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The city of San Francisco is in the process of constructing a downtown-area railroad extension that is estimated to cost in excess of $4 billion per mile of tunnel, The San Francisco Standard reported. The extension, known as The Portal, is a tunneled rail service that would connect the Salesforce Transit Center in the city’s downtown corridor to Caltrain and future high-speed trains, according to the Standard. The project’s overall cost estimate was recently revised up from $6.5 billion to a total of $8.25 billion, which makes for a per-mile cost of over $4 billion, ... “[Y]ou’re seeing some whopping...

Cars are more convenient and comfortable than walking, buses and subways — and that is why they are so popular. Make them even cheaper through ride-sharing and people are coaxed away from those other forms of transit. This dynamic became clear in the data a few years later: On average, ride-hailing trips generated far more traffic and 69% more carbon dioxide than the trips they displaced. Uber Pool was so cheap it increased overall city travel: For every mile of personal driving it removed, it added 2.6 miles of people who otherwise would have taken another mode of transportation. The...

BART’s board of directors voted Thursday to formally oppose a bill in the California Legislature that would decriminalize fare evasion in the state’s public transit systems. The board’s 5-3 vote came after a heated debate among members. Under state law, those who are caught evading a fare three or more times may face a misdemeanor charge, which could result in a fine of up to $400 and a sentence of up to 90 days in jail. If Assembly Bill 819 — introduced by Assembly Majority Leader Isaac Bryan — were to pass, the third violation would no longer be classified...

ROBIN WEINEREarlier this month we learned that California’s ruinously expensive bullet train system had gone up in price once again. The full system is now expected to cost $128 billion and that’s if it’s completed sometime in 2040. The other bad news about the bullet train was just as worrisome. A new estimate of anticipated ridership for the finished system showed a drop of about 25%.Declining ridership isn’t just a problem for the rail system of the distant future. It’s also a huge problem for systems that already exist and none has been hit quite as bad as BART, the...

BART director John McPartland was censured by his peers Thursday for using the phrase "cotton-picking" at a board of directors meeting earlier this month. McPartland made the remark while expressing his approval of a racial equity plan presented by Black staff members, a group that included Maceo Wiggins, the director of BART's Office of Civil Rights. "I find the work that Maceo is doing right now to be so cotton-picking inspirational," McPartland said. McPartland did not respond to an SFGATE request for comment but told the San Francisco Standard weeks ago that he was ignorant of the connotations of the...

Yesterday the Wall Street Journal had a story about a topic I’ve covered before, the hollowing out of American cities as a result of changes brought on by the pandemic. One symptom of those changes is the decline of mass transit in major cities on both coasts.While offices have largely reopened and travel has resumed, many commuters are only coming in a few days a week. That shift has left subways, buses and commuter trains operating at well below capacity—particularly on Mondays and Fridays…The ridership drop also has fueled an increase in transit crime, which in turn has pushed away...

SAN FRANCISCO - The Bay Area’s largest transit agency is considering drastic measures to replace its funding model — such as cutting weekend service — as it attempts to resolve the financial instability spurred by the pandemic. BART is looking ahead to 2025, when the agency is expected to fully exhaust the $1.6 billion in federal assistance it received to remain afloat during the pandemic. The funding model for BART before the pandemic relied mostly on farebox recovery, which amounted to about 70% of its overall funding. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, the agency responsible for regional transportation planning and financing,...

Aug 11 (Reuters) - Metro system riders in California's San Francisco Bay Area may have noticed a new station guard in recent months. A 5-year-old Harris's hawk named Pac-Man has taken up the perch at El Cerrito del Norte station, where he's on the look out - not for fare evaders, but pigeons. Ricky Ortiz, a falconer with Falcon Force and Pac-Man's handler, began patrolling with the bird at the station this summer, contracting with the Bay Area Rapid Transit system, or BART, to keep the pigeons at bay and protect commuters from pigeon poop.

Picture yourself on BART. Now subtract half a century of technology and add on-board dining, a ferry connection and windows that passengers could open to catch a breeze. The image forming in your mind should start to resemble the Sacramento Northern, one of the Bay Area’s vanished electric railroads and a forerunner of BART. As late as 1940, the company operated trains from San Francisco and Oakland to Walnut Creek, Concord and points northeast all the way to Chico. The railroad disappeared in phases. It was done in by cars, competition and the cost of renewal. Today, BART and Capitol...

