It'd be pretty cool if busses and trains were local-first.
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Also, what do you mean by trains being local-first? Trains by definition need to share the same tracks with catastrophic consequences for getting it wrong. You can't figure out if a train is going to possibly be on the same route locally, or if your route has been obstructed. Somebody gets a schoolbus stuck on a crossing, it takes over a mile to stop a train.
In the days before systems existed for publishing such schedules and emergency alerts, should public transit service not have been attempted at all?
> Trains by definition need to share the same tracks with catastrophic consequences for getting it wrong.
Just because it uses the same rail gauge as intercity freight doesn't require it to run on the same set of tracks. But if it did, I assume "local-first" entails other traffic just being excluded when an emergency in the local system necessitates it.
We're talking about BART, which uses a track gauge of 5'6" instead of the standard US rail gauge of 4'8.5". They can't run on the same tracks.
(Actually, this is generally true even for those systems that do use 4'8.5" gauge track--I suspect that the standard US freight car envelope doesn't actually fit on most subway systems.)
As a related aside, the Chicago Transit Authority still ran freight on its tracks until not that long ago. Maybe the early 2000's?
It is certainly possible to send a freight train that will fit in most subway tunnels of the right gauge, but you may need a short locomotive and short cars.
(After all, what are the maintenance trains but a form of freight?)
The standard US freight envelope probably counts as Plate C, which is 10'8" wide by 15'6" above the rail. Plate H is the standard for double-stacked containers, which pushes the height to 20'2".
(The part of the loading gauge that I'd be most concerned about is actually the width of the cars at the bottom of the carbody--passenger cars tend to be somewhat narrower than standard boxcar, and given a desire to minimize the platform gap, I'd think there's a decent chance that most freight would strike the platform.)