Comments

1
Coming from Boston to SF, let me say the BART is AMAZING, though yeah, Muni sucks. The BART is usually reliable AND has accurate displays letting you know when the next train will arrive.
2
I took the underground Muni last time I was in SF and was flabbergasted when they would only accept quarters for a fare. No dollars, no other change. There was no way to buy a pass as far as I could see (although I guess they exist since city residents were using them). Nope. If you're a tourist, you better keep a roll of quarters handy, because that's all they accept. And the underground Muni was practically medieval compared to the far more modern BART.

That said, as a tourist, I thought the bus system was acceptable, at least for getting from Nob Hill to CalTrain. The buses showed up about every 10 minutes, and there was none of that ride-free bullshit like we have here.
3
I got to make my first citizen's arrest

I'm curious how that went down, Riya. What did you do, sit on her until the cops showed up? And did the bus driver drive away with your stuff?

Seriously, you left out the best part of the story.
4
I walked everywhere when I visited SF, save for the trolley from downtown to the Castro district. The buses looked uninviting to the point where I didn't even want to try.
5
You leakin, call an emba lance
6
As someone who lived in SF (though for admittedly a much shorter time) the BART owned. Literally never had one of the delays you refer to and I usually rode it several times a day
7
Agreed.

NY's subway, while much better than SF's, still isn't at the top. Yeah, it's extensive and reliable, but its also ditry, loud, hot, run-down, and full of weirdos. Washington DC rules. Its subway is extensive and reliable, clean, sleek and high-tech, and has a very low weirdo quotiet. Public transport by rich people, for rich people.
8
@2 They're called "Clipper cards". Surprisingly they can be obtained from kiosks next to the train tracks. Crazy, I know!
9
Can Someone get a translation on that Chinese lady's yelling? She was obviously making her case to the others on the bus, but what was the gist?

The other lady didn't say enough to clarify
10
As a former S.F. resident I wholeheartedly agree with this post. MUNI sucks! The schedules are merely suggested times the bus will arrive, IMHO. Plus, riding an owl bus down Geary anytime after midnight is like riding the bus that's on it's way to hell.
11
@10, same deal with Metro.
12
are we sure this isn't a Street Films production?
13
"Communication between BART drivers and the control room is so bad that you only get to know why the train wasn't moving when you read the news later."

Same with Metro, especially when snow is on the ground. Turning off mountlake blvd going up the hill? Its a shame nobody warned the driver about the trap around the corner where the electrical tether line is down. So you turn the corner, only to meet about 5 buses all stuck. CB radios would have at least informed the driver to tell others at the stop to take a disel bus.

One thing I like about SF buses, the RFID bus passes, they have scanners at the front and back of the bus.
14
Why do these videos involve black people 95% of the time? Can we find one that doesn't involve them?
15
yeah, the muni's still better than trying to find parking though.
16
sf transportation, and bay area transportation as a whole, is still far beyond seattle public transit. the light rail, are you kidding me. the old 194 bus is fast than taking that crap to the airport.
17
My favorite part of the bus system in SF is the electronic signs at the stations telling you how long until your next bus. "Oh, look, it's only four minutes away", you say, and plunk yourself down. It counts down, "four", "three", "two", "one", "arriving"...but there's no bus. Then it starts again, "fifteen", "fourteen"...by the third time through you might get a bus. You might not.
18
@8,

Not at the station I was at. Unless you're right and there was a kiosk right by the tracks, which would be really fucking handy since the tracks were inside the station, *past* the turnstile.
19
@16: You ever haul your luggage on and off the 194, bumping hobos awake as you go? Or wait in the bus aisle behind 15 teenagers going to work at Sea-Tac to pay-as-you-leave? Speed ain't everything. The light rail kicks the 194's ass.
21
@20,

Reread #2. Thank you very much.
22
Riya,

While Goldy's U.S. News & World Report link is ranked according to any number of irrelevant, bullshit metrics that obfuscate the one criterion that matters -- how useful is the transit on a day-to-day basis? -- SF is inarguably among only 5 or 6 U.S. cities with transit comprehensive enough to put the whole city in easy reach.