Officials in San Francisco voted to approve a mask mandate on Thursday for people using its public transportation system. The Bay Area Rapid Transit Board of Directors approved the mask mandate during a board of directors meeting, and it comes just over a week after a federal judge tossed out the national mask mandate for public transportation that was implemented during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to Fox affiliate KTVU in San Francisco.

WALNUT CREEK — BART police arrested a man on a no-bail theft warrant Monday night following a major delay aboard the system, officials said. Officers initially responded about 5:15 p.m. for a report that a male was holding a female hostage on board a train at the Walnut Creek station and that he had a gun. BART said Tuesday that that report was discovered to be unfounded. The police response and subsequent investigation led to trains being shut down for about an hour, according to the agency. The suspect was taken to the Martinez Detention Facility.

A woman who boarded a BART train while tethered to her dog was dragged to her death after she briefly stepped off the train at a platform and the train pulled away with the dog still inside... The fatal accident occurred at 3:16 p.m. Monday, just after the woman boarded an Oakland-bound train at San Francisco’s Powell Street station with her dog, which was tethered to her at the waist. “Then at the very last second, right as the doors were closing, she fully off-boarded the train, clearing the doors, and the dog did not,”...“She appeared to be waving at...

Guess she’ll have to take the bus. Funding for a rail project near House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California district that Republicans denounced as wasteful was removed Tuesday from President Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill. The Senate parliamentarian ruled the $140 million appropriation wasn’t allowed under the so-called Byrd rule that polices unrelated items in budget reconciliation bills. Republicans singled out the rail project as an example of unrelated “pork” in the bill, which is being rammed through Congress without Republican support using special rules that allow a simple majority vote in the Senate. On Tuesday, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.)...

The House version of Biden administration's $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill contains funding for BART's planned expansion into San Jose and Santa Clara — and congressional Republicans are not happy about it. An analysis from Fox Business found that the expansion — long-planned but lacking funding — will be receiving $112 million in federal funds, and transportation officials told the San Francisco Chronicle the figure would actually be closer to $141 million. Twitter accounts for House and Senate Republicans began referring to the project as "Pelosi's Subway" in tweets railing against the legislation. "The Democrats’ $1.9 trillion spending bill is...

BART’s ridership is only 12% of what it was before the coronavirus pandemic and it’s facing a projected loss of $975 million over the next three years — nonetheless, the transit agency’s workers got a 2.75% raise July 1, bringing the top salary for station agents and train operators to $93,085.20 a year, plus benefits.“It was clear from the beginning of the budget process that staff and a board majority was committed to maintaining status quo,” BART board Director Debora Allen said. “That meant no layoffs, furloughs or pay cuts.”

I’ve written before about the problems on BART trains which include rising crime and a substantial increase in the number of homeless people using the trains as a moving shelter (and occasionally a bathroom). Not surprisingly, those and other problems have led to a substantial decrease in ridership. Though trains continue to fill during rush hour, fewer people are riding BART to museums, parks or shopping centers.Outside the peak commute times, ridership plummeted — from 62.2 million in 2015 to 52.7 million last year…A recent BART survey of 662 commuters in five counties may help explain the evening and...

BART has lost nearly 10 million night and weekend passengers in just four years at a time when the region is enthusiastically promoting a transit first philosophy. Data from the four-county rail system shows the disconnect between Bay Area transportation habits and purported Bay Area values. Though trains continue to fill during rush hour, fewer people are riding BART to museums, parks or shopping centers.

A man who was stabbed to death aboard a San Francisco Bay Area commuter train Tuesday may have been trying to stop the theft of another rider’s shoes, authorities said.

This week, a video went viral of a man being detained by police on a public transportation platform in San Francisco, Calif., for eating a sandwich. You can see the police officer in the video below insisting that eating is a violation of the California penal code. They have Sanctuary Cities for Criminal Illegals but you can get arrested for eating a Sandwich in California. pic.twitter.com/EL4XRUKi50— Feisty??Floridian (@Feisty_FL) November 10, 2019 It turns out that while he might be slightly off base, it's mostly true. The California penal code lists eating on public transport property as a "miscellaneous crime"...

https://youtu.be/6LbG1ixK_h0