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I reckon 1) could be solved by price discrimination. I would happily pay twice as much for BART if it meant riding in a train car that was only occupied by othe

I reckon 1) could be solved by price discrimination. I would happily pay twice as much for BART if it meant riding in a train car that was only occupied by other people willing to pay twice as much. By tiering service, you still provide transit at all for everybody who needs it at the current price, while meeting more of the demand of people who people who avoid public transit for perceived safety/classism concerns.

OkayPhysicist 4y ago
To expand on this, since it sounds kind of flippant: In the US at the moment, public transit suffers from the fact that in most areas, for most people it's largely optional: you can drive, or you can use public transit. Quite a few people choose to drive, leading to a disproportionate fraction of the people on public transit being people who have no other option, and furthermore the fraction of outright deranged individuals (leaving all their clothes on the platform save for a baseball cap and a syringe tucked behind their ear, for an example I witnessed a few days ago) being over-represented in the public transit riding populace. Overcoming this stigma is important for getting people to use public transit as their primary means of transportation, and working towards making truly car-optional cities.