That it ranks so highly, in spite of all the drawbacks you describe, should give you a sense of how screwed the rest of the country is for transit. And that King County Metro, with its 60-90 minute travel times for journeys that would be 15-20 in a car, has actual defenders here, should enlighten you to how low our expectations have fallen.

That said, BART is fucking useless. Unless you want to commute to downtown SF from a McMansion in the most remote hinterlands (in which case you're part of the problem), or unless your entire life transpires between The Mission and Downtown Berkeley, BART offers very little value for the billions spent on it (billions that were, of course, not spent improving transit within SF and Oakland and other areas with the density to support it). It has one of the nation's highest per-rider operating subsidies and by far the lowest ridership-per-mile of any of the prominent American transit systems.

BART is exactly the wrong model for future transit investment, yet it's the one that political dealmaking always seems to favor. And so Seattle, too, gets to spend billions on express trains to the far-flung suburbs that then, mysteriously, don't wind up being of any use when you need to get around. And we keep on driving...
24
Y'all is crazy: I can get from my front door to work in 15 minutes on BART. Everywhere else I can get to on the N or J, or by bike, or walk. Where the hell did you live?

You're right about one thing though: fuck a bunch of buses.
25
@22- What are you on about? BART connects the population centers of every major Bay Area city north of SFO. Useless? 450,000 rode BART in a single day last time they closed the bridge.

26

Drove down to Frisco last year, stayed in the Hilton. Drove just about everywhere even in the city. It's the best way to do. Rode street car...had to wait for three to go by too crowded. Took bus...real zoo. Lots of parking, SF is more spread out than Seattle it seems (lower density?) and more variety in the terrain and parts of the city. Still, car is way to go even in core downtown.
27
Seattle doesn't need an extensive public transportation system like SF because Seattle is not as big as SF. However, our light rail is a joke. It seems more like a tourist attraction.
28
See, some local pundits/reporters would say that car drivers suffer from the "social isolation" of missing out on melting pot moments like this.
29
Lived in SF for several years. It's the city that taught me "mass transit" is not the same thing as "rapid transit". Foolishly, I was raised in Chicago to think they were one and the same.

"Mass Transit" as in, "we've discovered a mass in your colon, and it's inoperable".
30
Is there a version of this video with subtitles?
31
Wow, finally a stranger writer who doesn't think SFO is the epitome of what Seattle transit should aspire to. Kudos, and more kudos to you for knowing of what you speak.

My favorite BART anecdote dates to September 2008, when the trains were so crowded that the city was considering raising fares to discourage ridership during peak hours. #transitfail
32
Who the fuck does that shit at 9:59 AM? 9:59 PM? Maybe. Not appropriate in the AM.
33
Obtw,

The 10 best cities for public transit? Aren't in America.

#1 would be Zurich. Berlin is also in the top 5.
34
@27, they're getting closer all the time. SF's not growing, Seattle is. And Seattle is physically larger, twice as big; SF is packed into the tiny tip of the peninsula. The SF metro area is bigger, but again, not by as much as you might think, if you leave out San Jose, which is quite a bit larger than SF and not on BART. Metro area: SF 4.3 mil, Seattle 3.4 mil.
35
From an East-Bay dweller who's often in SF...

Muni may not be great, but that doesn't mean it's not in the top 10....the fact that SF is in the top 10 is merely a statement about the dismal state of public transit in our country. Then again, that ranking list is sort of insane - I don't see how NYC isn't first.

