4 ms·

Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees

45 points by sxywu 13y ago

martinshen 13y ago
Any ideas as to what the true market rate for these types of jobs is? Theoretically, if BART did not have a union, would we expect it to be filled with minimum wage or $40K type salaries. Any other thoughts into how much labor costs as a proportion of their total expenditure. Is this where BART needs to decrease spending the most?
rhizome 13y ago
The fade-oriented segmentation is ridiculously useless and reader-hostile.
- sxywu 13y ago
  Ah, but the fade is on purpose, because I wanted to show that while they do have a high "cost of employment", what they truly pocket annually isn't as much. For that, the most important figure is the base salary, which is a solid block. The other things like pension and medical are either money they don't see until the future, or money they don't use unless they have a medical emergency.
  - rhizome 13y ago
    I don't have to pay for medical insurance until I have an emergency?
    - VLM 13y ago
      Probably thinking of 20-somethings who have no copays or medical deductibles or chronic medical conditions or require medicines. That was my experience in my 20s. I worked at a place for 3 years, people asked me what the insurance was like, told them I never used it, so had no idea. Its a bit different of course, once you have a spouse and a couple kids on the policy, and start getting old, etc. A properly implemented stealth agism policy (we only employ recent college grads because we're "hi tech", you know how it all goes) could save quite a bit. If you fire everyone once they have kids...
- enjalot 13y ago
  it's actually an efficient way to communicate the nuances going on with the issue. "Reader friendly" would be the quote that the average BART employee makes 80k in pay and benefits. This chart shows you what those figures break down to, emphasizing the base salary while still making you aware of benefits (which are less concrete and uniform in meaning).
fdschoeneman 13y ago
BART PR person says that the average cost per year of a union, non management employee, is closer to $134k per year, including benefits. I'm not sure which side to believe. In any case I appreciate your work but would love to see a closer examination of the $134k figure.
- sxywu 13y ago
  I think "average cost including benefits" is the important part. For me, I was concerned with finding out what the average base salary was for a union employee - and not just any union employee, but those that are affiliated with SEIU and ATU, since those are the ones in negotiation. What I found was that the average base salaries were between 45k to 70k for these SEIU and ATU workers. A lot of the information on salaries that's published out there include overtime, pension, medical benefits, PTO, etc., but that's the total cost for BART, and not necessarily the annual income that an employee pockets. For me, I wanted to see if a BART employee could make a comfortable living in the bay area, and for that, things like overtime and pension aren't as relevant since you either have to work more to earn them, or you don't really see them until the future. Thus, the much lower 45k to 70k I arrived at. It's fun to explore this if you can: https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-comp-all.csv https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-comp-a... It's a list of BART employees' total cost of employment, scraped from http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area
- walshemj 13y ago
  yes so what all employees cost about 2.5 3.0 times the headline salary rate. And what a lot of HN news readers probably dont realise (unless your in production engineering) is that for lower level blue collar jobs Bonus and OT are major parts of those workers pay packets.
  - ultrasaurus 13y ago
    I understand why maintenance staff might have surprise OT, but isn't a station agent or a conductor the very model of a job with predictable hours? It seems like BART should have no trouble correctly lining up workers and work without needing to resort to overtime. Clarification: I'm surprised that overtime would be a "major" part of the average station agent's salary. Obviously there's going to be some mismatch, but (assuming there isn't crazy turnover or long training required) it should be fairly easy to predict the number of hours required and hire hours/2000 employees. The schedule is decided months in advance.
zobzu 13y ago
the bonuses look lower than the last time i looked at the sheet. the salary diff between management and regular workers is pretty high too. pretty sure many senior IT engineers (who probably work 2x longer) would like to do 124K a year in the SF area.. then the proposal is to give them 150K by 2015. in a simple world i'd use that money to give 25% more to all other workers
- 3825 13y ago
  They are spending $26,982,431 in base salary to management. Almost $27M for 2013 and that is base salary alone. I can't find it acceptable either. They need to start letting people go in the management.
stevewilber 13y ago
Bart workers pay $92/mo for health insurance. [1] This post is comparing the income for one Bart employee to the expenses for a family of four. I'm not sure why child care is included if only one adult is working. Subtracting those out, I get $54,912. This seems about right for a frugal life in the burbs. [1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-workers-pay-plus-benefits-among-top-in-U-S-4723315.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-workers-pay-plus-...
- sxywu 13y ago
