[dilyevsky]

BART service area population is comparable to Greater London

> Costs are an America issue, not a BART issue: https://transitcosts.com/new-data

If by "America" you mean NYC/SFBA then sure. You can see in your own link there's massive spread across the locales with some being cheaper than UK per km

> you don't see people criticizing all of our highways around the area do you

uhm what?

[Buuntu]

BART is not a typical metro system in that it serves a lot of suburbs that have very little population density, and was mainly built as a commuter service to get people to downtown SF. So it was never going to have the kind of ridership the Tube has without massive upzoning and more infill stations. Comparing it to the Tube which mostly serves the city of London is not an apples to apples comparison. Look at the costs of building new rail infrastructure in London and it's comparable to here.

> If by "America" you mean NYC/SFBA then sure. You can see in your own link there's massive spread across the locales with some being cheaper than UK per km

What you're talking about in that link is the extension to San Jose, not day to day BART operations. That one does deserve criticism as they've made poor decisions like not doing cut/cover because NIMBYs in San Jose don't want any disruption to streets. So instead we are tunneling to the Earth first. Elsewhere in the world municipalities understand that it's worth temporary disruptions to roads to bring down costs, but of course America is unique and we have to learn these lessons ourselves.

[dilyevsky]

I'm not sure why we've drifted talking about new lines/stations. Both Tube and BART hardly built anything in the last 10 years. I was only remarking on operating costs for what was already built by pandemic and the fact that ridership seems completely untangled from it.

It seems to me that BART management did what most of other government bureaucracies did around here during covid - threw their feet on the desk and took an extended 2+ year sabbatical

[inferiorhuman]

  So it was never going to have the kind of ridership the Tube has
  without massive upzoning and more infill stations.

Yet BART insists on expanding its footprint instead of building infill stations.

[jandrese]

The infill stations don't make much sense because they're also low density housing. The fundamental problem with mass transit in CA is the insane insistence to remain low density despite the overwhelming demand for housing. It's the sin that leads to all of the problems the state faces.

[inferiorhuman]

No, treating BART as a low-density transit system while granting them right of ways in some of the most dense areas of the country doesn't make much sense. 30th & Mission and 98th & San Leandro would've absolutely made sense while neither Millbrae nor SFO should've ever been built.