To me, at least, the way to judge whether a public transit system is any good is the feasibility of living without a car. I'd say SF definitely passes that test, in that I know plenty of people here who don't have cars and get along very well. Muni/BART may not be fantastic, but they're perfectly usable and often a much better option than driving, depending when/where you're going. Certainly I like SF's transit better than what we have in the East Bay (AC Transit), which is just barely do-able without a car (I am a poor student, so I do it, but 20-30 minutes between buses is terrible, especially when said buses are not reliable)...I'd take Muni any day! :)
36
@ # 3, hi, so the full story about the citizen's arrest goes like this:

I was mugged by a 16-year-old on the MUNI #21 on my way to work couple of years ago—the little punk grabbed my iPhone and jumped out at a stop near SF City Hall. The entire time I was running after her, the Muni driver did nothing except stick his head out of the window and threaten to drive off with my bag and camera if I didn't get back on the bus to retrieve it.

I ran and ran and ran screaming "stop thief!" and caught up with her and pinned her against a wall at the intersection of Grove and Polk streets (SF City Hall employees who were outside that day for a fire drill across the street probably witnessed the whole thing). Since there was a drill going on in the area, the place was teeming with cops--so while running, I saw 2 SFPD officers walking up to us from the opposite direction (wrong day/place for stealing). I yelled and they immediately understood what was going on and took over from me. Then the young punk threw a punch at me (yelling "what's your problem, bitch!) and I punched her back but missed. The cops broke up our "fight" and asked me if I wanted to make a citizen's arrest. And I did. Then I saw the bus taking off--and I ran after it yelling that my bag/camera was still inside. The driver pointed at a woman who had just gotten off the bus (she had been sitting next to me) who had my bag and camera and even agreed to be a witness. We all gave our statements and I finally got to work, almost 2 hours late.
37
@ 2, 8: The Clipper card is relatively new...if 2 wasn't here in the past year or so, it may have been more difficult. They were changing the system every other week for a while, it seemed, so maybe they were in the process of installing a machine or something?
38
@24 - I know San Jose isn't exactly relevant to this topic, but if you're comparing metro areas and leaving them out, you best be shaving off anything outside King county to keep this apples-to-apples.

Seattle could do better than BART and MUNI. You're not going to—those ships have sailed—but you could.
39
@19 - Speed isn't everything, but it matters. Otherwise we'd all be taking Shuttle Express.

It always amazes me how SLOW that train moves. On my last trip, it never broke 45 (according to my phone). It's supposed to go 55. Did they not make the tracks straight enough? And who the hell designs a modern rail system with a max speed of 55?

If you factor in the preposterous walk from the terminal, it's a 50 minute trip to Westlake, and that's if you don't have to wait. Makes a cab look pretty attractive, especially when work is paying. (I haven't seen any light-rail love from the well-traveled Savage lately. I'm guessing he made the switch back to cabs.)

I hated the 194, but it took only 30 minutes.
40
Oh, its not so bad.

I live in SF and had a business trip to Las Vegas yesterday. I took muni and BART to SFO on Thursday for the outbound. My return flight had a stop and would have been three hours or so from Las Vegas to SFO. At check in today at Las Vegas for my return flight, I asked if they had a nonstop to SFO. Southwest replied that they had nothing, but they could put me on a nonstop to Oakland. No charge, by the way (Southwest should run all of our transit systems).

I accepted the non stop to OAK which arrived at 505pm. Walk out of the terminal, catch the shuttle bus to BART. Buy the $3 shutle ticket and $4 ticket to Glen Park in SF. Catch the 44 muni bus from Glen Park ($2) and in my apartment in the Sunset by 615pm. Two buses, one long BART ride and aircraft to apartment in just over an hour and 9 bucks?. Not bad. At 5pm on a Friday I don't think a $70 taxi from OAK could have gotten me home any quicker.
41
I AM A MOTHERFUCKER
42
SF is a refuge for all crazies in the country

I visited SF a few years back, and as I waited for the muni in the early evening, I had a strange feeling that I was making a fool of myself (believing a bus would come). I caught a cab in the end.

I'm going back in June, I'll be renting a bike and cycling everywhere. They have a map which shows you which streets to avoid to stay off the steep hills.

