[cmelbye]

In my anecdotal experience, it seems like at least a few Bay Area cities have a hard time doing that properly. Public transit is terrible here. I'm excited at the prospect of a private company giving it a try as a free service to the public. Of course, it's not pure altruism, there are PR motivations. But that's not necessarily a bad thing.

[Kalium]

My general impression is not that cities have a hard time doing public transit properly. It's that the politics of it make good public transit damn near impossible. Exclusive bedroom communities don't want to be accessible to carless commuters and Muni is impossible to improve because everything is a racist plot against minorities.

[cmelbye]

Good public transit is not impossible. It's done in other cities. There's just something about the political process of San Francisco, for example, that makes it difficult to improve MUNI.

[Kalium]

In political terms, I suspect perfect has become the enemy of good.

[TheCoelacanth]

Almost the entire US has a problem doing public transit properly. They are a variety of reasons, but it mostly boils down to government policies that favor private vehicles and suburban sprawl.

[driverdan]

> Public transit is terrible here

It sounds like you've never traveled outside the bay area. Muni + BART + Caltrain is far more than most cities have. What other cities have a system like Caltrain?

I'm not saying it's perfect, far from that. There are plenty of issues, especially with Muni. But it's not terrible.

[dragonwriter]

> It sounds like you've never traveled outside the bay area.

It seems to me that many urban areas in the US have better public transit than the Bay Area, and, even moreso, places in the developed world outside of the US tend to be better than the US.

Its true that the Bay Area's public transit is better than pretty much anywhere else in California, but that seems to be setting the bar low enough that you can trip over it.

[ecspike]

Agreed. Many cities on the East Coast have a Caltrain like system in the Amtrak Acela trains. DC, ATL, NYC, Baltimore all crush the system here.

Muni is terrible. Full stop.

[estebank]

> It sounds like you've never traveled outside the bay area.

Or that cmelbye has traveled outside the US.

> There are plenty of issues, especially with Muni. But it's not terrible.

I agree it's not as horrible as people make it out to be, but it is still in a pretty sad state. I've tried moving exclusively with public transport for the last month, but far too many times the Muni bus that was supposed to come just didn't for more than an hour, even though the sign said it would come 3 times in that time. And that's within SF, which is miles better than the rest of the bay area.

[mattmurdog]

The problem isn't really with public transit, it's with traffic and hipsters on their bikes in the middle of the road.