  Ah yes, the cost of living figures I have gathered from http://www.epi.org/resources/budget/ http://www.epi.org/resources/budget/. In my footnotes I address that for BART employees health insurance is $92/mo, but because I wasn't so sure what their co-pays and other expenses may be, I left in the health insurance figures from EPI's budget calculator. To account for my uncertainty, I built in a "Custom" option in the dropdowns, so you can play around with what you think is a fair cost of living for a BART employee, and how those numbers compare to their salaries and the proposal figures.
- nknighthb 13y ago
  > This seems about right for a frugal life in the burbs. More than these peasants deserve, right? I mean, why should people providing a vital service to a city feel entitled to live amongst the betters they serve?
  - jamesaguilar 13y ago
    Yeah, unskilled, replaceable labor doesn't get paid much. That is how it always has been, and I don't see it as a huge, immediate problem. These folks are already making way more than people of similar levels of skill in other parts of the country -- in fact, they are double the median income in the US. There are plenty of other essential services, like garbage people, chefs, janitors, cabbies, etc. that get paid less and require similar levels of education. I mean, when we remove scarcity, sure, give all the BART workers mansions. But until then, I think this is a fine wage for doing work that's on the block for being automated in ten or twenty years.
throwaway287391 13y ago
Why is it that when you go from 2 parents + 1 child -> 2 parents + 2 children, the cost goes up 6K, but when you go from 2 children -> 3 children, the cost goes up 18K? If anything it seems like per-child costs should diminish as you have more children? Also I think all these analyses that assume a BART employee is going to be a single income-earner for a family are a bit strange - surely there are some BART employees who fall under this but I'd imagine not many? It seems like a luxury in this day and age to have a parent staying at home full time. And honestly I find myself having trouble sympathizing with people who have a lot of kids without secure high-income employment - I don't think it's the employer's responsibility to raise wages for employees that make a very expensive lifestyle choice. I do feel bad for their kids, but I think the responsibility for making sure they're taken care of should be the government's.
- sxywu 13y ago
  I took the cost of living from Economic Policy Institute's Family Budget Calculator, and their documentation [1] is particularly interesting to sift through. In particular, the child care costs are apparently broken down like this: One parent, one child = cost of 4-year-old care One parent, two children = cost of 4-year-old care + cost of one school-age child One parent, three children = cost of 4-year-old care + cost of two school-age children Two parents, one child = cost of 4-year-old care Two parents, two children = cost of 4-year-old care + cost of one school-age child Two parents, three children = cost of 4-year-old care + cost of two school-age children And they assume the school-age children to require both before-school and after-school care. As for comparing a cost of living for a two-parent household with the income of a single worker, I could only make that assumption because...how would I be able to extrapolate the household income of a two-parent family from BART salaries? As imperfect a solution as it is, I still hope that it will give insight, since my hope was not to shove any particular opinions on anyone, but rather just a tool for exploration. [1] http://www.epi.org/publication/wp297-2013-family-budget-calculator-technical-documentation/ http://www.epi.org/publication/wp297-2013-family-budget-calc...
  - ceras 13y ago
    For two adults, >0 children, I think childcare should really be excluded from costs. It's not accurate for most any family in that position. Though I understand figuring out the second parent's income is difficult, I think it's more dangerous to entirely exclude it. To me it comes off as misinformation (especially when combined with the childcare costs). You can consider a hideable layer that allows the user to put the second parent's income, and default it to the average Bay Area income. I'm guessing that even if you defaulted it to 20-percentile for income, cost of living would no longer exceed household income, which is extremely important information in this discussion.
antr 13y ago
Last time I read on HN about the Bay Area developer salary, it seemed to me that consensus was that a $100-120k salary in the Bay Area is considered bang-on middle-income. BART technical jobs are well below that, and one can argue these are low-income. If $100-120k/year salary is middle income what's the exact issue with BART salaries?
- enjalot 13y ago
  Tech is a booming industry, and there aren't enough people with the skills to do the work that needs to be done so high salaries are common. It is unclear what the supply and demand curve is for public transit employees, but it will be skewed by labor contracts. The issue is that a lot of people don't make as much as BART employees (or have nearly as good benefits). If their salaries of BART employees are higher than they could be to keep the BART running, and they can upset the lives of hundreds of thousands by striking to get even more it makes people concerned.
  - russell_h 13y ago
    BART "receives 2,500 to 3,000 applicants every time it advertises for new train operators and station agents", and "gets 20,473 job applications annually for an average of 177 job openings". [1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Few-options-for-BART-riders-who-aren-t-S-F-bound-4891337.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Few-options-for-BART-r...
cjensen 13y ago