Bikes are the way to go.
43
d.p.@22: are you high? "bart is useless"? i live in the bay area. everyone takes bart. it takes us to where we need to go, for the most part. it takes us to the airport, it takes us to cities many miles away, and it runs often. it needs to get rid of the gross cloth seats and carpeting (whose idea was THAT?), but otherwise it's pretty rad.
44
Doug @25:

I didn't mean to offend. Let me clarify:

The trans-bay subway tunnel is, of course, indispensable. The high-volume urban parts of Oakland and Berkeley that it serves are great. It's helpful that it hits both airports. And there's certainly a case to be made for it relieving traffic bottlenecks through the Berkeley Hills and reaching strategically located park-and-rides along the East Bay corridors.

But where it stretches its tentacles dozens of miles into the furthest reaches of the suburbs, it represents really terrible investment! For billions upon billions of dollars, it's picking up a few thousand extra riders -- all of whom still have to drive to it (encouraging the worst kind of exurban development creep), and most would simply drive to a closer-in park-and-ride in the absence of those long extensions.

BART's operating subsidy is a humiliating $6+ per rider, and that's system-wide (its outer-reaches subsidy is exponentially higher).

Two things to ask yourself when pondering BART's worth:

- How many people have ever been empowered to sell their cars because BART exists? (Maybe a few Mission residents with East Bay jobs, but that's pretty much it.)

- How often, for a trip to a Bay Area destination that is not San Francisco, Oakland, or Berkeley, is BART worth considering? At times when the highways are not clogged, is it even on the radar? Or does its poor coverage of even the urban zones (wide gaps between stops) make you hesitate?

All other things being equal, BART's express-to-the-hinterlands, breadth-over-usefulness approach might have its place. New York and Chicago have their commuter rails; European cities offer easy rail connections to the most remote cow-towns. But most American cities lack the necessary urban complement. Those billions that were spent building BART are billions that weren't spent fixing the urban-transit problems Riya detailed. Do we really need reliable 15-minute all-day express headways to ease a few thousand people's long-distance trips -- trips whose very distance demands a chunk of scheduled time anyway -- when hundreds of thousands of urban riders can't rely on a 3-mile bus/trolley in the same time-frame?

Seattle's nascent rail system, sadly, is unfolding similarly. In the urban areas, we get stops as much as 3 miles apart for minimum usefulness, so that riders from Lynnwood and Redmond and Des Moines can have a fast journey that they'll rarely want to use because the available destinations are so few and far between. Metro service -- far, far worse than MUNI already -- will remain Seattle's shackle for all time.
45
Fnarf @34 wrote:

"Metro area: SF 4.3 mil, Seattle 3.4 mil."

You're ignoring San Jose but counting Tacoma.

Subtract greater Tacoma, the Seattle area drops to about 2.3 million. That's the apples-to-apple comparison. This region is, and feels, much smaller!

Ellarosa @ 43:

See my slightly better-explained reply to Doug @44. When you crunch the numbers, BART has been a low-return project. It has its merits, but on the whole it should be considered a cautionary example.
46
Bailo @ 26:

San Francisco has 2.5 times the population density of Seattle.
Parking is significantly more difficult and more expensive.
In-city transit usage is orders of magnitude higher.
And you are an idiot.
That is all.
47
The US N&WR article listed some metrics for how they rate transit, but it's doubtful that "diverse modes" was the only reason Portland ranked #1. People have reasons to hate transit entirely or support transit despite its flaws. Mass transit is simply a fundamental mode of urban/suburban travel that succeeds or fails depending upon how it is designed.

Portland's Tri-Met isn't fairly comparable to larger metropolitan area systems, but it is one of the best designs with many elements that do apply universally.

Portland is once again awarded #1 status because downtown traffic is amazing well-controlled through a combination of means, starting with Portland's 'idyllic' pedestrian infrastructure and amenities, separate bicycle pathways and orderly on-street routes, the fareless free rail zone, cheap city-owned structured parking, a business-supported transit funding mechanism, and urban planning that enhances storefront small business environment.

