A computer upgrade shut down BART

Everyone here blaming BART and bureaucracy for being inefficient when in reality it's starved for funding due to our own voting (and zoning preventing housing/badly needed ridership near transit stops). Yes it's expensive to build transit just like it's expensive to build anything in America, which we should fix but that is not unique to BART.

It's quite possible the system will collapse next year if we don't pass increased taxes to fund it in 2026 https://www.bart.gov/about/financials/crisis.

Just last year we failed to pass a common sense bill to make it so we only need a 51% majority for transit bills in the future, indicative of how opposed we still are to transit in the Bay Area https://www.cbsnews.com/sanfrancisco/news/california-proposi....

Not to mention the fact that Silicon Valley opted out of BART and chose car dependent sprawl instead.

So let's be clear, most of the issues with BART are due to anti-transit and suburban voters starving it of support.

I wouldn't consider myself anti-transit - before Covid I took BART every work day and currently walk to my office. And have never regularly commuted by car in the Bay Area. But in SF, we seem to keep throwing money at transit orgs through ballot measures, and getting little tangible results in return. I voted for funding increases for Muni for years, with supposed reliability / service enhancements that never seemed to materialize. It's disappointing that rather than hearing that voters are more hesitant to fund this now vs previously, the reaction would be to try to lower thresholds to get things passed.

Even with the new Central Subway that opened in SF (which I assume cost billions given how long it took to develop), wasn't a clear net-win. Muni closed other Metro routes when those opened. Depending on where you're going, you might be worse off now.

While RTO may be increasing ridership numbers, Covid did change population and commuting dynamics. Transit orgs need to adapt, and maybe accept downsizing / focusing more on a smaller scope. In Bart's case, maybe it would be wiser to focus on the core Bart system, and not the more recent expansions (the East Bay trains that are totally separate from the rest of Bart, and the Oakland airport train). Maybe a stronger look should be taken at merging the disparate transit organizations themselves, to reduce administrative overhead?

Caltrain seems to be doing better than others - they have financing worries themselves, but are on a better track from my understanding. Pun semi-intended :)

Transit is important, and I feel like the current organizations keep letting us down.

Do you have a sense of how much you're paying in taxes that is being mismanaged by BART? I think it's far less than you realize.

The numbers are here [1]. BART generates about $300M in revenue and gets $500M in "financial assistance," of which $320M is sales tax revenue.

[1] https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/2025-09/FY26%20Adop...

I meant like as an individual do you have a sense? $320M in sales tax is not really very much. Because people are often upset we spend too much on transit but also upset that our transit isn't as good as, say, the Tube. Can't really have it both ways.

BART taxes are not even in the top 100 list of expenses I worry about personally.