Public Transit in SF

September 13th, 2008 Alex

San Francisco Bart is considering charging different rates depending on the time you take the train. I think that is the stupidest idea. Their goal is to have people adjust and take the train at different times to alleviate congestion. Obviously the busiest times for public transit would be during commute hours since everyone has to get to work at a certain time. Just because it is cheaper to take BART at a later time does not mean everyone has the luxury of getting to work later or earlier.

It is suppose to be a good thing that the ridership is increasing for BART as people are choosing to take public transportation but yet, the city wants to punish people for it. This is coming from the city that is trying to be more green and promotes “Spare the Air Days”. Some of the newer stations are also not getting too much ridership and if it costs more to commute into the city, they will even get less people to ride the train. Some people are choosing to take BART because of higher gas prices and they are also being more green. If the prices increase, more people may just go back to driving to work and be less green.

Obviously the best solution would be to have more trains and have trains run more frequently. In Japan, millions of people commute using public trains everyday and they always find ways of making the commute efficient for people. There are other ways that the city can improve on making the BART stations more efficient such as making faster elevators and escalators and having more passageways and improving the flow of people traffic entering/exiting the stations.

On a side note, I hope Proposition 1A on the Nov. 4 ballot passes. This proposal was added in at the last minute by Arnold Schwarzenegger that would cost an estimated $32 billion for the construction of a 800 mile high speed rail system between Northern and Southern California. The train would travel at 220 mph and would take 2 1/2 hours to travel between San Francisco and Los Angeles. This system should have been implemented a long time ago because if it passes, we wont be able to ride it until at least the year 2020.

SFGate article on BART

SFGate article on Prop 1A

Entry Filed under: Green Tech,Local