Motorists are subconsciously signaled to slow down, enabled to park easily, finish any routine trip walking and hopping on the fareless, convenient light rail trains and streetcars. Suck on that, Seattle, and guess what, Mayor Mcginn is right to oppose the piece of engineered shit bored tunnel lunacy and right about the surface boulevard option.

You people are idiots. Portland has plenty of traffic downtown, but its speed is controlled, its numbers minimal and the percentage of cars moving as opposed to the percentage parked is the reverse of Seattle's and most US cities. In other words, if Seattle has 30% of the cars downtown parked, and 70% racing around like chickens with their heads cut off, Portland's traffic is 70% parked and 30% moving mostly in and out in a sensible manner. So, suck on that you fucking idiot frat twit hipster losers & jarhead honkies & bimbo talking heads who don't agree with Mayor Mcginn and Councilor O'Brien and uppity urban planners like me who can actually make a rational argument defending the surface boulevard option rather than blurting moronic nonsense about how it won't work.
..
48
The US N&WR article listed some metrics for how they rate transit, but it's doubtful that "diverse modes" was the only reason Portland ranked #1. People have reasons to hate transit entirely or support transit despite its flaws. Mass transit is simply a fundamental mode of urban/suburban travel that succeeds or fails depending upon how it is designed.

Portland's Tri-Met isn't fairly comparable to larger metropolitan area systems, but it is one of the best designs with many elements that do apply universally.

Portland is once again awarded #1 status because downtown traffic is amazing well-controlled through a combination of means, starting with Portland's 'idyllic' pedestrian infrastructure and amenities, separate bicycle pathways and orderly on-street routes, the fareless free rail zone, cheap city-owned structured parking, a business-supported transit funding mechanism, and urban planning that enhances storefront small business environment.

Motorists are subconsciously signaled to slow down, enabled to park easily and finish any routine trip walking and hopping on the fareless, convenient light rail trains and streetcars. Suck on that, Seattle, and guess what, Mayor Mcginn is right to oppose the piece of engineered shit bored tunnel lunacy and right about the surface boulevard option.

You people are idiots. Portland has plenty of traffic downtown, but its speed is controlled and the percentage of cars moving as opposed to the percentage parked is the reverse of Seattle's and most US cities including San Francisco. In other words, roughly, if most big US cities have 30% of the cars downtown parked, and 70% tootling around like chickens with their heads cut off, Portland's traffic is 70% parked and 30% moving, mostly in and out in a sensible manner. So, suck on that you fucking idiot frat twit hipster losers and jarhead honkies and bimbo talking heads who don't agree with Mayor Mcginn and Councilor O'Brien and those damn urban planner enviro-types who can actually make a rational argument defending the surface boulevard option instead of blurting nonsense about how you just know it won't work.
49
...means, starting with Portland's 'idyllic' pedestrian infrastructure and amenities, separate bicycle pathways and orderly on-street routes, the fareless free rail zone, cheap city-owned structured parking, a business-supported transit funding mechanism, and urban planning that enhances storefront small business environment.

Motorists are subconsciously signaled to slow down, enabled to park easily and finish any routine trip walking and hopping on the fareless, convenient light rail trains and streetcars. Suck on that, Seattle, and guess what, Mayor Mcginn is right to oppose the piece of engineered shit bored tunnel lunacy and right about the surface boulevard option.
50
....boulevard option.

You people are idiots. Portland has plenty of traffic downtown, but its speed is controlled, its numbers minimal, and the percentage of cars moving as opposed to the percentage parked is the reverse of Seattle's and most US cities. In other words, if Seattle has 30% of the cars downtown parked, and 70% racing around like chickens with their heads cut off, Portland's traffic is 70% parked and 30% moving mostly in and out in a sensible manner.

