I think BART struggles with who it's meant to serve now, since it was clearly designed for ultra-peak weekday commute traffic. Recovery for weekend ridership is way better than weekday.
I also agree that the governance structure for BART is weird and overly complex. Why do I elect a BART director? Why are they in their own special BART districts completely discontinuous from the 10 other ways we have sliced up the Bay Area?
All that being said, BART has done some good stuff too. The new cars really are way better, and they were not easy to procure since BART has its own weird, non-standard rail gauge. They have increased frequency and shortened trains on weekends to respond to the ridership changes.
Most of all, BART remains the only form of Bay Area transit genuinely faster than driving in real-world circumstances: it averages above 60mph in parts of the east bay, and goes from downtown Oakland to downtown SF in 11min, which is often 2-3x faster than driving. It's the primary transit system that can compete head-to-head with driving. For that reason, I do hope they keep increasing frequency (shortening trains if necessary).
It’s kind of sad that BART’s first mover advantage means it’ll forever be a second-class railway. They’ll never do the “correct” thing and shut it down long enough to replace everything with standard equipment and gauge.
It has been said the broader gauge was chosen at the time to make trains able to run safely over Golden Gate Bridge with strong side winds. My physics is not good enough to calculate whether that argument makes sense. And I have no idea how realistic that route ever was.
I don't think the gauge is a major problem. Train orders are always a custom project, few urban networks use exactly the same standards. Railroad manufacturers are used to different gauges.
In particular the track gauge is a long way from being the only consideration. Structure gauge and Loading gauge are also crucial. When I first moved here despite this being an important port city a Victorian arch bridge carrying road traffic over the railway meant every single freight train carrying containers from the port to the rest of the country needed to either go on a circuitous route or use special low wagons with reduced capacity, which hold a container below axle height so as to fit under that bridge.
In that case blocking the road and dropping in a new road bridge was affordable given the economic value but generally you put up with what you've got.
True, when it comes to loading gauge one can no longer even about a standard. Most countries have several different loading gauges even for the same track gauge.
In practice I am not convinced the BART is severely impacted by their "weird" gauge (whatever is meant by that, not sure what their loading gauge is, for passenger trains the distance to and height of the platforms would be most relevant).
Stadler KISS series used by Caltrain is built at least in 3 different widths.
Auckland, NZ had (not sure whether still in use) rolling stock from the UK, converted from 1435 mm to 1067 mm track gauge, the loading gauge obviously was close enough.
Finland has engines (Sr3, Dr20) and railcars (Dm12) designed for smaller central European loading gauges. They look a bit tiny compared to other stock, but they are fully usable.
It shouldn't be, though. There is way too much democracy in California localities.
There should be no elected school board, transit districts, utility boards, assessors, sheriff, and so much more. No one is properly informed about candidates for these positions.
For that matter, the Board of Supervisors should have no power other than oversight and impeachment. The Mayor should basically be a local dictator, with the power to do anything the State authorizes the municipality to do, at their sole discretion, with the oversight of an elected board.
Americans seem to have a view that if you get a part of an unengaged electorate to mark an x in a box every few years that’s democracy, and more is thus better.
Instead it removes accountability from public servants who can simply hide behind the “elected” excuse.
What terrifies me the most are elections for judges. I am not a legal scholar and I rely upon local bar associations for qualification ratings (and I’m not convinced I made the right call all the time); to my horror I’ve had educated colleagues tell me they just pick cool sounding names.
I also agree that the governance structure for BART is weird and overly complex. Why do I elect a BART director? Why are they in their own special BART districts completely discontinuous from the 10 other ways we have sliced up the Bay Area?
All that being said, BART has done some good stuff too. The new cars really are way better, and they were not easy to procure since BART has its own weird, non-standard rail gauge. They have increased frequency and shortened trains on weekends to respond to the ridership changes.
Most of all, BART remains the only form of Bay Area transit genuinely faster than driving in real-world circumstances: it averages above 60mph in parts of the east bay, and goes from downtown Oakland to downtown SF in 11min, which is often 2-3x faster than driving. It's the primary transit system that can compete head-to-head with driving. For that reason, I do hope they keep increasing frequency (shortening trains if necessary).