SanFran BART has #sadz, "Why nobody ride our trains?"https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2023/05/12/sanfran-bart-has-sadz-why-nobody-ride-our-trains-n550339Poor BART. They didn’t understand what was happening. Why is ridership tanking? Are lingering pandemic effects and remote working coupled with all that empty real estate taking a chunk out of ridership?
So they asked around.
...
Quite possibly these were not the droids answers they were looking for.
…One of the survey’s most revealing takeaways was that remote work was not the main reason most respondents said they were not riding. The survey found that it’s primarily safety and security concerns that are keeping people from riding BART, with only 17% saying they feel safe on the trains and only 16% describing the transit system as being clean.
...
The day after the report was released, as if to emphasize the heart pounding intensity of possible encounters with fellow BART passengers, there was this guy with a meat cleaver…
Reality gives no place of refuge for bureaucrats. Ridership is down 60% from pre-Covid levels. Covid shutdowns are over (= hiding place lost). BART is used by theft gangs to get their looters in and out (= unsafe). BART is used by sacred homeless dopers and mental cases to move about the Bay Area (= unsafe and filth). What not to
dislike?
The thing is, unless the PDs of a dozen or two Bay Area cities and the DAs of the several Bay Area counties all, more or less simultaneously, crack down on thieves and bums, BART police can do almost nothing. Cities served by BART keep feeding thugs and bums onto BART trains, and do-nothing DAs give those thugs and bums impunity.
