[mikysco]

I feel like SF residents' aversion to new transit projects is unfortunate but totally reasonable... walk anywhere in SF near a BART (subway) stop and you face open drug use, trash, and other problems nobody wants in the neighborhood they call home. It's not like these are intractable problems - other major cities manage to keep their subway stops and surrounding areas clean & pleasant to use.

The case against BART expansion is made by the experience & externalities of existing BART.

[inamberclad]

Except most BART stations are fine. Even 24th and Mission, the most notorious, is actually really not that bad. Once people use it, they'll hate it less. However, most people will steer clear for their entire lives.

[pianoben]

Man, that's not even remotely close to my experience. I used that station (and 16th st) regularly and saw:

- frequent drug use - frequent drug sales - congested and filthy station entrances/exits - zonked out naked dudes starting fights on the platform (yes more than once or twice) - liquid poop on station stairs

I wish I was exaggerating but... this is just how it is around those stations.

[dopeboy]

Depends on your definition of bad. Urine smells, homeless people, and knowledge that muggings typically happen around that area?

I’d call that bad. I’m with you - we need more public transit in the bay. But there’s a huge swath of people where that Bart experience just isn’t going to work.

[baby]

> knowledge that muggings typically happen around that area

I witnessed one in a bus near tartine in the mission. Safety is really this thing that only becomes an issue after you witness it or become victim of it.

[dpe82]

We must not use the same 24th and Mission BART stop. IMHO 24th and 16th stops are disgusting. I use them both often but I'm never happy to.

[homonculus1]

Not that bad? Hate it less? What an exciting pitch for the new nuisance in your neighborhood.

I'm not familiar with that area but I can infer that it must be pretty miserable for people who care about their surroundings, respect public spaces, and work hard to maintain a high standard in the environments they occupy. More power to them.

[confidantlake]

I lived very close to that station about a decade ago. Never thought it was that bad. I always thought civic center was much worse.

[pianoben]

I feel like it changed noticeably around 2012-2014. Before then it was okay, and since then it's terribad. Basically, in lockstep with the skyrocketing cost-of-living in SF associated with the city's tech boom.

[diebeforei485]

It's pretty simple - don't tolerate this sort of behavior around public transit stations. Transit riders deserve a safe and clean commute. In the absence of that, they'll retreat to the safe clean cocoon of their cars.

[logifail]

> It's pretty simple - don't tolerate this sort of behavior around public transit stations

(I hope it's not seen as outrageous to suggest this, but) perhaps one shouldn't tolerate this sort of behavior anywhere, ever?

Everyone deserves safe and clean public spaces.

[rhaway84773]

No one thinks “hey every place should not be safe”. That’s obviously what everyone wants. However, given that in practice we have huge swathes of places that are in bad condition you need to start by prioritizing. And it obviously makes a lot of sense to prioritize a public transit station, which not only has much higher usage than a random sidewalk, and is far easier and cheaper to keep safe because it has a much more limited geographic footprint and the major sections are not wide open easily accessible spaces but are controlled by gates that require tickets, than it is to do a wide open sidewalk.

It obviously makes sense to start with the space that gives you the most return for the lowest cost and that would be any public space that has the highest usage and density, such as public transit stations.

Even better, imposing safety in those transit stations will also have a significant effect in improving safety through the length of the actual BART train ride because access to the train is limited to the few stations.

This is not true of a random sidewalk.

[hnav]

Well the people who smoke fent off of a piece of foil aren't going to disappear so you have to put them somewhere. If you were to put them somewhere in Pac Heights where the residents actively work against public transit that'd displease them, so they go where the community is less civically engaged and less powerful, like next to public transit. In effect there's a feedback loop where the area next to BART is only going to get grimier and Pac Heights are going to get NIMBYer.

[homonculus1]

Put them in jail. There's no reason the general public should have to deal with them anywhere, rich or poor. The fact that we do is a policy decision.

[mikysco]

You're correct, of course, but the public good from improving the safety/cleanliness of shared infrastructure like transit has a much higher ROI than your "average" public space. Both have societal good but improving transit stops (especially rail) deserves higher priority than your average sidewalk

[logifail]

Our eldest (just turned 13 :eek:) walks down an "average sidewalk" to the railway station, rides a train (alone) into town, and walks an "average sidewalk" to his school, and back. Every weekday. He commented on drunks hanging around the (in-town) station in the late afternoon just a few days ago.

Everywhere should be safe.

[afarrell]

> Everyone deserves safe and clean public spaces.

There is a cost to this and that cost includes the coercive use of force to prevent that behavior.

[incone123]

What causes people to congregate at transit stops? Is it something that can be changed without use of force?

[afarrell]

In most cases, yes. Most.

[baby]

That's pretty much me. I tried public transport when I moved to SF (came from Europe, didn't even have a driver license) and ended up being like "nope". Got my driver license and use uber mostly. I'm not putting myself in danger, fuck it, I'll just spend my money on a car + uber.

