The Metro train reaches a divergence. Its tracks head toward "business as usual" while the road leads away to "reform." Metro: We will be holding here momentarily for mechanical reasons...
Back in the 1990s, Metro was cleaner, better-run and even more reliable than BART was at the time—and even cheaper to use than BART—except that Metro ran in DC and BART in the Bay Area.But BART had a lot of problems that crept up on it as the focus of BART was more on expansion than it was on keeping the current infrastructure running.Much of BART’s problems probably started in 1993 when they embarked to create a new line to the Tri-Valley area, which became the “Dublin-Pleasanton” line and as a result, elevators and escalators at existing stations like Embarcadero and 19th-Street Oakland wound up in disrepair and stayed that way for long periods of time.It might have been even worse on the Richmond Line where there there times that the line from MacArthur Station to its Richmond terminus had to be shut down as cars seemed to fall apart on that line and damage the tracks and that the line was shut down for several days in 1993 until they could get that fixed.And when the Dublin-Pleasanton Line was completed in 1995, BART then focused on extending the current San Francisco Line out to SFO, which is in San Mateo County and beyond South San Francisco and the priority focused on that expensive expansion.And then came 1998, when BART had to cut down on expenses because their revenues were down, so they raised fares and cut schedules to the point that there was now a train running at the San Francisco and Oakland stops every 5 minutes during commute hours from every 2 minutes and that some of these trains would no longer be 10 cars in length, but 8 or 9.Add to that BART asking the other public transit agencies in the Bay Area for their Federal grant monies and that AC Transit, which serves Oakland and the immediate East Bay, was hurting for money, too, in those days.BART pressed on and eventually got their extension to SFO built, extended the Concord Line out to West Pittsburg/Bay Point and when Chuck Reid, then-Mayor of San Jose was pressuring BART to expand into San Jose, even when the voters in the late-1960s and early-1970s voted down the system.BART had other priorities, like extending the Dublin-Pleasanton Line out to Livermore, who paid into the system since the beginning on promises that they would be served by BART, and extending the Concord Line out to Brentwood in eastern Contra Costa County (not to be confused with OJ’s Brentwood these days), but extending the Fremont Line out to Santa Clara became the new priority putting Livermore and Brentwood on the back-burners for now.Meanwhile, BART train cars are falling apart because of their age and over-use, elevators and escalators at BART stations are constantly either in disrepair or under repair, fares keep going up and it takes longer and longer to wait for a train at the station and when it comes, to try and board it because it is already overcrowded and BART’s response these days has been to address how some of its passengers hog seats and crowd the train doors instead of addressing the real reasons why these conditions may exist in the first place—because BART created that situation.As for Metro’s problems, it’s a younger system than BART, and these folks probably learned from some of the mistakes that other transit agencies may have made before Metro was built, especially those impossible-to-graffiti entry ways, but compared to BART, there may be no comparison.
Back in the 1990s, Metro was cleaner, better-run and even more reliable than BART was at the time—and even cheaper to use than BART—except that Metro ran in DC and BART in the Bay Area.But BART had a lot of problems that crept up on it as the focus of BART was more on expansion than it was on keeping the current infrastructure running.Much of BART’s problems probably started in 1993 when they embarked to create a new line to the Tri-Valley area, which became the “Dublin-Pleasanton” line and as a result, elevators and escalators at existing stations like Embarcadero and 19th-Street Oakland wound up in disrepair and stayed that way for long periods of time.It might have been even worse on the Richmond Line where there there times that the line from MacArthur Station to its Richmond terminus had to be shut down as cars seemed to fall apart on that line and damage the tracks and that the line was shut down for several days in 1993 until they could get that fixed.And when the Dublin-Pleasanton Line was completed in 1995, BART then focused on extending the current San Francisco Line out to SFO, which is in San Mateo County and beyond South San Francisco and the priority focused on that expensive expansion.And then came 1998, when BART had to cut down on expenses because their revenues were down, so they raised fares and cut schedules to the point that there was now a train running at the San Francisco and Oakland stops every 5 minutes during commute hours from every 2 minutes and that some of these trains would no longer be 10 cars in length, but 8 or 9.Add to that BART asking the other public transit agencies in the Bay Area for their Federal grant monies and that AC Transit, which serves Oakland and the immediate East Bay, was hurting for money, too, in those days.BART pressed on and eventually got their extension to SFO built, extended the Concord Line out to West Pittsburg/Bay Point and when Chuck Reid, then-Mayor of San Jose was pressuring BART to expand into San Jose, even when the voters in the late-1960s and early-1970s voted down the system.BART had other priorities, like extending the Dublin-Pleasanton Line out to Livermore, who paid into the system since the beginning on promises that they would be served by BART, and extending the Concord Line out to Brentwood in eastern Contra Costa County (not to be confused with OJ’s Brentwood these days), but extending the Fremont Line out to Santa Clara became the new priority putting Livermore and Brentwood on the back-burners for now.Meanwhile, BART train cars are falling apart because of their age and over-use, elevators and escalators at BART stations are constantly either in disrepair or under repair, fares keep going up and it takes longer and longer to wait for a train at the station and when it comes, to try and board it because it is already overcrowded and BART’s response these days has been to address how some of its passengers hog seats and crowd the train doors instead of addressing the real reasons why these conditions may exist in the first place—because BART created that situation.As for Metro’s problems, it’s a younger system than BART, and these folks probably learned from some of the mistakes that other transit agencies may have made before Metro was built, especially those impossible-to-graffiti entry ways, but compared to BART, there may be no comparison.