This is a good lesson for those of us making programs who "need" to charge a certain price in order to make a living. There is something in the human psyche that really wants to make a connection between the price of an item and the living conditions of the seller or the buyer. The lesson is this: the Law of Supply and Demand is not interested in your rationalizations or ad-hoc reasoning about "fair" pricing. In this case, the cost of living for BART employees has nothing to do with what BART should pay the employees, unless those costs cause enough employees and potential employees to quit and reduce the supply of labor. For those of us in tech, the lesson again is that pricing has nothing to do with your costs in making a good or service. If the return is insufficient, you may either choose not to make the good in the first place, or cease making the good. It has no effect on pricing.
- enjalot 13y ago
  Here's an interesting essay that expands on this exact point: https://medium.com/armchair-economics/ec6139b54795 https://medium.com/armchair-economics/ec6139b54795 it's written by a collaborator of this project and a transportation PhD student at Cal.
  - 3825 13y ago
    If we could lose jobs and still run BART safely and efficiently, I am all for fewer jobs (or even no jobs) at BART. > Suppose there were some technology that rendered BART’s whole workforce unnecessary. Robots maybe. Or some super-efficient private contractor. The public would face a choice: we could lay off all the workers and use the savings to send trains more places, more frequently, and at a higher level of comfort and safety. Or we could carry on. Sorry but BART does not exist to provide jobs. BART exists to run a public transit. If we don't need those people working in BART, I am sure their hard work will be useful somewhere else.
- 3825 13y ago
  As Shirley says: > For another, what does 80k really mean? Is it the average of their base salaries or their total costs of employment? And who are included in this average? Certainly, if management salaries are included, it'd unreasonably skew the data! I am concerned why there are 217 people in management. I am sure we can find some other people who will work in management for less. Fire the management! If it were up to me, I'd stick to the BART compensation for everyone but the utility workers and increase their base by about 1k over current BART proposal. I'd make up for that by cutting down on management costs. I would not necessarily decrease pay outside of those with corporate title but they have to start letting some of the people in management go. My goal would be to reduce the number of management employees from 217 to 150 by the end of 2014. Nobody needs 17% of their workforce to be in management. Trim that fat. I don't have much confidence in either the unions or the management to do their job. I bet everyone involved is very glad that I don't run BART.
lnanek2 13y ago
Looks above the cost of living everywhere except SF. And there you just have to knock it down to one kid and you are fine. I don't think the equivalent of a bus driver should be able to live in a super over priced city like SF and still be able to have a bunch of kids. It's not a big deal to commute in from Oakland and other areas. Should they be able to afford their own Manhattan apartments for a bunch of kids too next? Or should they get cheap shared accommodations and limit their number of kids if they want to live in the super rich city area instead of the burbs like everyone else does who starts a big family? I think it's fine if you have to make sacrifices to live in the city. Personally, I think BART just needs to automate the trains and fire them all.
- bayareaguy 13y ago
  Says the game developer who sells virtual goods... I've lived in the bay area longer than BART has been in operation, and I'd rather see my fares raised to pay the BART employees even more so that they can focus on the safety and security of the system instead of having to be worred about being evicted to make room for some virtual good merchant. BART workers directly help millions of people in the bay area every day and provide far more value to the bay area community and economy relative to what they are paid then do the participants in this forum.
jonknee 13y ago
$607 a month for transportation seems odd since BART workers and their families ride for free (even after retirement!): http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_23778144/barts-free-ride-program-among-bay-areas-most http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_23778144/barts-f...
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  True, though outside of SF and Berkeley Oakland, far fewer people are within walking distance of a BART station, so a lot of people have to drive there. It's easy to forget this if you're carless (as I am) until you go somewhere else and need to figure out how to continue your journey beyond BART. Look at a geographical map and see how far apart the stations are at the extremities.
FrankenPC 13y ago
This is a red herring argument. The REAL issue to anyone in the Bay Area who commutes is the extraordinary price of BART tickets. Right now, assuming I DON'T pay the monthly parking permit cost and just wing it (which is getting increasingly difficult...) I pay ~$10 a day for BART. Or about 200$ a month. If you hunt around, you can get monthly parking permits in SF for LESS than that. Yes, gas costs money. But then again, not having to be stuck in "the can" with a bunch of sick people during the winter months is worth the price of gas. BART is pricing themselves out of the commute game. So, my question is: what would it take to lower BART costs WHILE still paying people a decent wage? If it's not possible, then maybe BART just isn't feasible long term.
darklajid 13y ago
