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Comment by einpoklum | Hacker News Reader

Oh yeah, the problem with BART is employee wages, look at all those millionaire stall clerks and attendants, they're what's holding back mass transit in the bay area - unlike in Europe, where public transit works so much better because there are no unions and no strikes anywhere... </sarcasm>

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I think it's not as crazy as it sounds. You should visit SF and ride BART. You'll likely find the experience horrifying as a direct result of the behavior of these highly paid employees. The badness of the BART experience is a major cause of underinvestment. The public simply does not want more of that.

American unions are quite different from European unions.

More militant than Germany, way less militant than France. "Europe" isn't close to a monoculture for trades unions.

Even the UK does public transport better than the US, and our union/management relations are very similar to yours.

In the US, unions have been outcompeted from almost all the private sector.

They mostly remain in public sector monopolies, where they in some ways are stronger than politicians and management.

I don't know of anywhere in Europe that's similar. It has little to do with "militancy" levels.

Yeah, the same in the UK (though I'd quibble about 'outcompete', and 'stronger than' is quite contingent in both countries in my view).

Our public transport system still works way better than in the US. And I say that as someone who actually likes Amtrak.

That's a hilariously bold claim with zero evidence.

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