has been great hasn't it?!? The difference between running every 30 minutes on weekends vs ever 2 hours is the difference between hopping on the train up to Redwood City for lunch with a friend and then back again. Versus one of us driving one way or the other.
If they can electrify the San Jose to Gilroy segment that will be even better.
I think they are running into issues with that because they don't own the rail lines, so they will probably go with batteries rather than overhead lines.
Electric does help with getting cars to run quieter and faster though. With the old diesel engines, they needed more headway because of slower cold start times so there's more frequency and can hit the speed limit faster. Electric engines have high torque and are naturally much quieter.
It's not the electric motor torque that makes the difference. Caltrain used to use traditional locomotives, you'd have a single F40PH or MP36PH at one end pulling a bunch of unpowered carriages. Those locomotives were diesel-electric though, that is the diesel is only there to act as a generator while the traction motors are electric.
The Stadler KISS units are so much faster because they're EMU's (Electric Multiple Units), that is most of the wheels in a 7-car consist are powered with their own traction motors. An F40PH makes 3000 hp (2200 kW) while a Caltrain 7-car KISS consist can put out 9400 hp (7000 kW) continuous and about 50% more than that in short duration overload mode for starting. That's the reason it accelerates so much faster.
Traditional locomotive trains are completely obsolete in any sort of commuter service with frequent stops, there's just no way for them to keep up with EMU's or even DMU's. You can't solve it by just putting bigger engines on the locomotives, you wouldn't have enough weight on the wheels to make sufficient tractive effort.
Yup not to mention that the fumes from diesel engines got into the cars so you tended to avoid the ones close to the engine. Its a HUGE qol improvement!
For now. They're replacing them with battery-electric trains that can go past Tamien. Yeah, it should just have caternaries the whole way down but you know how rail is around here -- owned by Union Pacific, and the federal government prevents municipalities from exercising eminent domain to take control of railways.
I did not know that. I checked the schedule for those when I had jury duty in Morgan Hill and it was always never the right time and/or in the wrong direction, so I had to take the bus from the Diridon station to make my jury duty appointments.
Honestly, I think even the old Caltrain cars were pretty clean. The only dirty parts were the bathrooms (and honestly, train bathrooms are sort of gross most places). Caltrain has always been sort of luxury, though; the median Caltrain rider has a >100k household income, which come to think of it, might be one of the highest median rider incomes for a public transit system in the world.
I think COVID year stats are always a bit sus. I imagine the people who had the option of working from home tended to be higher income. Outside of medicine jobs, the stay home order mostly exempted lower income jobs (eg grocery stores, mechanics)
How is safety these days? The last time I was in a BART station, I had to intervene in an uncomfortable situation where a (possibly high) man was bothering a young woman. It felt surreal because everyone around hadn’t helped her at all and was just ignoring what was happening.
That's because they still haven't eliminated the crossing points.
They need to turn every road or pedestrian crossing into an underpass or overpass, or eliminate it. They've started on this process, but it will take many years.
I live a block away from a train crossing for a track that does a lot of local refinery transfers and occasional has freight. It has the normal old style crossing with an arm on each side with lights, a loud bell, and trains required to signal with horn. There are 8 road crossings in a short distance so each train is signals 8 times nearby.
The requirements for a no-signal crossing is essentially a pedestrian gate. The quote the city has for each crossing was if I remember right 1.5 million usd. And you’d need to replace many of them. The city doesn’t want to prioritize that much money. (FWIW I agree)
The worst thing is we have under utilized tracks going all over the region and no commuter train service. Even with the rail expansion prior to the Olympics (I’m near Los Angeles), the commuter rail is only being extended to the northern most edge of the city.
Neighbors have been fighting against commuter rail every step of the way. I’ll say attending local govt and rail proposal meetings is at once interesting, impressive at what some groups are trying to achieve and disturbing at the lengths people go to prevent change.
