I live in Oakland and am frightened of taking BART after hearing many horror stories from friends. If I, a healthy man in his 20s, am afraid to take BART, imagine how intimidating it must be for women and the elderly.
I live here and take BART all the time. My partner has some car crash trauma so unless I'm driving, she's using transit to get around and she generally feels safe. It can get sketchy at night on the weekdays but otherwise neither of us have had problems on BART.
FWIW people complain about sketchy people and odd comments on BART, but I've also been followed by a driver I merged in front of who circled the block, cut me off, tried to follow me home, then flashed a knife on me and threatened to shank me. Last year someone got mad at me on the freeway then brake checked me at an exit. People run reds here all the time too, which is scary on both car, bike, and foot. As long as I use BART before 11 PM on weekdays I never really feel more unnsafe than I do when driving, but I also am not the type that likes to live away from people. I enjoy cities.
Why is there so much rage there? I can't understand how anyone has the spare time (and willingness to needlessly burn fuel) over petty traffic incidents like that.
Heh I don't know, but I was shook. The shanking incident, I was driving with my partner which made it more shocking. We ended up driving in circles a bit to make sure they couldn't follow us to our home.
Ok but this is not the reason. People don’t ride BART because half of working professionals now work at home and don’t need it. You can clearly see this in the fact that weekend BART riders is most of the way back to pre-COVID levels. Riders are not afraid of the system. It just doesn’t serve their weekday needs right now.
By the way freeway shootings in the Bay Area tripled to more than one every day and plenty of people still use the freeway.
I road BART on Tuesday and it wasn't scary. You repeating what you heard might just create an echo chamber that amplifies something that isn't true and gets other people to believe it.
Counter anecdata, I rode Bart last night from 16th mission at ~9PM. First I waited 45mins for a train, then all the available seats on that car were covered in piles of trash, and panhandlers hassled the elderly couple next to me.
I think BART is generally tolerable, but you're dismissing how obviously fucking terrible the BART experience can be and regularly is. A lot of people aren't willing to deal with that roulette, nor should they have to. Other transit systems aren't this bad.
That's true. Even if I intellectualize a trip on BART as risk-free, it's still anxiety inducing and involves inconvenience I would volunteer to avoid if I had a car.
I took BART the other day to go watch the As v Yankees (missed the perfect game yesterday by one day god damn it). Anyway, it was safe both ways and quite pleasant.
FWIW people complain about sketchy people and odd comments on BART, but I've also been followed by a driver I merged in front of who circled the block, cut me off, tried to follow me home, then flashed a knife on me and threatened to shank me. Last year someone got mad at me on the freeway then brake checked me at an exit. People run reds here all the time too, which is scary on both car, bike, and foot. As long as I use BART before 11 PM on weekdays I never really feel more unnsafe than I do when driving, but I also am not the type that likes to live away from people. I enjoy cities.