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Comment by ccarter84 | Hacker News Reader

Agreed, but asking for 20+ % raise over 3 years was a poor PR approach.

I think unions served a purpose in the past, and hopefully still do now, but honestly once you look at the overtime pay it's painful.

http://www.mercurynews.com/salaries/bay-area/2012

p.s. Some dude took a stab at liberating the data further, but it could use some work. http://public.tableausoftware.com/views/BARTsalaries/BARTsal...

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Except for politics, there is little reason the conductors could not be replaced by automated systems.

In other places, some mass transit systems are at least partially automated.

I believe BART was intended to be automated. This 1972 LA Times article mentions safety concerns:

  Safe Automated BART Train Controls Doubted (1972)
  Legislative Analyst A. Alan Post expressed doubt Tuesday that a $36 million automated 
  train control system for the Bay Area Rapid Transit District can be made "fail safe" to 
  adequately protect its passengers."

http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/latimes/access/660715472.html?di...

That may have been the finding back when the system was being evaluated prior to '72. Since then, automation has seen vast improvements in safety and fail-safe systems.

It's only political inertia, in my opinion, which keeps things manned (and womanned). I suspect that even as Google cars take off in popularity and prove their safety, public transit will resist and insist that drivers who are susceptible to weariness, exhaustion, sleep deprivation, disease, etc. are still the safer to steer buses through our streets.

CBS is reporting they were seeking a 15% raise over three years.

http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/07/01/bart-workers-off...

Plus 2% cost of living each year. That's actually 22.5% over 3 years.

May I get a source for that?

Not that hard to google it yourself: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/24/bart-strike_n_34931.... Simple interest isn't additive, that should be the first clue.

I shouldn't have to Google it myself, you're making the claims. You can't just drop a whole bunch of numbers in a thread, present them as facts, and not cite any sources whatsoever. It does no one who is trying to learn about the subject matter any favors and isn't constructive at all.

I completely agree with this, however the tact could have been a bit better. I wouldn't mind having something like this officially added to the HN guidelines.

Use IIRC or AFAIK when you remember something, but don't remember exactly or cite a source for anything stated as fact.

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