For me the breakdown was great. I can understand numbers like housing and expected them to be a bit higher (frankly? $1795 in EUR is roundabout 1300. My current budget for a new home - I'm actively looking - is 1200 EUR for my family of 3.5). Food obviously varies. I never thought about child care before I became a dad, but I understand that number quite well now. What totally blew me away was healthcare. Wow. How is that worth another rent, a second apartment? (I won't talk about absolutes too much - they obviously are local. In absolute terms nearly every salary on that page is _big_ in DE and IT might pay less than a BART mechanic gets. But again - local, really different situations etc.)
- sxywu 13y ago
  Thanks darklajid! The health care costs is total insurance premiums and total out-of-pocket costs[1]. For a BART worker, it may only be upwards of $92, as they have a fixed health care contribution. For that reason, I have made the costs customizable, so you can edit and input any number you feel reasonable (I didn't want to make any personal assumptions with the numbers). [1]http://www.epi.org/publication/wp297-2013-family-budget-calculator-technical-documentation/ http://www.epi.org/publication/wp297-2013-family-budget-calc...
anovikov 13y ago
This somehow misses out the fact that in a married couple having 'childcare' expenses, there are supposed to be 2 earners. With a gender gap of about 30% for married women that leaves about 60k a year of wife's income or about $3500 after taxes per month which should leave no problem making ends meet. Leaving wife out of work is reserved for the upper class nowadays, even not all of them. Definitely not for the bus drivers. Also if the wife does not work, why do they have childcare expenses from? What is the wife doing then? And, bus drivers don't need to save for retirement, unlike us coders, so they don't really need to save at all, union cares for them. And they are not supposed to have transportation costs since they ride for free. I am starting to think we will get self-driven buses long before we get self-driven cars...
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Childcare != daycare. Even if one parent stays at home, you still have buy special clothing, children need more medical attention, school supplies etc. etc. Leaving wife out of work is reserved for the upper class nowadays, even not all of them. Definitely not for the bus drivers. It used to be that quite normal across all classes for one parent to go out to work and one to look after the family. One wonders what the point is in increasing economic growth if it's to make us less well off than we used to be.
  - goggles99 13y ago
    "Schools Supplies" and "Special clothing" are most definitely NOT child care. Medical attention already has it's own category. Child care definitely means someone else caring for you child wither it be a nanny, pre-school, day-care, after school care ETC. I agree with you about the parent staying at home bit. I really think that most people could still do it (like my wife and I do), but they would have to live frugally and not listen to the women's lib Hollywood+Media+peers who are telling them that they are losers if they don't get a career outside of the home and leave the child rearing to a stranger (This sounds so wrong but that is ultimately what they are saying). Quality of life should not be measured by wealth because wealth will never buy you happiness and never will raise your kids as well as you could have done it.
  - 13y ago
fishtoaster 13y ago
> This causes a slight discrepancy in the bar graph, as the cost of living figures assume all parents to be working, but the income assumes only one working parent. That seems like a pretty big discrepancy, and makes the cost-of-living vs pay comparison meaningless. If you assume each parent contributes equally to their cost of living, you would pretty much halve the 'cost-of-living' line on the chart. Even if the other parent only makes 50% of what the bart employee parent makes, it would pretty easily close the gap between pay and COL for most of these positions.
- sxywu 13y ago
  I am going to implement a simple toggle option to include a second income (which I will research into what the median/average/reasonable salary in the Bay Area to be) on the bar graph - hopefully that solves the discrepancy!
panaa 13y ago
These comments...they are completely awful.
ogd 13y ago
The cost of living analysis represents pampered first-world luxury living. Bare necessities are $5000/year per person. I live on 15k/year myself in the bay area, and I consider myself to be a big spender. I share a 1200 sq foot house with one other person, I drive a 2008 prius, and i have all the modern amenities in plentiful amounts. People like Jacob from ERE (http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ http://earlyretirementextreme.com/) are real world examples of living well below the poverty line. Regardless, the only legitimate concern over how much we pay BART employees is supply and demand of their skills which the market will handle on its own. Unions are horrible for society
ultrasaurus 13y ago
If you want to play with the raw data[1] I've uploaded it to Google[2]. Treating Base+OverTime+Other as someone's take home pay: * the mean across all employees is $88.8k * the median is a "Contract Specialist II" taking home 84.8k * the most common job, a train operator takes home 80.8k [1] https://github.com/enjalot/bart/tree/master/data https://github.com/enjalot/bart/tree/master/data [2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av3e0siMRvildElIT3hXU3BueUgzVkVzQzFNZW9VVkE&usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av3e0siMRvildEl...
sxywu 13y ago
I have added a toggle for including a second income earner into the equation/bar graph. The figure is an average of the median per capita income of four Bay Area counties - hopefully this will give better context. Also, more explicit "Customize" buttons to encourage people to play around with and edit the data :D

