Congestion charging...

[applez]

...for BART.

I can see why they're doing it, and it probably says something about the limited capacity of the rolling stock - but it also seems quite wrong to me. We should be positively enhancing BART over the car. This sort of thing will only force more people into cars.

Comments

[celestialweasel]

It has always seemed rather freaky to me that
a) BART has no peak / off-peak charging
b) how little discount there is for multi-ride tickets (the equivalent of season tickets).
Clearly lots of trains sit around outside peak hours (you see them sitting around).
It used to be the case that BART was limited by the track / station / signalling etc. not by the number of trains.
If I recall correctly the original 'vision' (when it was first mooted) was
a) some utterly ludicrous number of trains between the East Bay and SF during peak hours
b) some rather implausible percentage of people commuting would use it.

What I'm getting at is if the limit isn't the number of trains, presumably upgrading it would be a monumentally long and expensive job so some sort of 'congestion charging' as you put it would be necessary.

BART and the Bay Area

[applez]

Most of my specific responses are sourced from the fact that BART is oddly simplistic for a geographically difficult area. I think most of these service functions and rider demand arise from system complexity, and BART has only really started to achieve that in the last 10 years.

Consider: BART only really integrated populace San Mateo County, SFO, and Caltrain in the last 5 years (11 if you count groundbreaking start)...almost 40 years after the system was originally conceived. The Oakland Airport connection has always required a bus-bridge, and the Richmond connection to the Amtrak Capitol Corridor is also a 15-year conception/implementation. Bus connections have been generally good, but weakly integrated and entirely dependent on local-county bus service for quality control. Integrated CarShare programs are only 7 years old, and service too few to be much more than a critical niche

Re: BART and the Bay Area

[celestialweasel]

Yes, clearly BART suffers from being essentially a commuter railway for S.F. when I imagine journey patterns are much more complex.
BUT the loop from S.F -> Oakland -> Fremont -> San Jose -> round the bottom of the bay -> SFO -> S.F. would be ludicrously long for a commuter rail system (specifically one without toilets).

Re: BART and the Bay Area

[applez]

Porta-buckets? ;-)

EDIT: Some BART patrons are not the least bit nonplussed by the absence of facilities. ;-p

In fairness, a South Bay loop would have plenty of 'edge city' traffic - comparatively few people in San Jose have a commuting need in San Francisco. Likewise, a Dumbarton connection will mostly take away San Mateo Bridge car traffic.

Also, in extremis, any rider can get off at the next station, and all stations have facilities - some of them quite nice, if utilitarian.