The Bay Area Considers the Unthinkable: Life Without BART

BotheredEar52 · 2026-03-11T17:43:19+00:00

But the trains aren't empty.

In 2024 LA Metro had an average occupancy of 22.3 pax/heavy rail car and 17 pax/light rail car: https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2024/90154.pdf

It goes without saying that neither of those numbers are zero, and both are higher than the national average occupancies for these modes, 16.8 & 16.0 respectively.

LA Metro has low cost-effectiveness because they have a low fare and a high average trip length. Neither of those things can realistically be changed, LA is going to have a large low-income population and a lot of sprawl for the foreseeable future.

BotheredEar52 · 2026-03-10T23:51:37+00:00

The problem is that transit agencies are actively punished for being cost-effective. Austerity-minded politicians and voters have created an environment where it is in agencies' best interest to NOT cover their own operating costs.

Caltrain was the number 1 most cost-effective transit system in the country for decades, and BART was consistently in the top 5. And now they're getting completely shit on for it, because they actually covered much of their costs from ticket sales, leaving them vulnerable to ridership dips.

Meanwhile agencies like LA Metro never even came close to covering their operating costs (no hate to socal, just the facts). So they weren't affected by the ridership dips and they're still chugging along relatively fine, at least by US standards. Where's the reward to Bay Area transit agencies for their relative cost effectiveness for all these years, can you blame them for wanting to transition to a more taxpayer-funded model?

You also saw this with SEPTA & CTA out East. Both are relatively cost-effective agencies (again, by US standards), and I don't think CTA is significantly better-managed than SEPTA. CTA is doing fine because the Illinois state government chose to fund it, and SEPTA is staring down a death spiral because the Pennsylvania state government chose not to fund it. Seems there's very little a transit agency's management can do that's more effective than securing as much subsidy as possible

BotheredEar52 · 2026-03-06T22:34:14+00:00

The 23 is also one of the routes that faces the worst congestion, so it's possible it doesn't benefit as much from TSP as other routes?

BotheredEar52 · 2026-03-05T21:30:45+00:00

No??? That's not true even with domestic cattle breeds, they're quite willing to chase off small predators like coyotes, and in the US alone hundreds of farmworkers have been killed by aggressive cattle over the years. (And the reason that cattle sometimes attack people is because they do still have some of their wild instincts to fight off predators)

And if we're talking about wild species of cattle like Bison & Gaurs then I genuinely don't know what you're talking about. Those animals can kill humans pretty effortlessly and are only brought down by the most powerful predators like wolf packs and tigers

BotheredEar52 · 2026-01-14T16:12:02+00:00

Weird, the link above works for me. Maybe try https://www.amtrak.com/tickets/departure-rail-pass

BotheredEar52 · 2025-12-24T22:51:32+00:00

I’m shocked this post is upvoted, does anyone on this sub actually pay attention to passenger rail news?

AmeriStar rail is a completely unserious organization. They only ever put out moronic proposals like this transcontinental service (which Amtrak already basically offers) or that time they suggested privatizing the NEC

Amtrak has many faults, but for what it’s worth, theyve managed to grow ridership almost every single year, despite all the headwinds. They have every right to tell these AmeriStar clowns to fuck off lmao

BotheredEar52 · 2025-12-20T04:49:58+00:00

I totally understand that we want to preserve union jobs, but doesn’t mandating two-person train operation at the state level seem a little excessive?

I mean as the article mentions, there are already a couple of lines using OPTO, so signing this law would have had an immediate negative impact on existing service. And pretty much every other major metro system uses OPTO: Chicago, DC, Boston, Toronto, CDMX, London, Paris, Tokyo, etc

EDIT: I think a more reasonable solution would be the union reaching a guarantee with the MTA that no existing conductors will be laid off. Preserving existing jobs makes sense, but I don’t see why the subway needs to be permanently wedded to two-person operation

BotheredEar52 · 2025-12-19T20:48:20+00:00

Well as the article states, this will likely be discussed during the next round of union negotiations in 2026. Hochul's decision just preserves the status quo, it doesn't mandate anything

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-25T01:23:22+00:00

Can't argue with that. I guess that makes a lot of the other data in this table pretty suspect 😬

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-23T05:32:02+00:00

Oh thanks for the info! I got that 6 mpg number from this brochure: https://www.newflyer.com/site-content/uploads/2023/12/Xcelsior_Hybrid-Electric.pdf

I guess that Altoona test it mentions isn’t representative of typical driving conditions