45 points by sxywu 13y ago

Any ideas as to what the true market rate for these types of jobs is? Theoretically, if BART did not have a union, would we expect it to be filled with minimum wage or $40K type salaries. Any other thoughts into how much labor costs as a proportion of their total expenditure. Is this where BART needs to decrease spending the most?

rhizome 13y ago

The fade-oriented segmentation is ridiculously useless and reader-hostile.

sxywu 13y ago
Ah, but the fade is on purpose, because I wanted to show that while they do have a high "cost of employment", what they truly pocket annually isn't as much. For that, the most important figure is the base salary, which is a solid block. The other things like pension and medical are either money they don't see until the future, or money they don't use unless they have a medical emergency.
- rhizome 13y ago
  I don't have to pay for medical insurance until I have an emergency?
  - VLM 13y ago
    Probably thinking of 20-somethings who have no copays or medical deductibles or chronic medical conditions or require medicines. That was my experience in my 20s. I worked at a place for 3 years, people asked me what the insurance was like, told them I never used it, so had no idea. Its a bit different of course, once you have a spouse and a couple kids on the policy, and start getting old, etc. A properly implemented stealth agism policy (we only employ recent college grads because we're "hi tech", you know how it all goes) could save quite a bit. If you fire everyone once they have kids...
enjalot 13y ago
it's actually an efficient way to communicate the nuances going on with the issue. "Reader friendly" would be the quote that the average BART employee makes 80k in pay and benefits. This chart shows you what those figures break down to, emphasizing the base salary while still making you aware of benefits (which are less concrete and uniform in meaning).

fdschoeneman 13y ago

BART PR person says that the average cost per year of a union, non management employee, is closer to $134k per year, including benefits. I'm not sure which side to believe. In any case I appreciate your work but would love to see a closer examination of the $134k figure.

sxywu 13y ago
I think "average cost including benefits" is the important part. For me, I was concerned with finding out what the average base salary was for a union employee - and not just any union employee, but those that are affiliated with SEIU and ATU, since those are the ones in negotiation. What I found was that the average base salaries were between 45k to 70k for these SEIU and ATU workers. A lot of the information on salaries that's published out there include overtime, pension, medical benefits, PTO, etc., but that's the total cost for BART, and not necessarily the annual income that an employee pockets. For me, I wanted to see if a BART employee could make a comfortable living in the bay area, and for that, things like overtime and pension aren't as relevant since you either have to work more to earn them, or you don't really see them until the future. Thus, the much lower 45k to 70k I arrived at. It's fun to explore this if you can: https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-comp-all.csv https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-comp-a... It's a list of BART employees' total cost of employment, scraped from http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area
walshemj 13y ago
yes so what all employees cost about 2.5 3.0 times the headline salary rate. And what a lot of HN news readers probably dont realise (unless your in production engineering) is that for lower level blue collar jobs Bonus and OT are major parts of those workers pay packets.
- ultrasaurus 13y ago
  I understand why maintenance staff might have surprise OT, but isn't a station agent or a conductor the very model of a job with predictable hours? It seems like BART should have no trouble correctly lining up workers and work without needing to resort to overtime. Clarification: I'm surprised that overtime would be a "major" part of the average station agent's salary. Obviously there's going to be some mismatch, but (assuming there isn't crazy turnover or long training required) it should be fairly easy to predict the number of hours required and hire hours/2000 employees. The schedule is decided months in advance.

zobzu 13y ago

the bonuses look lower than the last time i looked at the sheet. the salary diff between management and regular workers is pretty high too. pretty sure many senior IT engineers (who probably work 2x longer) would like to do 124K a year in the SF area.. then the proposal is to give them 150K by 2015. in a simple world i'd use that money to give 25% more to all other workers

3825 13y ago
They are spending $26,982,431 in base salary to management. Almost $27M for 2013 and that is base salary alone. I can't find it acceptable either. They need to start letting people go in the management.

stevewilber 13y ago

Bart workers pay $92/mo for health insurance. [1] This post is comparing the income for one Bart employee to the expenses for a family of four. I'm not sure why child care is included if only one adult is working. Subtracting those out, I get $54,912. This seems about right for a frugal life in the burbs. [1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-workers-pay-plus-benefits-among-top-in-U-S-4723315.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-workers-pay-plus-...

