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Comment by Karrot_Kream | Hacker News Reader

As the article states, the reason why BART is so heavily impacted is because it was mostly designed as commuter rail. BART is unique in that historically it paid most of its costs in farebox revenue. While peak-hour (morning and evening commute) ridership is catching up again (BART publishes numbers so you can check the work here), usage outside of peak hours is at an all-time low because of the increase of WFH jobs. Since the rail alignment of BART can't be changed now, we'll probably settle on a new normal with BART.

BART along the same alignment still moves 2x more people than the Bay Bridge does though, which is something to remember as non-users of BART clamor for its defunding.

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I’m a little confused by the reasoning here.

You state that peak (commute) traffic is recovering but off-peak is still low, due to WFH?

Wouldn’t WFH be impacting peak hours, with off-peak at all-time-low due to other things like leisure travel?

Also if the decline is all WFH, why have private vehicle miles traveled recovered to pre-pandemic levels?

Have they recovered in the bay? I thought the whole bay is still much less traffic due to WFH.

Is that miles total or commuting miles?

If its miles total, I would chock it up to people doing more leisure travel, seeing family etc.

I don't think RTO is in full swing in such force that its commuter miles, so I'd say you're seeing a big uptick in leisure travel right now, which makes sense, as more and more people are becoming comfortable with this again

Well it can't be ONLY wfh. I think they meant "primarily". But more commuters choosing to drive is impacted by fewer people driving in due to WFH. The traffic was light, so they drove. Now traffic is normal again.

I'm not 100% on my reasoning, so I welcome alternate explanations. I suspect that a lot of part-time or odd-hour positions were most impacted by WFH. I'm guessing many of these have gone remote. Moreover, headway was cut back during the pandemic so folks who absolutely had to go into their positions may have invested in a car and don't feel the need to get back on transit because traffic off-peak is not too bad.

I’m going to guess that people still want to go to mixers and events and happy hours in SF and those still happen at the same time

If thats when peak hours are

Speaking for myself, I rarely go to downtown SF now and go out mostly in downtown Oakland these days. The businesses are just as, if not more, vibrant and I have more transit options (BART, bus, BRT, bike) than being forced to take BART across the Bay. Before the pandemic SF downtown had a much more vibrant scene but Oakland has caught up if not exceeded the SF scene. This is just myself though.

I’ve always thought that the jobs most “susceptible” to WFH are the traditional, 9-5 white collar jobs. Am interested to know if this is correct (outside of software industry, especially).

Just a theory, but white-collar jobs that now offer WFH as a perk probably offered flexible hours as a perk pre-COVID. This is conducive to commuting during off-peak hours.

I worked for about a year for a startup based in L.A. where I was the only remote and it seemed they worked roughly 10:30-6:30 to shift their commutes off-peak.

I was wondering the same. Perhaps peak is all about people on fixed schedules like shop assistants amd the like, whereas those jobs that have switched to WFH Havre far mow flexible hours and many were using that flexibility was to avoid peak hours?

BART used to be so busy that people getting on in downtown stations would back-track to Civic Center/The Mission to actually get a seat across the bay.

A similar amount of behavior existed of people doing anything to avoid a peak hour BART train.

Now, if you're commuting in, the best times are during rush.

BART numbers will always seem insanely low vs. pre-pandemic because they were unsustainable high back then.

Instead of treating public transit as an enterprise that should break even, we should consider what removing barriers to access through fare free public transit can do to serve our citizens more effectively.

Many transit districts in Washington State have already gone fare free. Removing the barrier of paying helps drive more ridership, particularly on non-peak hours that traditionally see much lower ridership.

The rail already exists, increasing it's utilization by will drive economic growth and help municipalities recover and heal the donut hole that was punched in many urban cores by the pandemic.

When I looked recently, Boston was still at just over 50% of pre-COVID transit utilization though some commuter rail and subway lines were a bit better--and bus lines were a bit better yet. Anecdotally traffic at rush hour is at least as bad as ever so it at least appears that some people switched back to (or started) driving who hadn't before.

Boston has had some well-publicized transit issues due to long-delayed transit maintenance but, at least short- to mid-term, it's lost a bunch pre-COVID commuting which has switched to driving.

> BART along the same alignment still moves 2x more people than the Bay Bridge does though, which is something to remember as non-users of BART clamor for its defunding.

Any source for that?

For BART numbers:

1. Is it traffic across the bay?

2. Or total traffic?

Edit: Digging up some data, I think it is #2, which seems a weird number to use.

BART total per day: ~400k Bay Bridge per day: ~200k

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco–Oakland_Bay_Brid...

https://www.bart.gov/sites/default/files/docs/June18FactShee...

>BART is unique in that historically it paid most of its costs in farebox revenue.

