I lived in DC for a few years before I moved to SF, spending a few years there as well. DC Metro is not perfect by any means, but I was really surprised at how much better transit was in the district than the bay area considering they have zero weather issues to contend with and are - ahem - home to a tremendous amount of technological talent.
My personal observations are really that California are just truly fucking terrible at this sort of thing. Ironic considering they are such a huge economy and so wealthy. In northern California PCH (pacific coast highway) has been closed for over 15 months due to a rockslide. In southern california, a huge segment of ACH (angeles crest highway, one of my favorite places on earth) has been closed since 2023! You cannot drive from one end of the range to the other at this time.
China would have fixed these issues in weeks. For all the cash and people they have, Cali really manages to drop the ball on these things constantly. Don't even get me started on high speed rail that was built out in the middle of buttfuck farmland from Madera to Shafter. Like a stairway to nowhere.
> There's no way you can lose 60% of your customers and not have major problems.
There is a way, but (with how much they used to crow that (unlike those other big, fat, LOSER mass-transit companies in the area) 80->95% of their budget came from rider fares) the BART management pretty clearly really hates to do it: Make up the shortfall with government money.
Are they actually building housing near the new bart stations?
South Bay is doing everything it can to make sure no new houses are serviced by existing train route. They even tore out the line that ran through most of the residential areas decades ago.
That line serviced Cupertino, Saratoga, Los Gatos, the San Lorenzo Valley and Santa Cruz. It ran all the way to SF, so it must have serviced many other cities on the peninsula.
My personal observations are really that California are just truly fucking terrible at this sort of thing. Ironic considering they are such a huge economy and so wealthy. In northern California PCH (pacific coast highway) has been closed for over 15 months due to a rockslide. In southern california, a huge segment of ACH (angeles crest highway, one of my favorite places on earth) has been closed since 2023! You cannot drive from one end of the range to the other at this time.
China would have fixed these issues in weeks. For all the cash and people they have, Cali really manages to drop the ball on these things constantly. Don't even get me started on high speed rail that was built out in the middle of buttfuck farmland from Madera to Shafter. Like a stairway to nowhere.