What strikes me is the massive difference in functionality between the system when it is running smoothly and when it hits a snag, and how people consider the v

What strikes me is the massive difference in functionality between the system when it is running smoothly and when it hits a snag, and how people consider the very best case to be baseline against which performance should be judged. Perhaps operations can be improved, but pending those improvements, the system is essentially running overoptimistically, pretending that its performance when everything is working right reflects its true capability more than its usual performance does. Many people have made this point, but the quote I have to hand is from Rich Hickey: "In the real world, failures are all the time. A large system is in a state of partial failure almost continuously." In a system like this, there's no point in improving the best case or even the most common case. In fact, it can be counterproductive, because it makes it hard for riders to figure out how to plan their trips, and when they do figure out the best way to use the system (getting to work an hour early many days to ensure you're consistently on time) they resent it. Also, if you perform acceptably most of the time, people are going to assume that you're just a few tweaks or a modest increase in capacity away from performing acceptably all the time, which can be very far from the truth.