sxywu 13y ago
Ah yes, the cost of living figures I have gathered from http://www.epi.org/resources/budget/ http://www.epi.org/resources/budget/. In my footnotes I address that for BART employees health insurance is $92/mo, but because I wasn't so sure what their co-pays and other expenses may be, I left in the health insurance figures from EPI's budget calculator. To account for my uncertainty, I built in a "Custom" option in the dropdowns, so you can play around with what you think is a fair cost of living for a BART employee, and how those numbers compare to their salaries and the proposal figures.
nknighthb 13y ago
> This seems about right for a frugal life in the burbs. More than these peasants deserve, right? I mean, why should people providing a vital service to a city feel entitled to live amongst the betters they serve?
- jamesaguilar 13y ago
  Yeah, unskilled, replaceable labor doesn't get paid much. That is how it always has been, and I don't see it as a huge, immediate problem. These folks are already making way more than people of similar levels of skill in other parts of the country -- in fact, they are double the median income in the US. There are plenty of other essential services, like garbage people, chefs, janitors, cabbies, etc. that get paid less and require similar levels of education. I mean, when we remove scarcity, sure, give all the BART workers mansions. But until then, I think this is a fine wage for doing work that's on the block for being automated in ten or twenty years.

throwaway287391 13y ago

Why is it that when you go from 2 parents + 1 child -> 2 parents + 2 children, the cost goes up 6K, but when you go from 2 children -> 3 children, the cost goes up 18K? If anything it seems like per-child costs should diminish as you have more children? Also I think all these analyses that assume a BART employee is going to be a single income-earner for a family are a bit strange - surely there are some BART employees who fall under this but I'd imagine not many? It seems like a luxury in this day and age to have a parent staying at home full time. And honestly I find myself having trouble sympathizing with people who have a lot of kids without secure high-income employment - I don't think it's the employer's responsibility to raise wages for employees that make a very expensive lifestyle choice. I do feel bad for their kids, but I think the responsibility for making sure they're taken care of should be the government's.

sxywu 13y ago
I took the cost of living from Economic Policy Institute's Family Budget Calculator, and their documentation [1] is particularly interesting to sift through. In particular, the child care costs are apparently broken down like this: One parent, one child = cost of 4-year-old care One parent, two children = cost of 4-year-old care + cost of one school-age child One parent, three children = cost of 4-year-old care + cost of two school-age children Two parents, one child = cost of 4-year-old care Two parents, two children = cost of 4-year-old care + cost of one school-age child Two parents, three children = cost of 4-year-old care + cost of two school-age children And they assume the school-age children to require both before-school and after-school care. As for comparing a cost of living for a two-parent household with the income of a single worker, I could only make that assumption because...how would I be able to extrapolate the household income of a two-parent family from BART salaries? As imperfect a solution as it is, I still hope that it will give insight, since my hope was not to shove any particular opinions on anyone, but rather just a tool for exploration. [1] http://www.epi.org/publication/wp297-2013-family-budget-calculator-technical-documentation/ http://www.epi.org/publication/wp297-2013-family-budget-calc...
- ceras 13y ago
  For two adults, >0 children, I think childcare should really be excluded from costs. It's not accurate for most any family in that position. Though I understand figuring out the second parent's income is difficult, I think it's more dangerous to entirely exclude it. To me it comes off as misinformation (especially when combined with the childcare costs). You can consider a hideable layer that allows the user to put the second parent's income, and default it to the average Bay Area income. I'm guessing that even if you defaulted it to 20-percentile for income, cost of living would no longer exceed household income, which is extremely important information in this discussion.

antr 13y ago

Last time I read on HN about the Bay Area developer salary, it seemed to me that consensus was that a $100-120k salary in the Bay Area is considered bang-on middle-income. BART technical jobs are well below that, and one can argue these are low-income. If $100-120k/year salary is middle income what's the exact issue with BART salaries?

enjalot 13y ago
Tech is a booming industry, and there aren't enough people with the skills to do the work that needs to be done so high salaries are common. It is unclear what the supply and demand curve is for public transit employees, but it will be skewed by labor contracts. The issue is that a lot of people don't make as much as BART employees (or have nearly as good benefits). If their salaries of BART employees are higher than they could be to keep the BART running, and they can upset the lives of hundreds of thousands by striking to get even more it makes people concerned.
- russell_h 13y ago
  BART "receives 2,500 to 3,000 applicants every time it advertises for new train operators and station agents", and "gets 20,473 job applications annually for an average of 177 job openings". [1] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Few-options-for-BART-riders-who-aren-t-S-F-bound-4891337.php http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Few-options-for-BART-r...

