I like your analysis and discussion, but the speed issue isn't about peak speed or speed between easy matching points (which of course mainly means time to go f

I like your analysis and discussion, but the speed issue isn't about peak speed or speed between easy matching points (which of course mainly means time to go from one BART station to another by bus or by BART since BART can only go between BART stations, and that's a test that BART will always win and that the buses don't optimize for precisely because BART handles it better, including factoring in the walk from STC to BART in the analysis). The real test as a passenger is actual travel time from one's starting point to one's destination. If your start and end align closely with the details of a rail route, rail will almost always win, but most of the surface area isn't close to a rail route or station (at least in the Bay Area) and bus systems are able to reach more points and adjust routes more frequently than rail systems, enabling them to do better optimizations for better total travel times for more passengers, particularly as demographic and land use patterns change. SF has BART. It should maintain it and make the most of it, but I'm far from convinced it would be the right place to put that amount of transportation dollars if SF didn't have BART and were trying to define its future mass transit system. That's the scenario the planners described in the article were trying to consider, and I'm very willing to believe there were much more legitimate reasons for favoring bus systems than the author of the article implies.