So, suck on that you fucking idiot frat twit hipster losers & jarhead honkies & bimbo talking heads who don't agree with Mayor Mcginn and Councilor O'Brien and uppity urban planners like me who can actually make a rational argument defending the surface boulevard option rather than spew regurgitated lies and moronic nonsense about how it won't work.
51
d.p. I don't disagree with most of your conclusions about BART, but it's good to remember that the BART system as it exists today, warts and all, is the result of active (and not a little bit racist) obstructionism by the bay area's richer counties. The original plan for BART was a thing of beauty: two main loops around the south and north bays, with spurs heading in multiple directions, and as a result, several more lines running through the core cities in useful ways. Minimally, there would have been a BART line going out Geary and connecting up through Sausalito and Marin (with proposed spurs going out as far as Napa), and another heading south on Third Street and then down through the peninsula to San Jose.

But San Mateo and Marin counties lost their shit at the idea that scary people from Oakland might be able to just hop on a train and come riot or whatever, and as a result we've got the nonstop clown car disaster that is CalTrain, the years-late-billions-over-budget-and-still-nonfuntional T-Third muni LRV, and a BART system that's basically just a glorified commuter rail.

The bay area really needs a single, unified transit agency, but sadly I doubt it'll ever happen.
52
Wells: easy on the 'submit' button there. :)
53
Yeah, let's show examples of the worst of SF Muni and then claim the entire system is just like that.

I've been using Muni for 32 years and have never encountered anything like this. But I know this shit happens.

Does anyone think for a moment that nobody gets into fights or gets robbed on the NY subway system? Ditto for any transit system anywhere in the world?

Oh, the "somebody the stole my iPhone and so it must be Muni's fault" idiot who wrote this piece of shit post is a fucking lunatic. Somebody broke into my car once, so the world is a fucking awful place, right?

Note to Ryah Batt-shit-crazee: There are bad people in the world. Sometimes they use public transportation.

Grow some brain cells.
54
Ah, here it is: the original BART system proposal. Now, it's not ideal to be sure: western SF still gets kinda fucked (I swear to god I remember there being a Geary spur; that may have been a later proposal), but it's still loads better than what eventually ended up being built. (A Piedmont line! Just imagine.)
55
GarySFBCN: Merely my own datapoint, but honestly? I've lived in Philadelphia, NYC, Boston and SF, and while yes, there's fights and craziness on SEPTA, the MTA and the MBTA, none of them hold a candle to the level of antisocial behavior that I regularly see on MUNI.

A lot of it isn't MUNI's fault as such: San Francisco has some pretty unique problems with the homeless and mentally ill, and inevitably a lot of them end up using the bus system as a daytime shelter. But some of it is: late and overstuffed busses being driven by surly incompetent drivers leads inevitably to frayed tempers. Sooner or later someone loses their cool, and it all heads south quickly.
56
Oh, and very belatedly to #2: a few of the downtown underground stations have vending machines for the Clipper Cards, but primarily you can buy them at any Walgreens or Safeway. Why aren't there signs at every bus stop informing tourists of this fact? Because MUNI are incompetent on every conceivable level. Sorry about that. :(
57
7, you clearly haven't been here in a while. It's supposed to be 13 minutes from my home to my work, it never takes me less than 20. Frequently, it's over 30 minutes. The longest it's ever taken me to make my daily commute was 1.5 hours. Our trains now run 20 minutes apart in the evening, and they're talking about making it 25. There's so much maintenance to do on the system that the trains have been single-tracking at my station EVERY WEEKEND for over a year, and will continue through the summer (the DC Metro has only 2 tracks, so when they need to work on one, they have to run both directions of trains on the same track...i.e., massive clusterfuck of delays). The employees are running the system into the ground. Half are incompetent, another non-mutually-exclusive half is too lazy to care, and even more appear to actively hate the customers and do everything within their power to make our lives miserable. The cops are arresting people whose passes accidentally didn't scan while roving groups of hoodlum teens rob and brutally beat totally innocent riders. Being hit by a bus is probably a pretty highly common cause of death in DC, and the #1 cause of insurance claims as bus drivers seem to hit people and/or cars at least weekly. And no one ever gets fired. Ever.

