I just read that BART wants to raise fairs and parking fees next year AGAIN
Services continues to diminish. It is at below 2008 pre-economy crash levels with no service restoration in site. BART is talking about rebuilding Montgomery and Embarcadero BART Stations when the trains are already so crowded you can't Board so what good is that going to do unless BART starts running trains more often first????
I really wonder about the people who run BART sometimes. I'm very disappointed in BART's Board for taking so long with East County after we've been paying property taxes forever and ever and ever, as well as the rest of the fees and increased fares.
You also pay for BART in the form of vandalism, break-ins and people hitting your car.
IS BART REALLY WORTH IT ANY MORE?
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Here's the
Here's the Link.
http://www.mercurynews.com/traffic/ci_22573645/bart-fares-and-parking-fees-are-going-up
With the ridership at an all
With the ridership at an all time high and they have capacity issues now.
fares have not kept up with inflation, so BART is cheaper than it was when it opened.
Price of driving your car has gotten SUPER expensive now..
To answer your question.. YES..
Honestly, if it was a real business, they probably could raise the fares by quite a bit, which would reduce the number of people on the train, but there would still be so many riders that they'd be better off.. The price of BART would probably still be cheaper than driving.
And I bet most people would be happy to pay a little bit more and see a few more options with regards to seating because some people would feel it's to expensive.
Fares may not have kept up
Fares may not have kept up with inflation, but neither have salaries.
Workers are making less in inflation-adjusted dollars now than they were when BART opened.
If they raised their fares much more, people like me would go back to driving most days.
Since I don't have to pay for parking on either end the cost difference between BART and driving is less than a dollar, and driving is faster and more convenient.
Yes BART is worth it. It's
Yes BART is worth it.
It's extrmely cheap for what you are getting. Compare it to London or other train services around the world. What you now save on gas and parking makes up for it. Now $4.30 a gallon of gas
Things could be better of course. More pro-active police would be a plus.
An all out offensive on fare evasion would bring in an extra $10m a year
Allow coffee shops in stations and allow people to drink their tera and coffee in trains.
"An all out offensive on fare
"An all out offensive on fare evasion would bring in an extra $10m a year"
If they just fixed the damn stations to make it harder to just jump over the fences and activated the damn alarms on the emergency exits they could stop most fare evasion.
Plus they need to add fences to keep homeless people from shitting in the escalators at night. Fixing those every week costs a ton of money.
Wow, that is some Grade-A
Wow, that is some Grade-A super-retarded logic.
BART is not a private, for-profit company. As long as they are being subsidized by taxpayers BART should be doing everything it can to move as many people as possible as cheaply as possible.
I personally don't think that
I personally don't think that BART is worth taking after the double increases: from parking and in fares. The trains continue to get packed, the agents are rude and fares rise on a continuous basis.
You are paying more to get less.
I wouldn't mind the fare increases if we actually got something more such as clean seats, less crowded trains, or even more trains in operation to reduce wait times.
If it goes up much more and
If it goes up much more and we don't see real improvements, I'll go back to driving. Maybe buy a motorcycle.
Sick of being asked to pay more and more to get crammed in like a sardine while I see fare-evading a-holes every day jumping fare gates and using the elevators to avoid paying.
One big problem is BART has
One big problem is BART has not raised fares according to inflation, therefore the price is cheaper now than when it opened. The "new" system cost less to maintain also because it was new.
Now the system is aging, maintenance cost go up. They should have kept up with the cost of inflation over time, so that as the system ages they could charge more to keep things nice.
Even the workers have been going backwards, I read they are about 12% behind over the last 8 years due to no raises, and givebacks in the last two contracts to help BART with "Projected" deficits (that never materialized). They also gave up COLA increases back in the early 1990's (which they shouldn't have done).
The bridges of the bay area were smart and they have gone up MORE than the cost of inflation, knowing it cost more to maintain something as it ages..
A good example is buying a new car.. A new car shouldn't have high maintenance costs, but over time it should rise (faster than inflation).
If BART had at least kept up to at least inflation, the minimum would be about $2.50, That in itself would reduce the number of people on the trains, without affecting money coming in since many riders would still use the system. And the fare would seem high, until you look at how much everything else goes up due to inflation. But they'd have more money to put back into the system, and you'd reduce the number of "seedy" crowd.
Parking Fees are another problem. <$5 for parking? In the BAY AREA? Really? I pay $15/day at our building. Some of BART's policies seem to put the burden on taxpayers, instead of the riders that use the system.
Simply keep up with inflation first, then get more to make the system something people want to ride. If you fall behind inflation, everything falls apart.. Like Fare Evasion, they'd have more money to tackle problems that require money to fix.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_wage
BART's parking fees should go up, but fares are fares shouldn't.
The "seedy" crowd is only a problem because BART has ignored their fare evasion problems for decades so that crappy people know they can get a free ride easier on BART than on any other transit system in the Bay Area.
If they had put a stop to it early on, they wouldn't be in the situation they're in now. Why should the riders have to pay extra because the management was too fucking stupid to deal with a problem that people have been complaining about for decades?
Why on earth would BART
Why on earth would BART design their elevators to exit OUTSIDE of the fare gates in the first place?
BART was designed by idiots
BART was designed by idiots in the 1970s who had visions of a fruity leftist utopia dancing in their heads.
Rather than examining what did and didn't work in other transit systems around the world, they decided to start from scratch and design a "perfect" system which has been a spectacular failure in terms of design.
It's a very valuable system and a crucial part of the Bay Area's travel infrastructure, but if they hadn't been such idiots when they built the thing and had used standardized parts and common sense, the system wouldn't have half the problems it does now.