cjensen 13y ago

This is a good lesson for those of us making programs who "need" to charge a certain price in order to make a living. There is something in the human psyche that really wants to make a connection between the price of an item and the living conditions of the seller or the buyer. The lesson is this: the Law of Supply and Demand is not interested in your rationalizations or ad-hoc reasoning about "fair" pricing. In this case, the cost of living for BART employees has nothing to do with what BART should pay the employees, unless those costs cause enough employees and potential employees to quit and reduce the supply of labor. For those of us in tech, the lesson again is that pricing has nothing to do with your costs in making a good or service. If the return is insufficient, you may either choose not to make the good in the first place, or cease making the good. It has no effect on pricing.

enjalot 13y ago
Here's an interesting essay that expands on this exact point: https://medium.com/armchair-economics/ec6139b54795 https://medium.com/armchair-economics/ec6139b54795 it's written by a collaborator of this project and a transportation PhD student at Cal.
- 3825 13y ago
  If we could lose jobs and still run BART safely and efficiently, I am all for fewer jobs (or even no jobs) at BART. > Suppose there were some technology that rendered BART’s whole workforce unnecessary. Robots maybe. Or some super-efficient private contractor. The public would face a choice: we could lay off all the workers and use the savings to send trains more places, more frequently, and at a higher level of comfort and safety. Or we could carry on. Sorry but BART does not exist to provide jobs. BART exists to run a public transit. If we don't need those people working in BART, I am sure their hard work will be useful somewhere else.
3825 13y ago
As Shirley says: > For another, what does 80k really mean? Is it the average of their base salaries or their total costs of employment? And who are included in this average? Certainly, if management salaries are included, it'd unreasonably skew the data! I am concerned why there are 217 people in management. I am sure we can find some other people who will work in management for less. Fire the management! If it were up to me, I'd stick to the BART compensation for everyone but the utility workers and increase their base by about 1k over current BART proposal. I'd make up for that by cutting down on management costs. I would not necessarily decrease pay outside of those with corporate title but they have to start letting some of the people in management go. My goal would be to reduce the number of management employees from 217 to 150 by the end of 2014. Nobody needs 17% of their workforce to be in management. Trim that fat. I don't have much confidence in either the unions or the management to do their job. I bet everyone involved is very glad that I don't run BART.

lnanek2 13y ago

Looks above the cost of living everywhere except SF. And there you just have to knock it down to one kid and you are fine. I don't think the equivalent of a bus driver should be able to live in a super over priced city like SF and still be able to have a bunch of kids. It's not a big deal to commute in from Oakland and other areas. Should they be able to afford their own Manhattan apartments for a bunch of kids too next? Or should they get cheap shared accommodations and limit their number of kids if they want to live in the super rich city area instead of the burbs like everyone else does who starts a big family? I think it's fine if you have to make sacrifices to live in the city. Personally, I think BART just needs to automate the trains and fire them all.

bayareaguy 13y ago
Says the game developer who sells virtual goods... I've lived in the bay area longer than BART has been in operation, and I'd rather see my fares raised to pay the BART employees even more so that they can focus on the safety and security of the system instead of having to be worred about being evicted to make room for some virtual good merchant. BART workers directly help millions of people in the bay area every day and provide far more value to the bay area community and economy relative to what they are paid then do the participants in this forum.

jonknee 13y ago

$607 a month for transportation seems odd since BART workers and their families ride for free (even after retirement!): http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_23778144/barts-free-ride-program-among-bay-areas-most http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-news/ci_23778144/barts-f...

anigbrowl 13y ago
True, though outside of SF and Berkeley Oakland, far fewer people are within walking distance of a BART station, so a lot of people have to drive there. It's easy to forget this if you're carless (as I am) until you go somewhere else and need to figure out how to continue your journey beyond BART. Look at a geographical map and see how far apart the stations are at the extremities.

FrankenPC 13y ago

This is a red herring argument. The REAL issue to anyone in the Bay Area who commutes is the extraordinary price of BART tickets. Right now, assuming I DON'T pay the monthly parking permit cost and just wing it (which is getting increasingly difficult...) I pay ~$10 a day for BART. Or about 200$ a month. If you hunt around, you can get monthly parking permits in SF for LESS than that. Yes, gas costs money. But then again, not having to be stuck in "the can" with a bunch of sick people during the winter months is worth the price of gas. BART is pricing themselves out of the commute game. So, my question is: what would it take to lower BART costs WHILE still paying people a decent wage? If it's not possible, then maybe BART just isn't feasible long term.

darklajid 13y ago

For me the breakdown was great. I can understand numbers like housing and expected them to be a bit higher (frankly? $1795 in EUR is roundabout 1300. My current budget for a new home - I'm actively looking - is 1200 EUR for my family of 3.5). Food obviously varies. I never thought about child care before I became a dad, but I understand that number quite well now. What totally blew me away was healthcare. Wow. How is that worth another rent, a second apartment? (I won't talk about absolutes too much - they obviously are local. In absolute terms nearly every salary on that page is _big_ in DE and IT might pay less than a BART mechanic gets. But again - local, really different situations etc.)

