I could write a thousand books on problems I have with regional transit in the Bay Area, but that’s irrelevant to how it actually works from a policy perspectiv

I could write a thousand books on problems I have with regional transit in the Bay Area, but that’s irrelevant to how it actually works from a policy perspective. Each and every City in California is its own legal monopoly on land use, all of them, how it’s working out for them isn’t pertinent to whether or not that’s how it works. Don’t mistake my position for advocacy, it’s a relaying of facts. By and large, this is more or less how it works across the States, but that can vary since the States can basically do anything as far as how they organize local government so long as it falls within some kind of democratic principles and norms. So effecting regional transit policy basically has three paths in the Bay Area: setup a special cross-county district government like BART, or get buy-in between the relevant jurisdictions you want to run a train through. If that’s a dozen cities and three counties, you’re going to need to talk to all of them. The third path is for the State to implement something directly, but in practice that’s subject to local politics as well, and the State Government per its own laws does not actually have carte blanche to do as it likes with the land over the wishes of local government.