6/17    In response to this:
                      "Speaking as someone who gets around without a car,
                       you're wrong.  The combined Bay Area transit miasma
                       is one of the most expensive and least effective
                       systems in the country, and it shows no signs of
                       abating as the biggest, most expensive, and least
                       effective part of it (BART) keeps sucking up
                       all the mind share and funding.  Woo hoo, a billion
                       dollars for an extension to Warm Springs, that'll
                       help!  -tom"
        See "BART named #1 Transit System in U.S."
        http://www.bart.gov/news/features/features20040824.asp
        \_ The APTA awards are self-nominated and self-congratulatory; they
           mean nothing.  -tom
           \_ Reference please?
              \_ http://www.apta.com/services/awards.
                 And your above URL, which lauds BART's airport extension
                 that came in 2 years late, more than a billion dollars
                 over budget, and has less than half the ridership BART
                 was projecting.  -tom
                 \_ $1 billion over budget?  WHat was the budget?
                    Although, since it's basically the only part of BART I
                    ride regularly, I like it anyway.
                    \_ The budget was originally $1.2 billion.  Actually,
                       if I recall correctly the budget was $700 million for
                       a multi-modal station west of 101, where you'd get
                       the monorail, but BART insisted on going directly
                       to the airport, which had an estimated cost of $500
                       million more, and made the trip slower.  And it
                       wound up costing over $2 billion.  -tom
                 \_ Hmm, people think BART sucks because they don't ride it,
                    and people don't ride BART because they think it sucks.
                    \_ People ride BART when it's an easy hop from it to their
                       destination, and when their destination has high parking
                       or toll costs.  Other than that, its integration with
                       the rest of public transport, and the imbalance in funds
                       making for lower quality in the rest of public transport
                       makes BART suck.
                 \_ Hmm, people think BART sucks because people don't ride it,
                    and people don't ride BAR because they think BART sucks.
                    and people don't ride BART because they think it sucks.
                       \_ I see many bus lines stopping at every BART station.
                          SF MUNI's light rail also stops at BART stations.
                          And there are free BART shuttles to employers.  (I
                          used to take the one going from Hayward to Foster
                          City.)  How is it not integrated with the rest of
                          public transport?  Suggestions for improvement?
                          \_ Take a trip to Singapore and experience the
                             MRT system. They use a single RFID card to
                             deduct money each time you enter and leave
                             a train station or bus anywhere in Singapore.
                             That doesn't work with BART,MUNI, AC Transit
                             Cal Train, etc.
                             \- SINGAPORE IS THE STANDARD:
                    http://home.lbl.gov:8080/~psb/Singapore/StandardCard12.jpg
                                Of course there is also this aspect of SIN:
                    http://home.lbl.gov:8080/~psb/Singapore/ForeignWorker34.jpg
                          \_ There is no "transit pass"; if you want to take
                             AC Transit to BART to MUNI you need to pay three
                             different times.  BART, when partnering with
                             other transit agencies, insists on BART service
                             being offered at something like 90% of full price,
                             which makes monthly passes pointless.   -tom
                        \_ That is not the way politics works. BART is nice
                           so more middle class people ride transit, so more
                           money is allocated to transit overall. The money
                           would go to freeways instead.
                           \_ Obviously, this hasn't worked, as nearly
                              all the money which goes to "transit" goes
                              straight down BART's money pit.  Been to
                              Warm Springs lately?  -tom
           \_ NYC's MTA won the same award in 2001.
              \_ I was there in 2000 and I didn't like MTA at all.
                 Trains are slow, mainly because they stop every two
                 blocks all the way from Coney Island until
                 Manhattan. Seats are not very comfortable. Stations
                 are dirty and ugly, water leaking from the ceilings
                 in some underground stations. I thought BART was so much
                 better than that.
                 \_ Exactly.  The award means nothing.
                 \_ BART was designed by people who think public transit
                    should be like Disneyland.  -tom
                    \_ OOC, if you were designing public transit, how would you
                       do it?  --dbushong
                       \_ UBAHN! The TUBE!  There are successful models the
                          whole world over.  We'd rather subsidize the auto
                          industry than have good public transit.
                          \_ The Tube?  The Londoners I know bitch about the
                             Underground every goddamn day.  It's really just
                             grass-is-greener syndrome, they have no idea
                             how good they have it.
                       \_ I would be a lot more careful about things like
                          survey results and customer satisfaction.  Cushy
                          chairs may increase customer satisfaction, but if
                          they don't increase ridership, the money spent on
                          cushy chairs should be spent somewhere else.
                          I would build in incentives to use the system
                          a lot (monthly passes at significant discounts).
                          I would build it so transit users are prioritized
                          over auto drivers (instead of transit users
                          subsidizing thousands of free parking spaces as
                          they do on BART).  I would notice that the most
                          successful stations are the ones that are located
                          in neighberhoods, not the ones that are located
                          in the middle of acres of parking lots.  I would
                          use standard rail (unlike BART) to allow for
                          flexibility in use of the right-of-way, and lower
                          build and replacement costs.  For long-haul runs,
                          I would use trains which are fast.  I would
                          make runs like Dublin to Bay Fair short shuttles,
                          rather than redesign the entire schedule (poorly)
                          just because two stations were added.
                          For example.  -tom
              \_ I was there in 1999 and thought it worked pretty well, but I
                 was only in Manhattan/Staten Island.  I rode VTA (mostly bus)
                 and CalTrain in the south bay in 1997-2000 and it was
                 miserable.
                \_ that's nice.  tom is still right.