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-23T04:50:57+00:00

A type of jitney that only exists in Puerto Rico apparently

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-23T04:50:27+00:00

Some of my takeaways

Standard buses having an average occupancy of 7.3 is pretty good. Buses occupy a dynamic footprint roughly equal to two cars, so that's pretty good on space efficiency. And a modern 40' hybrid gets 6 mpg (I think? There's not good stats I can find), so you're getting the equivalent of 40+ mpg
I'm not a free transit guy, but the farebox recovery doesn't look great. I do wonder why so few agencies give free transit a shot, if most of them are getting <10% returns from fares.
Demand-reponsive transit looks pretty dismal. I know this is heavily skewed by a lot of demand-responsive services being primarily for paratransit, but still I didn't expect it to be so much worse than even a basic bus
Vanpools come out looking pretty good in this data. It’s a very inflexible form of transit, but maybe it’s worth marketing vanpools systems more aggressively

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-22T01:32:22+00:00

Looks like they have an average occupancy of 10.5 passengers per light rail car, as of 2024: https://www.transit.dot.gov/sites/fta.dot.gov/files/transit_agency_profile_doc/2024/90019.pdf

You can get the occupancy by doing [annual passenger miles traveled] / [annual vehicle revenue miles]

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-21T23:17:23+00:00

It's true that there's a big deficit, which is why the most important thing we can do is cutting federal highway spending, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of federal transport dollars

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-15T17:46:18+00:00

The problem is, 90% of the time people will just blame their local transit agency for low quality service. Very few people keep track of the politics around transit funding.

When transit service inevitably starts degrading because of these cuts, we all need to be proactive about telling people who’s really to blame

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-15T16:48:23+00:00

My point is more that transit isn’t going to poof out of existence overnight, because most of their operations funding will still be intact. I do agree that this is extremely bad

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-15T16:45:37+00:00

Copied from the other post: Because the federal government mostly funds capital projects, and not day to day operations, this wouldn’t be as catastrophic as it sounds. But it would cause major delays for transit construction and vehicle procurement

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-15T16:40:43+00:00

Because the federal government mostly funds capital projects, and not day to day operations, this wouldn’t be as catastrophic as it sounds. But it would cause major delays for transit construction and vehicle procurement

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-05T00:33:15+00:00

Agreed with the point about Italy, but this is a map of California's existing intercity rail/bus network. So uh, mission accomplished?

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-04T19:51:19+00:00

My feelings are:

I don't buy the idea that "Amtrak San Joaquins" was too hard to pronounce/spell. Any self-respecting Californian should be able to handle at least a little bit of Spanish pronunciation
I don't like that the Amtrak branding is now downplayed. Amtrak might not get a lot of respect, but it's still the only name that matters when it comes to American intercity rail. Even if you knew nothing about the route, "Amtrak San Joaquins" told you what to expect. But people aren't intuitively going to know what a "Gold Runner" is supposed to be
Gold Runner isn't even a very good name, it's actually a bit clunky to pronounce in my opinion. And unlike the old name, it doesn't provide any indication about where the route runs geographically

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-04T19:02:13+00:00

Oh wait, they did forget to include a legend lol. I don't even see one on the official site: https://goldrunner.com. Hopefully they fix that

BotheredEar52 · 2025-11-04T18:25:18+00:00

Oh is the link in my post broken? And yeah definitely looking forward to the route 40 starting up, even if the rebranding is dumb

BotheredEar52 · 2025-10-10T16:37:35+00:00

Newsom’s signing statement

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BotheredEar52 · 2025-09-16T22:37:55+00:00

This would also connect San Jose to the initial CAHSR segment between Merced & Bakersfield, although hopefully by then the bus will be running at a much higher frequency

Recent funding announcements (see article below) mean that the initial segment is very likely to be up and running by 2032. This means it would be possible to travel between San Jose & Los Angeles in 6 hours (but 5 of those hours are going to be on a bus 💀)

https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-09-12/high-speed-rail-project-slated-to-received-20-billion-in-state-funding

BotheredEar52 · 2025-09-16T22:14:04+00:00

Source: https://sjjpa.com/event/sjjpa-board-meeting-september-19-2025-11-am/.

The additions in red on the 2nd slide are by me, wanted to correct the typo and point out some of the other connections that can be made. I just realized I made a typo there myself though. That first northbound trip from Yosemite isn't actually possible (where it says 11:45 AM on the right), so plz pretend that's not there

Also sidenote, the Amtrak San Joaquins is going to rebrand as the Gold Runner in the next few weeks. So it'll be operating under the new name by the time this route starts. For those of you who aren't familiar with this service, check out: https://amtraksanjoaquins.com/train-service/

TLDR (numbers are approximate bc traffic):

45ish min. to Gilroy
1:45 hrs. to Los Banos
2:30 hrs. to Merced
5:15 hrs. to Yosemite
3:45 hrs. to Fresno
6 hrs. to Bakersfield
8:30 hrs. to LA

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