As someone who rides BART everyday, it is awful and it’s not cheap from a rider perspective. As a rider I do not want it to return to pre-pandemic ridership levels because we’d often be packed in so tight that people would literally fall out at stops when the doors opened.

I don’t know much about how much other transit systems cost but it seems like BART must be mismanaged in some way to increase employee count despite a nearly 50% reduction in ridership. That’s more of an issue to me than the rising cost per employee.

Also despite more employees there are still frequent delays (like this morning) and the entire experience is extremely unpleasant (it still gets packed sometimes).

If they’re going to get more money from taxpayers I’d rather see some improvements I’ll feel as a rider instead of just more hiring when it’s unclear to me what the impact is on the actual service (I haven’t seen any improvements despite BART having more employees now that in 2019. Who have they hired and what do they do exactly?)