It's sad, the DC Metro used to rock. I fear it will never achieve its former glory.
58
In 99% of the bus/subway fights recorded 1) black folks are involved and 2) they are the ones to turn an argument into a physical altercation. Does this represent the racial breakdown of violence on public transportation? Or are violent incidents involving black folks recorded (and on youtube) disproportionately?
59
@9 My Taishanese is a bit rusty but basically the Chinese woman said that she asked the black woman politely to sit down next to her--twice. Apparently the black woman didn't appreciate that and began to harass her.There's a good translation in the comments section of the video.
60
@27 chak:
"Seattle doesn't need an extensive public transportation system like SF because Seattle is not as big as SF. However, our light rail is a joke. It seems more like a tourist attraction."

Seattle has a land area of 83.87 sq mi. SF has a land area of 46.7 sq mi. Seattle is nearly twice as large physically. As for population, Seattle has 600,000 while SF weighs in at 800,000. So SF is a bit larger, but it's not an enormous difference.

I agree that our light rail is inadequate, but that's partly because it's *under construction*.
61
Why should the muni driver get involved? Nothing to do with him is it? If the animals can't behave, leave them to it. I drive buses in England and I just keep driving till there's blood involved or someone needs an ambulance. I go to work to earn money, not to care about the trash in the back. As we say, we do the same job as the refuse disposal guys. The shit behind them usually doesn't smell as bad or answer you back.
62
BART is a mess in the morning. Taking it from the East Bay like El Cerrito to Downtown SF is almost like stacking cattle in an elevator. What makes it worse is how riders try to squeeze in while boarding a packed train. I don't want to know how a canned sardine feels like!!! Worst of all is the delay caused by the packing-effect since time is wasted as people shift around to accommodate more cattle so the door can close safely.

I swear, there should be a liability disclaimer on every BART ticket removing BART from liability if you get your arm or leg stuck and subsequently amputated as BART tries its hardest to be on schedule by closing the door while riders try to squeeze inside. This will surely scare people from packing-in a train, and all will be dandy. Raising the speed of those trains will also help in making me reconsider giving up my car. DAMMIT! MOVE THEM TRAINS FASTER!!! Who gives a rat's ass if you kill a dumb rider now and then! MOVE IT!!!! The fear of death will keep BART riders in check!!! Try it...it never fails!
63
BART is a mess in the morning. Taking it from the East Bay like El Cerrito to Downtown SF is almost like stacking cattle in an elevator. What makes it worse is how riders try to squeeze in while boarding a packed train. I don't want to know how a canned sardine feels like!!! Worst of all is the delay caused by the packing-effect since time is wasted as people shift around to accommodate more cattle so the door can close safely.

I swear, there should be a liability disclaimer on every BART ticket removing BART from liability if you get your arm or leg stuck and subsequently amputated as BART tries its hardest to be on schedule by closing the door while riders try to squeeze inside. This will surely scare people from packing-in a train, and all will be dandy. Raising the speed of those trains will also help in making me reconsider giving up my car. DAMMIT! MOVE THEM TRAINS FASTER!!! Who gives a rat's ass if you kill a dumb rider now and then! MOVE IT!!!! The fear of death will keep BART riders in check!!! Try it...it never fails!
64
SF is not good for a public transit system, but good for U.S. standards. I'd put it at #6, but the gap between #1, #4 and #6 are all big gaps. As somebody who likes to live car free, it doesn't quite pass the test. It is a good walking city though, but getting around all points of the city is a no go, plus the few options where it does go aren't great. BART (heavy rail) only has 6 stops in the city on one linear line, not very useful. The rest of the Bay Area is mostly suburban from an East Coast / European standpoint. It simply doesn't match up. There are only 4 cities in the country where you can enjoyably explore virtually all interesting points of the city/metro and not own a car. NYC > by far, then Chicago, DC, and Boston. That's it. Any of the public transit efforts will not change that in the next 30 years. Still, great and beautiful metro, just doesn't match up for my lifestyle. I've lived in both NY and Chicago car free, when I moved to SF I thought I could pull it off but ended up getting a car.

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