Trains don't honk in much of Europe when approaching a gated crossing.
The lights and barriers are assumed to be sufficient. Within cities, there may well be CCTV cameras (pointing only at the crossing) so the signal controllers can check the crossing is clear.
I grew up in a 600,000 inhabitants city in Germany. They got EMUs in the 1930s. When they got the next generation in the 1970s all level crossings were replaced.
So California, one of the forerunners in the US, seems to be roughly 90 years behind. Depends on your age whether you'll be able to enjoy a quiet train trip during your lifetime. </sarcasm>
In 1930s California’s population boom had just started. There were 5 million people in the state, split between San Francisco and Los Angeles. Both cities had electric trams, but the demand for regional rail wasn’t high enough to electrify it.
Even today it’s not uncommon to de-electrify lower-volume rights of way.
People don't understand and respect public transportation (train in this context) in this country. There's a lot of dumbasses who will be on the tracks when and where they should not be. Hence we need those loud horns.
People have much easier access to roads, where many more deaths occur. We don't require automobile drivers to use their horn at every intersection. Why do we require trains to sound the horn at every intersection? Why can the train not reserve the horn for when there is someone on the tracks?
I was so excited for the EMUs, but unfortunately the near-vertical seat backs are extremely uncomfortable. I ride a coach bus to work and rely on working during my commute. I simply cannot work on Caltrain.
Haha. Doubtful. In your lifetime you won't see any transit system in the bay area that approaches anything remotely close to what you see in places like Tokyo or NYC.
I get that there's improvement but like it's still rather pathetic compared to almost everywhere else across the pond.
The problem is that Bart network will barely get denser. At the rate they're building it, your great great great great great grandkids will live in a bay area where most people don't need to jump on a car to get to work.
We can do better. It's not magic. But we don't. And that is pathetic.
They do. You're not being realistic. Almost everyone would like to have a choice between getting on a subway for super cheap or driving through traffic. You're saying they would rather have no choice between the two options? Come on.
The Bay area (people) want top of the line transit, all of California wants it. It's similar to how Ethiopia wants to get out of poverty. Both places can't get what they want for similar reasons: incapability.
Take a look at the high speed rail. Probably won't finish in both of our lifetimes. People want that thing, what's stopping it from happening is incompetence.
They do. You're not being realistic. Almost everyone would like to have a choice between getting on a subway for super cheap or driving through traffic. You're saying they would rather have no choice between the two options? Come on
Sure, everyone wants an easy commute where the train picks them up in front of their house and drops them off at the office, but they also want their house with yard in Walnut Creek. Or lacking that, their single family house in the Sunset.
Sure some people would be happy in a high density city, but do enough people want it to make it worth building? As dense as downtown San Francisco is, it's still a long commute to the Easy Bay or Peninsula from the Sunset or Richmond. Driving is usually faster and more convenient.
I'd like to see some evidence for that -- sure, there are a lot of people in big cities that are happy with high density (but even many of them move out to the suburbs when they decide to settle down and have kids), but there are many people in the USA that won't give up their 2000 sq ft house with 3 car garage that fits their F150 pickup.
Much of my midwest family is that way - they couldn't believe how tiny my "city" apartment was that wasn't even in the city, it was a 1600 sq ft townhouse that was a 40 minute commute from city center.
It's going to take decades (or some catastrophic disaster) to get Americans to change that mindset and give up low density living.
Zoning rules are the evidence. Eliminate the zoning rules and let the market sort it out. No? Why not, are you afraid the "character" will change immediately?
you're severely out of touch. Only around 15% of Californians can afford to buy a home. Why can't they buy a home? LACK of Inventory. You can see this on the news, you can quote experts everywhere saying this. There's not enough houses and that raises prices. So how do you lower prices? Build more homes. How do you build more homes? Increase density. Yeah if you're in the 15% sure, buy a big home. If you're in the 85%, well you want to buy a smaller home. You can safely assume 85% of the people who can't afford a home, want cheaper homes and therefore want higher density.