[CoastalCoder]

> It's pretty simple - don't tolerate this sort of behavior around public transit stations.

IIUC, it's only that simple at a very superficial level. I.e., the complexity arises when you have to answer what you do about the offenders.

TL;DR:

(I'm not actually from SF, so apologies if I've misunderstood residents' views on this.)

Do you punish them? I get the impression most San Franciscans see drug addicts as pitiable victims of bad choices or the opioid epidemic. So behavior modification via punishment would be evil.

Do you put imprison the drug users for the safety of others? That sounds like punishment, which again most SF'ers reject.

Do you put the drug users in mental institutions / forced rehab? I suspect this reminds people of the dark days of abusive mental institutions, and is therefore rejected.

And what about people who are clean and sober, aren't homeless by choice, but for whom public housing isn't available? I.e., they're not mugging anyone, but they can't find anywhere else to sleep, poop, or pee? You have the sticky question of whether or not residents are legally obligated to have a home.

[thethethethe]

> I feel like SF residents' aversion to new transit projects is unfortunate but totally reasonable

SF residents don't have an aversion to funding transit and transit projects, see measure L that just passed with 2-1 support.

> walk anywhere in SF near a BART (subway) stop and you face open drug use, trash, and other problems nobody wants in the neighborhood they call home

Singling out BART subway stops in your anecdote is disingenuous when you consider that there are only 8 BART stops in San Francisco, 3 of which are similar to what you describe, but there are _113 MUNI stops_. Additionally, MUNI has ~90 million annual riders while BART only has ~27 million while covering a geographic area 10X the size of MUNI

[Karrot_Kream]

Only Civic Center and 16th Mission are like this. 24th can be a bit gross, but not always. The rest of the system is fairly clean. The problem is that everyone judges the BART by its worst stations but nobody decides whether or not to drive by the horror of a car crash, and that's a cultural issue. Americans culturally erase car trauma but amplify transit trauma.

[VancouverMan]

It's reasonable to judge a transit system based on its worst stations. If those happen to be the stations that a traveler will be using, then what's going on at those stations will have a significant impact on that traveler's experience.

[Karrot_Kream]

Sure but those stations generally don't have "nice folks" (hate using that term, given that I grew up in an area that would be avoided by these nice folks, but most on HN are generationally upper-middle class so) living near them. 16th and Mission is the exception because of the rapidly gentrified Valencia street, but Civic Center is very much not where upper-middle class folks live. The BART station nearest to me is clean and nice. Proximity to BART generally increases property values and rents.

[baby]

They're like the main stations that everyone use :D

[Karrot_Kream]

Huh? This is publicly available information published by BART. Civic Center is used a lot, but isn't in the top 3. 16th St is more on par with stops in Berkeley or Oakland and isn't used much. 24th St is used even less. Civic Center is used much more often as an exit station (e.g. to commute to) than an entry station (e.g. where people live.) The most used stops are Embarcadero, Montgomery, and Powell.

https://www.bart.gov/about/reports/ridership

[runarberg]

I’m curious, have you waked near a BART station recently? If so, which?

If you go to an average BART station, say, Balboa Park, or North Berkley they are completely fine, not noticeable different then other areas in the same neighborhood. If you go to a newer stations (say Dublin / Pleasanton) this is even less so.

And for that matter I’m not sure your parent is actually providing any correct insights. I’m not aware of much backlash from immediate residents against new transit projects in their neighborhood (such as the muni realignment near SF state or the Van Ness BRT lane).

[grandmczeb]

> I’m not aware of much backlash from immediate residents against new transit projects in their neighborhood

The Geary Bart extension was famously killed by local opposition. Although that was more a reaction to the store closures caused by the market street subway construction, not drug use or crime.

[hodgesrm]

> walk anywhere in SF near a BART (subway) stop and you face open drug use, trash, and other problems nobody wants in the neighborhood they call home.

Is there any evidence these problems are actually related to BART? The Tenderloin district has equally bad or worse sections away from the Civic Center station. Market Street as a whole below Castro has had serious issues for decades.

[larsiusprime]

I would posit that if the city had a direct interest in the land value immediately surrounding the transit station -- as is the case in many successful Asian transit projects -- they would have a much stronger incentive to make that land value go up, by making it cleaner and safer and more well maintained.

[baby]

> other major cities manage to keep their subway stops and surrounding areas clean & pleasant to use

I wouldn't say so, the homeless crisis is very much a US issue

[andbberger]

the case against BART expansion is that the urban core is underserved, as a direct result of BART hoovering up all transit funding and available ROWs

what you're describing is a you problem. SF residents who are well served by transit overwhelming favor transit expansion, it's the residents who are underserved (sunset, outer richmond) who oppose

[WalterSear]

This just isn't the case.

In my daily experience, BART station QoL issues reflect the neighbourhoods they are in.