by Bob Walsh
BART is the Bay Area Rapid Transit District. It runs around a large chunk of the San Francisco Bay and out into some of the feeder communities. Unfortunately the ridership is off considerably and the non-peak ridership is WAY off. The BART board of directors is attempting to figure out why.
BART has an interesting seat-hog law, which has never been enforced and is about to be formally withdrawn. The ordinance makes it illegal to take up more than one seat in most circumstances. Many people right now park backpacks and other stuff on a second seat or otherwise flop out and take two seats. The actual reason for withdrawing the ordinance, however, is that it is "unfair" to homeless, excrement-encrusted bums who bring all of their excrement-encrusted belongings onto BART with them and who NEED two or three or more seats to flop out on, sleep and dump their excrement-encrusted belongings on while their excrement-encrusted bodies are napping, etc.
BART stations and elevators and to some extent trains have the reputation of smelling bad and being filthy, in large part because excrement-encrusted homeless bums use the trains, elevators and stairwells as latrines.
Strangely enough the BART board does not see any connection between the ridership drop-off and their policy of turning BART trains into mobile flop-houses for excrement-encrusted bums.
1 comment:
I wouldn't ride public transportation one city block. Let's see. I can buy my groceries on line and have them delivered by almost every major grocery company. My doctor can enable my computer to check my vitals signs and skype with me face to face. If I want to travel, I can take a paid limo service to the airport. I can even arrange for a car company to have a retired armed cop as my driver. Almost every city offers this service. You may think that this would be expensive. It's really less than you would pay for a car, insurance and upkeep each month. It's also much safer than any public transportation.
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