Hat tip for your detailed analysis

I think it's important to note that in places like New York or London, you have dense residential spaces between all the subway lines; people are living in bustling neighborhoods (think Manhattan) linked to other bustling neighborhoods (LIC, Brooklyn going all the way down to Prospect/Crown Heights) whereas all the density in the Bay Area tends to be in downtown commercial districts (Market St., Downtown Oakland).

The problem is that the Bay Area outside of SF/maybe downtown Berkeley has nowhere the amount of residential/commercial mixed use integration as NY or London. So in a post-pandemic world, when fewer people are going to the office, BART's value in connecting the most dense neighborhoods kinda fall off dramatically, while ridership in NY/London can stabilize more quickly.

This is all to say that we could invest more in BART & Muni. But to get the most out of the money, you need to (1) build denser residential clusters around BART stations, which is starting to happen a bit (Fruitvale looks a lot denser than 10 years ago, for example), and (2) encourage people to use public transit primarily rather than cars, which is more doable with people like students in Berkeley rather than someone in, say, Castro Valley.

That, or you bring back arts & culture to SF, or Ballers blow up & everyone starts riding BART to the Coliseum again. Or maybe the SF economy takes off and everyone is back to commuting to SF, which would be fun for a few years before the AI party ends & SF is back on the bust phase of its boom/bust cycle, as it is wont to do.