Public Comment

It would be nice to see an in depth story about BART's failures as a public transit system. My point of view is that public transit should be funded by those who drive in the form of a gasoline tax, but since we don't have that, BART workers and management should not be overpaid (as they are quite substantially in most cases), and BART should not be used as a jobs program to employ people in useless positions, such as most station agents (this job for all but the busiest stations could easily be handled by a call center). 

I commute to & from work on BART daily, as well as using it occasionally for other transportation. I grew up riding the El in Chicago and have also ridden the New York subway a lot, and ridden a little on the Boston and Philadelphia subways. BART is easily the worst of all of these systems in its grossly overcrowded trains, and its unreliability due to breakdowns and police state actions that stop trains for no good reason, just to mention a few problems off the top of my head. The overpaid and unnecessary workers are sucking money out of a system that can't afford it at the expense of the half million of us who ride BART daily and at the expense of the environment in causing people to drive because of BART's problems (not to even mention their nerve to go on strike!), and I welcome a detailed debate on this very important issue.