Because it's expensive as hell, and the only sane option for commuting into the city during rush hour. A $10 round trip to go 5 miles from the east bay to downtown is absolutely crazy. Easily double the price of any other metro in the US.

Easily an order of magnitude more than Singapore.

Not if you compare to commuter rail. I'm further out but if you look at commuter rail parking, the train itself, and subway if I need to take it, I'm $35 to commute into Boston for the day. (If I do it every day, the pass is a bit cheaper.)

Yes, if I don't need to park at the subway and don't need to take commuter rail, it's about $5 but that's not really the norm for a lot of people coming in from the suburbs.

    I'm $35 to commute into Boston for the day

Jesus! Between what stations? That is a crazy fare.

Commuter rail from N. Leominster to Porter is 24.50 round-trip + $4 for parking + ~$5 round-trip for the T. That's still cheaper than driving in for a day which would be about $50 round trip using IRS rates plus parking which could easily be $30+. (I'll drive in the evening or weekend when driving/parking are easier/quicker and the commuter rail really isn't very practical for an evening event.)

Excellent follow-up. Well said!

Compared to the cost of driving that five miles, parking, tolls, etc that's not that expensive. If you're taking BART to work and back every work day that's $200 a month. The Bay Bridge toll is $7 IIRC. Then you've got to find parking in downtown SF. Street parking is a crap shoot in 1) finding a spot and 2) not having your car vandalized any given day and a paid lot of space is likely to put you over the $10 round trip BART cost.

San Francisco seemingly hates car commuters and just about every aspect of the city demonstrates that fact. Commuting on BART for work is downright cheap compared to driving.

I like when people complain about metro fares. What would the equivalent cost (and speed!) of driving be? Remember that you will need to pay for parking. The answer: Much more than 10 USD, and much longer than BART.

Also, I checked the fare between Powell Station and 12th / Oakland, it is 3.85 USD one way. So, 7.70 USD round trip. Crossing the bay twice at 100 km/h is pretty cheap at that price.

Well the bay bridge toll is $7 heading to sf, and the trip probably costs over $3 of wear + fuel for the vehicle

> BART along the same alignment still moves 2x more people than the Bay Bridge does though, which is something to remember as non-users of BART clamor for its defunding.

How much does BART cost per year (or per decade) vs the Bay Bridge?

A huge advantage of roads vs public transit is you don't need staff. (Maintenence is needed on both, but even then I suspect roads are cheaper to maintain.)

The bay bridge and golden gate bridge are perpetually being painted.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/projects/2022/visuals/bay-bridge...

Also the drivers fund the heavy moving equipment which is a huge subsidy for the roads.

The BART has to pay for everything out of fares and sundry. The highway authority just has to build and maintain the road not the vehicles.

True - the majority of the BART maintenance cost is the rolling stock not the track. How much does the average commuter spend on car maintenance and fuel? Or even the capital expenditure in the first place, if that commute is the difference between needing a(nother?) car for the household in the first place.

And costs like the drivers and station workers is just split over the 1-per-car drivers across an equivalent road. I don't know anyone who enjoys that commute, likely arriving more stressed rather than less, and you can't read or prep for your real work in any way when driving.

It's a common fallacy to ignore relatively small per-person costs, even if the total adds up to a massive amount due to the numbers of people.

This is actually a fun one to point to. Replacing the Eastern span of the Bay Bridge happened recently, and has been one of the most expensive Californian infrastructure projects to date. It started with a price tag of $250 mil but it ended up costing $6.5 bil. In the meantime, BART has performed modifications on their tracks and has begun switching to new rolling stock, but it's been a lot cheaper than replacing the Eastern span of the Bay Bridge.

Looks like the bridge opened about 100 years ago - so that's $6.5 bil/100 years. So that's one data point.

Wikipedia says BART costs about $0.6 bil/year. Which is 10 times as expensive as the bridge. I need figures on yearly maintenance cost for the bridge to make this accurate though.

But so far it's not looking good for BART.

Great comparison! Let's stop maintaining the bay bridge or servicing the bonds. Then rebuild it in 100 years.

That way everyone can use BART :)

You're comparing a 2-mile, $6.5 bridge to a 130-mile, $0.5 bil/year system and you think this looks good for the bridge?

Not to mention in addition to direct costs, you need to look at externalities.

It was not me who made the comparison, that's the person I replied to.

They were comparing number of people crossing the bridge to the total number of people using the entire BART system.

If anything what you say just makes BART look even worse, since a 2 mi stretch of bridge carries a half as many people as a hundred mile long BART system.

Uh, the other (correct) way to look at it is the Bay Bridge requires a staff of 1000 people to move 1000 people across the Bay. Just because you externalize the costs doesn't mean you eliminated them.

Some people might get work done on a train, but not many. Most just waste their time.

So those 1000 people spent that time either way, makes little different if they are passengers or drivers. However driving gets you there faster, so the costs are lower.

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