>It's going to take decades (or some catastrophic disaster) to get Americans to change that mindset and give up low density living.
Bro, that catastrophic disaster is called global warming. And you can see the effects of global warming in the weather in the US. There have already been entire cultures and peoples uprooted from where they live because of rising sea levels. The luxuries we enjoyed living in cities designed for cars is bought and paid for with our future.
You can't force developers to build what they can't sell at a profit.
I'm sure San Francisco would love to have more billion dollar high density buildings, but can a developer sell enough million dollar condos to pay for them? Is there any evidence that it's zoning that's keeping more residentials towers from being built in downtown SF?
>Bro, that catastrophic disaster is called global warming
It's not a catastrophic disaster yet -- nearly all Americans sat at home in comfort watching the LA fires. People don't see a disaster if it doesn't affect them, then it's just a tragedy.
It is zoning that is stopping high density from going up. The house owners are stopping it. You. When you remove those restrictions you get tons of projects wanting to execute on that.
Look up builders remedy.
In the Bay Area, examples of "Builder's Remedy" projects include proposed developments in cities like Mountain View, Menlo Park, Saratoga, and Los Gatos, where developers leverage the state law to build high-density housing projects in areas previously resistant to new development, often by proposing large apartment complexes or mixed-use developments on sites zoned for lower density housing, particularly in affluent communities that haven't met state housing mandates; notable examples include a 200-unit project at 1920 Gamel Way in Mountain View and a large development at the Mountain Winery near Saratoga, which could include a hotel alongside residential units, all while utilizing the "Builder's Remedy" to bypass local zoning restrictions due to the inclusion of a significant portion of affordable housing within the project.
Key points about Bay Area Builder's
Targeted areas:
Developers often target affluent cities like Menlo Park, Los Gatos, and parts of Santa Clara County, where housing needs are high but local resistance to new development is strong.
High-density development:
These projects often propose significantly denser housing than what is typically allowed under local zoning, including multi-story apartment buildings.
Affordable housing inclusion:
To qualify for "Builder's Remedy," developers must include a substantial percentage of affordable housing units within the project.
Local opposition:
While intended to address housing shortages, these projects often face significant local opposition from residents concerned about increased density and potential impacts on their neighborhoods. These are rich house owners who own a home and they are the 15% who oppose the 85 percent who don’t. It’s class warfare.
> It's not a catastrophic disaster yet -- nearly all Americans sat at home in comfort watching the LA fires. People don't see a disaster if it doesn't affect them, then it's just a tragedy.
LA is your front doorstep and I lived in LA about two miles from the border of the fire.
Yeah watch from the comfort of your own home. Give it some more time and one day people will be watching you from the comfort of their own home.
>Sure, everyone wants an easy commute where the train picks them up in front of their house and drops them off at the office, but they also want their house with yard in Walnut Creek. Or lacking that, their single family house in the Sunset.
You can have both. Tokyo is twice the size of the bay area. Density isn't the issue. It's incompetence.
Where in Tokyo do you have easy access to transit and a large suburban house?
My brother in law moved from Tokyo to where he could buy a house and yard in Chiba Japan, it's around 900 sq ft with a "yard" that's smaller than the deck on the back of my house. And it's still a 20 minute bike ride + 90 minute train ride to his job in Tokyo.
I don't know if you've been to many homes in Walnut creek, but a small attached house is not what people are moving out of the city for - if that's what they wanted, they could just move to the avenues and stay in SF
I don't think I'm overstating when I say that American style suburbs with large lots and large homes are not conducive effective public transit.
I lived in the bay area my entire life. You don't have to go to walnut creek to see suburbia. That ugly shit is everywhere.
Public transit in Tokyo is largely underground. Density is irrelevant. If you have high density or low density above ground, this factor is completely orthogonal to whatever you build Underground. Understand?
