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I think you have it backwards. We squander the capacity of our main commuter railroad (BART) by surrounding it with dispersed neighborhoods. We need to build

I think you have it backwards. We squander the capacity of our main commuter railroad (BART) by surrounding it with dispersed neighborhoods. We need to build dense transit villages around the rail stations we already own.

zamfi 7y ago
> We squander the capacity of our main commuter railroad (BART) Out of curiosity, do you ride Bart at commute hours? At 5pm, the platforms at Embarcadero and Montgomery are dangerously packed. I didn’t think there is much excess capacity for commuting. All other times? Absolutely yes.
- thedance 7y ago
  A fun fact is that BART has 48 stations.
- manfredo 7y ago
  You're putting the cart before the horse. More commuters creates more ticket revenue, which gives BART more resources to expand capacity. They're not going to expand capacity until there's more demand.
  - thedance 7y ago
    BART ridership is currently maxed out in the peak direction at peak hour, and carries triple the design number of passengers. They don’t need to expand, they need to profit from the currently underused directions (eg berkeley to Fremont).
    - manfredo 7y ago
      Transit reacts to changes in transportation demand, it doesn't set demand. How do you envision BART would profit from underused directions? Put out ads encouraging people to take these routes for fun? As I said, pointing out that transit systems are at capacity is not a valid reason to block development. Transit systems always try to operate at capacity because excess capacity means suboptimal allocation of resources. There's no reason to increase capacity until there's demand for that capacity.
      - thedance 7y ago
        The people profit, not BART itself. BART is infrastructure. Like the fire department, it is not intended for it to be internally profitable. The way the people profit is you put homes in the places that have lots of jobs, mostly so that people can just walk around but also to benefit from people filling up the reverse direction on BART. In places that have mostly homes you buld jobs instead. For places without an abundance of either, such as Orinda and Lafayette, you build both. It's total nonsense that we build a railroad to a place like Lafayette, but that city has had the same population for 50 years. This goes triple for Berkeley, which has THREE subway stations and the same population it had in 1950! We should expect that adding billions of dollars of infrastructure also adds lots of people.
      - zamfi 7y ago
        > Transit reacts to changes in transportation demand, it doesn't set demand. How do you envision BART would profit from underused directions? Put out ads encouraging people to take these routes for fun? BART could encourage commercial development, instead of residential development, on land it owns near transit stations.
  - nradov 7y ago
    Any possible increase in BART ticket revenue would be a drop in the bucket for the capital funding necessary to significantly increase system capacity. The popular routes are already at capacity so they would have to build more tracks and stations. This would cost hundreds of billions of dollars mostly from federal and state budgets. The planning, land acquisitions (eminent domain), environmental reviews, legal battles, and construction would take decades. We can complain that this is unreasonable, and that it ought to be cheaper or faster. But that's the reality and it isn't likely to change.
  - zamfi 7y ago
    > You're putting the cart before the horse. I'm not, let me explain. > More commuters creates more ticket revenue, which gives BART more resources to expand capacity. They're not going to expand capacity until there's more demand. BART needs money to expand, and this money is not going to come from commuters. Why? First, "expand capacity" can mean two things: 1) Buy and/or run more trains on existing tracks, serving existing stations. 2) Build more tracks and/or stations. For 1), BART already operates at or nearly at maximum physical capacity at commute hours in the peak commute direction: there is not headroom in the Transbay tube to add more trains at rush hour, at least for trips between SF and the East Bay. BART could earn more revenue from more commuters that are not on the peak lines -- but building more housing in the suburbs will not provide this. For 2), this money comes from the capital budget, not the operating budget. BART fares provide about 70% of the operating costs of BART. There is no profit, no money left over to go to pay for more tracks or stations. That money comes from voters who approve bonds or other sources of funding for this constructions. More commuters will not provide this either. We need to expand BART, and we need development -- these two go hand in hand!

zamfi 7y ago

> We squander the capacity of our main commuter railroad (BART) Out of curiosity, do you ride Bart at commute hours? At 5pm, the platforms at Embarcadero and Montgomery are dangerously packed. I didn’t think there is much excess capacity for commuting. All other times? Absolutely yes.

thedance 7y ago
A fun fact is that BART has 48 stations.
manfredo 7y ago
You're putting the cart before the horse. More commuters creates more ticket revenue, which gives BART more resources to expand capacity. They're not going to expand capacity until there's more demand.
- thedance 7y ago
  BART ridership is currently maxed out in the peak direction at peak hour, and carries triple the design number of passengers. They don’t need to expand, they need to profit from the currently underused directions (eg berkeley to Fremont).
  - manfredo 7y ago
    Transit reacts to changes in transportation demand, it doesn't set demand. How do you envision BART would profit from underused directions? Put out ads encouraging people to take these routes for fun? As I said, pointing out that transit systems are at capacity is not a valid reason to block development. Transit systems always try to operate at capacity because excess capacity means suboptimal allocation of resources. There's no reason to increase capacity until there's demand for that capacity.
    - thedance 7y ago
      The people profit, not BART itself. BART is infrastructure. Like the fire department, it is not intended for it to be internally profitable. The way the people profit is you put homes in the places that have lots of jobs, mostly so that people can just walk around but also to benefit from people filling up the reverse direction on BART. In places that have mostly homes you buld jobs instead. For places without an abundance of either, such as Orinda and Lafayette, you build both. It's total nonsense that we build a railroad to a place like Lafayette, but that city has had the same population for 50 years. This goes triple for Berkeley, which has THREE subway stations and the same population it had in 1950! We should expect that adding billions of dollars of infrastructure also adds lots of people.
    - zamfi 7y ago
      > Transit reacts to changes in transportation demand, it doesn't set demand. How do you envision BART would profit from underused directions? Put out ads encouraging people to take these routes for fun? BART could encourage commercial development, instead of residential development, on land it owns near transit stations.
- nradov 7y ago
  Any possible increase in BART ticket revenue would be a drop in the bucket for the capital funding necessary to significantly increase system capacity. The popular routes are already at capacity so they would have to build more tracks and stations. This would cost hundreds of billions of dollars mostly from federal and state budgets. The planning, land acquisitions (eminent domain), environmental reviews, legal battles, and construction would take decades. We can complain that this is unreasonable, and that it ought to be cheaper or faster. But that's the reality and it isn't likely to change.
- zamfi 7y ago
  > You're putting the cart before the horse. I'm not, let me explain. > More commuters creates more ticket revenue, which gives BART more resources to expand capacity. They're not going to expand capacity until there's more demand. BART needs money to expand, and this money is not going to come from commuters. Why? First, "expand capacity" can mean two things: 1) Buy and/or run more trains on existing tracks, serving existing stations. 2) Build more tracks and/or stations. For 1), BART already operates at or nearly at maximum physical capacity at commute hours in the peak commute direction: there is not headroom in the Transbay tube to add more trains at rush hour, at least for trips between SF and the East Bay. BART could earn more revenue from more commuters that are not on the peak lines -- but building more housing in the suburbs will not provide this. For 2), this money comes from the capital budget, not the operating budget. BART fares provide about 70% of the operating costs of BART. There is no profit, no money left over to go to pay for more tracks or stations. That money comes from voters who approve bonds or other sources of funding for this constructions. More commuters will not provide this either. We need to expand BART, and we need development -- these two go hand in hand!