sxywu 13y ago
Thanks darklajid! The health care costs is total insurance premiums and total out-of-pocket costs[1]. For a BART worker, it may only be upwards of $92, as they have a fixed health care contribution. For that reason, I have made the costs customizable, so you can edit and input any number you feel reasonable (I didn't want to make any personal assumptions with the numbers). [1]http://www.epi.org/publication/wp297-2013-family-budget-calculator-technical-documentation/ http://www.epi.org/publication/wp297-2013-family-budget-calc...

anovikov 13y ago

This somehow misses out the fact that in a married couple having 'childcare' expenses, there are supposed to be 2 earners. With a gender gap of about 30% for married women that leaves about 60k a year of wife's income or about $3500 after taxes per month which should leave no problem making ends meet. Leaving wife out of work is reserved for the upper class nowadays, even not all of them. Definitely not for the bus drivers. Also if the wife does not work, why do they have childcare expenses from? What is the wife doing then? And, bus drivers don't need to save for retirement, unlike us coders, so they don't really need to save at all, union cares for them. And they are not supposed to have transportation costs since they ride for free. I am starting to think we will get self-driven buses long before we get self-driven cars...

anigbrowl 13y ago
Childcare != daycare. Even if one parent stays at home, you still have buy special clothing, children need more medical attention, school supplies etc. etc. Leaving wife out of work is reserved for the upper class nowadays, even not all of them. Definitely not for the bus drivers. It used to be that quite normal across all classes for one parent to go out to work and one to look after the family. One wonders what the point is in increasing economic growth if it's to make us less well off than we used to be.
- goggles99 13y ago
  "Schools Supplies" and "Special clothing" are most definitely NOT child care. Medical attention already has it's own category. Child care definitely means someone else caring for you child wither it be a nanny, pre-school, day-care, after school care ETC. I agree with you about the parent staying at home bit. I really think that most people could still do it (like my wife and I do), but they would have to live frugally and not listen to the women's lib Hollywood+Media+peers who are telling them that they are losers if they don't get a career outside of the home and leave the child rearing to a stranger (This sounds so wrong but that is ultimately what they are saying). Quality of life should not be measured by wealth because wealth will never buy you happiness and never will raise your kids as well as you could have done it.
- 13y ago

fishtoaster 13y ago

> This causes a slight discrepancy in the bar graph, as the cost of living figures assume all parents to be working, but the income assumes only one working parent. That seems like a pretty big discrepancy, and makes the cost-of-living vs pay comparison meaningless. If you assume each parent contributes equally to their cost of living, you would pretty much halve the 'cost-of-living' line on the chart. Even if the other parent only makes 50% of what the bart employee parent makes, it would pretty easily close the gap between pay and COL for most of these positions.

sxywu 13y ago
I am going to implement a simple toggle option to include a second income (which I will research into what the median/average/reasonable salary in the Bay Area to be) on the bar graph - hopefully that solves the discrepancy!

panaa 13y ago

These comments...they are completely awful.

ogd 13y ago

The cost of living analysis represents pampered first-world luxury living. Bare necessities are $5000/year per person. I live on 15k/year myself in the bay area, and I consider myself to be a big spender. I share a 1200 sq foot house with one other person, I drive a 2008 prius, and i have all the modern amenities in plentiful amounts. People like Jacob from ERE (http://earlyretirementextreme.com/ http://earlyretirementextreme.com/) are real world examples of living well below the poverty line. Regardless, the only legitimate concern over how much we pay BART employees is supply and demand of their skills which the market will handle on its own. Unions are horrible for society

ultrasaurus 13y ago

If you want to play with the raw data[1] I've uploaded it to Google[2]. Treating Base+OverTime+Other as someone's take home pay: * the mean across all employees is $88.8k * the median is a "Contract Specialist II" taking home 84.8k * the most common job, a train operator takes home 80.8k [1] https://github.com/enjalot/bart/tree/master/data https://github.com/enjalot/bart/tree/master/data [2] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av3e0siMRvildElIT3hXU3BueUgzVkVzQzFNZW9VVkE&usp=sharing https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av3e0siMRvildEl...

sxywu 13y ago

I have added a toggle for including a second income earner into the equation/bar graph. The figure is an average of the median per capita income of four Bay Area counties - hopefully this will give better context. Also, more explicit "Customize" buttons to encourage people to play around with and edit the data :D