>I don't think I'm overstating when I say that American style suburbs with large lots and large homes are not conducive effective public transit.
You, in fact, didn't say ANYTHING related to this matter. You simply stated it's not conducive without mentioning why it's not conducive. I disagree. You can still build it because what's above ground has nothing to do with what's below ground.
The fact of the matter is, once you build this, barring zoning restrictions, the density should follow. Right now the bay area is a political battle ground where rich people effectively price out poor people with zoning restrictions. It's a class based war where a luxury you want is impacting the lives of people less fortunate than you.
If you let the bay grow naturally and fairly then people with your "wants" should move to the country side.
Suburbia is also not sustainable for the environment. It's why greenhouse gases per capita in the US is the worst in the world.
You seem to be arguing that it's physically possible to build transit that serves low density housing, I agree with that.
My argument is that it's economically infeasible, especially in the USA.
Extending Caltrain to downtown SF is estimated at $3B/mile, BART to San Jose is $780M/mile. You can't spend hundreds of millions of dollars building transit to a neighborhood with 100 homes. It's already hard to serve those neighborhoods with buses, since bus routes are either long and slow that wind through many neighborhoods, or they are vastly underutilized.
Right and you should’ve stated this in the beginning but you didn’t.
It’s economically feasible. We have the most powerful military in the world we have the highest gdp per capita in the world.
It’s economically feasible. When I say we are incapable of building mass transit I’m referring to every single type of incompetency in existence except for economic incompetency.
>Right and you should’ve stated this in the beginning but you didn’t.
I didn't think it was necessary to specify "under normal economic constraints and not a thought experiment where we can spend unlimited money on transit". I forgot where I was. Lesson learned.
We are not under normal economic constraints when we have the most money per capita on the face of the earth. The financial capital to do this exists.
I’m baffled at how you think it’s not economically possible when it completely it is. How does Tokyo even exists if it’s not economically possible?? It’s possible it’s just we can’t do it due to incompetence.
Just look at the high speed rail in California. That is a framed picture of American incompetence.
Because our politicians patrons are rentier capitalists who think the government spending money on things is a waste of their money. So yeah they really hate spending money on transit projects.
Doesn't help that we're at the end stages of a debt driven real estate/rent price spiral. That means acquiring land for mass transit is twice as expensive as it should be. Ditto labor costs.
There's no "they" here. You're describing like five different groups that aren't aligned with each other, and most of them aren't capitalists. Japan is capitalist, more so than California.
Why so negative? Given that the served population is conservatively a quarter of either of those areas, doesn't seem like a fair comparison.
More to the point, I've been favorably impressed with the transit options since moving here, and in terms of reliability it's been better than NYC, though obviously there are fewer trains/branches.
I'd love to see BART open later, like NYC, but even Tokyo trains stop at midnight.
It's fair. NYC is 8.8 million, bay area is 7 million. Tokyo is about double that.
Not being negative. Being realistic. It's unfortunate that being realistic often is negative. Transit here is garbage. You either luck out and live and work near transit or you're like most people and have to drive.
A couple million in energy savings doesn't mean anything compared to the amount wasted by cars.
Those are not the right population metrics to compare. If you're talking full Bay Area, you might as well talk NYC metro area (MTA claims to serve 15.3 million [1]). Tokyo's even trickier, but I think 36 million [2] seems closer to right.
It's probably not worth arguing about too much, because ultimately I agree with you that there's a lot more to be done to reduce car ridership. But pointing at those places and saying "copy them" misses a lot of structural differences.
Transit renaissance? Until I can get across both the 84 and 92 bridges by train, to Half Moon Bay, and to Santa Cruz by train, I wouldn't call it a renaissance.
Between this, the new BART cars (also much quieter!), and Muni hitting a reliability & satisfaction records, there’s really a transit renaissance going on in the Bay Area. I really hope we can keep this going!