[nradov]

Under funded relative to what? What would the optimal amount of funding be? Are there ways that BART could cut costs to free up budget for IT upgrades?

I'm not trying to be snarky, it's just that for regular citizens who don't have time to attend BART BoD and committee meetings it's almost impossible to tell whether existing money is being wisely spent. So people get the impression that taxes are going up while service quality declines and assume the money must be going into someone's pocket.

[lokar]

In nearly all of the US there is an unresolved (and perhaps unresolvable) debate about to what extent public transit should get a subsidy vs pay for itself.

The dominant position (even in CA) has been no or little subsidy.

[aafanah]

The bigger issue is not just the upgrade but how brittle the system is. Modern practices like rolling releases or safe fallback modes are standard elsewhere. Critical infrastructure should not be this fragile.

[lokar]

I would assume the IT side is just as underfunded as the rest of the system, probably more (they will prioritize safety and rolling stock)

[flerchin]

In no way does BART pay for itself. 22% of their operating costs are covered by fares. Public transit is an amenity paid for by taxes. Private transport also has its own subsidy, but it's not even close.

https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/2024-12/BART_FY24%2...

[abeppu]

I think that's a misleading statement:

- Prior to the pandemic, BART got >60% of its operating costs from riders (p9 in your linked doc)

- Ridership is still way down relative to 2019 even though costs are up in absolute terms

- Even from 2020 data, BART was hitting 50% https://lovetransit.substack.com/p/most-profitable-public-tr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farebox_recovery_ratio#United_...

The subsidy in BART is higher than anyone would like it now, but I do think that's still a transient response to the pandemic; either more people will have to eventually go back to riding public transit, or we'll need to drop the emergency funding it's been receiving.

[flerchin]

Well I wasn't trying to be misleading. I do agree with what you've said wrt historical ridership, but it's been 6 years. BART docs imply that RTO is driving ridership back. We may be in a new normal wrt remote working patterns. Dropping emergency funding would, imo, lead to a death spiral of reduced maintenance and service which further reduces ridership. We can have nice things, paid for by taxes.

[roboror]

But if single-occupancy vehicles don't cover the costs of the infrastructure they use, the ridership moving from public to private may incur even higher costs.

[hansvm]

Which is a bit shocking in its own way, even if the numbers were break-even instead of 20-50%.

Public transit is widely touted as being more efficient than the alternatives, but for most trips it's cheaper (factoring in maintenance, depreciation, gas, etc, and pretending that BART is as convenient and reliable) to drive than to take BART, and not by a little bit.

Income just from gas taxes, tolls, and registration cover ~half the infrastructure maintenance, so there exists effectively another $200-$300 per capita per annum subsidy, but that's nowhere near enough to make BART cost less than just driving, even if I had to account those extra fees against my driving.

Why is that? How is BART worse than driving and still losing money when it's supposedly a more efficient solution? Is it just low volume? Is the organization making bad bets? Is the premise that trains are more efficient flawed?

[bkettle]

There are also a variety of ways that "efficiency" can be defined; your comment considers monetary efficiency, but both modes of transport have costs on society that are not considered in the numerical operating costs (pollution, opportunity cost of land use, healthcare costs due to accidents...)

[kelnos]

The problem is that you have to go all-in on transit to make people want to ride it. You need to have frequent, reliable service, clean trains/buses, and feelings of safety. You also need the infrastructure to be designed well: build subways rather than surface-level trains. If you can't build subways, elevate the trains, or at least do your best to grade-separate, and give priority to those trains at traffic signals. Buses should have dedicated lanes.

Transit in the bay area fails at pretty much all of those things. Service is just infrequent enough to make things difficult, and unreliable enough that you worry that a late or missing bus or train will make you late. Cleanliness is inconsistent, and there are often people on drugs riding around all day, spouting nonsense. We do have some subways, but not enough of them, and there is no light rail line in SF that runs only underground, so they can only be a maximum of two cars long (otherwise they'd be too long for a single city block in some areas). All of the above-ground light rail is at mercy of car traffic (with tracks in some areas actually running in the same lanes as cars), stop signs, and traffic lights (which do not prioritize the trains). We do have some dedicated bus lanes, but they're dedicated bus+taxi lanes, and Ubers/Lyfts and regular passenger cars abuse them with little risk of being ticketed.

The end result of this is that people see that it takes 10 minutes to drive and 40 minutes to take public transit, but that they really need to add on an extra 15 minutes to the transit trip to account for delays and unreliability. So even though they don't want to to deal with parking, or pay 5-10x as much for an Uber/Lyft fare, they value their transit time more, and drive or get a car ride from an app.

Earlier this year, SF Muni was experiencing a large budget shortfall. They managed to save many jobs from being cut, which is commendable, but instead they reduced service. This just causes more people to look at the situation and choose to find an alternative that will get them where they're going faster, and more reliably.

[hn_acc1]

Agreed. The other problem is connectivity - if you aren't close to a hub you can actually get to, and that BART didn't connect south along the east bay until very recently.

I once looked at how long to get to work by public transit (~20 miles each way) - it was estimated at 1.5 hours each way (multiple buses + some walking), and costing ~$12-15 each way (15+ years ago). It took 25 minutes each way to drive on a good day, 45 each way on a bad day. Worst case was ~60 minutes to get home.

On average, it would take 2+ hours less PER DAY to drive, and cost $5-10 less, calculating driving cost at $0.50/mile. Plus I could go on my own schedule, no walking in the rain, etc. There was very little "win" for public transit in any way.

[bell-cot]

> Private transport also has its own subsidy, but it's not even close.

So - what % of Cali's road construction & maintenance is paid for by gas taxes?

[ggreer]

If I'm reading this report correctly[1], California's car registration fees and gas taxes cover more than the cost of roads. Caltrans estimates $20.2 billion in revenue from fuel taxes and vehicle registration fees, while their budget is $18.7 billion.

It also looks like public transportation is mostly paid for with sales taxes, federal loans/grants, and $1 billion of taxes on diesel fuel.

1. See chart A on page 24, and chart F on page 28: https://dot.ca.gov/-/media/dot-media/programs/budgets/docume...

[bkettle]

Note that Caltrans only maintains state roads; looks like from that document that they distribute some money to localities but as far as I can tell we can't see what fraction of local road maintenance that covers. Of course localities also have parking fees, traffic tickets, etc that can help cover road maintenance.

[flerchin]

That's difficult to untangle due to multiple agencies. Local, State, and Federal. However, the answer is the overwhelming majority of road construction and maintenance is paid for by gas taxes, car registration, and tolls.

[wbl]

The highway fund gets a massive amount of money from the general budget every year federally.

[kelnos]

And this is the problem. If you "don't have time" to be civically engaged, then you're woefully uninformed, and you shouldn't complain about how your tax dollars are allocated, because you simply have no idea what you're complaining or arguing about.

[ninetyninenine]

No it’s not. Bart is just really bad, and don’t blame lack of civil engagement. We don’t have time for this shit. Plenty of countries have good public infrastructure without the need for everyone to be engaged.

It’s like saying crime is a problem in this world because of your lack of engagement in stopping crime.

Bitching on HN is one small form of engagement I can afford and I’m hoping at least one bart official sees it and realize what a shit job he’s doing or one government official sees it and realizes what a shit government official he is and changes something. Minuscule hope but why not.

Instead we get random people who will only benefit from fixing the bart actually trying to defend it as if it’s their favorite sports team.