> I'll go back when it's safe, but not before then.

BART is already exceedingly safe. Even with robberies rising 45% this year the overall robbery rate is projected to be 1.7 per million trips[1].

To put it another way, if every time you rode the BART you also bought a CA lottery scratch-card you'd be about as likely to get robbed as you would to win the jackpot (normalized odds for a $2 scratch card: 0.00000167[2], normalized odds for robbery 0.0000017).

Do I think BART is a great system? Absolutely not. Do I prefer taking a Lyft to the airport rather than the BART? Yes. But I've worked in cities with unsafe public transit systems, and the BART simply doesn't compare.

[1]: http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Crime-stats-show-where-s... [2]: http://www.calottery.com/LotteryHome/play/scratchers-games/$...

That's interesting, because it is quite improbable that someone would "know personally" several lottery winners at ~590000 to 1 odds, even if his acquaintances routinely bought two tickets a day. GP's post is just a single datum, of course, but it's enough in itself to raise doubt about the accuracy of that 1.7/megatrip statistic.

Numerically, suppose GP knows 30 people who make 600 trips on BART each year. In one year, the chance of at least one robbery in that group, given the quoted odds, is three percent. The chance of multiple robberies, i.e. at least two, is under 0.05 percent – over 2000 to 1 odds against. Even over a ten year period, the odds are 25 to 1 against. If GP's personal experience is not unusual, then something is screwy with the stat.

> GP's post is just a single datum, of course, but it's enough in itself to raise doubt about the accuracy of that 1.7/megatrip statistic.

In itself it's not that great. You have two obvious options:

1. Robberies on BART are generally not reported. You'd need a very high rate of nonreporting to mess with the conclusion that overall BART trips are quite safe.

2. Certain BART trips, by location, time of day, or some other metric, are much more dangerous than the average, and the BART-using public preferentially avoids taking those trips.

If you believe in case 2, it's not at all surprising that someone might know several people who have been robbed on BART. You'd conclude that their social circle has atypical BART habits. How many robberies-at-gunpoint do you think occur in the packed rush hour trains?

Unfortunately many of these crimes will go unsolved because BART refuses to release videos. Apparently, releasing the videos “could lead to stereotypes”

https://www.google.com/amp/sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/07...

BART doesn't release the videos to the public. They do release them to the police. There are legitimate reasons not to release them to the public, including the fact that the media will sensationalize them to make BART look far more dangerous than the statistics actually reflect.

Replace [BART] with Police and [police] with [congress]:

"The Police doesn't release the videos to the public. They do release them to Congress. There are legitimate reasons not to release them to the public, including the fact that the media will sensationalize them to make the Police look far more dangerous than the statistics actually reflect."

Would you still want videos withheld from the public?

After all, BART is a public agency. We are not babies who need to be protected by The Master Director because we are "the lowly citizen." That's not how it works in America.

Videos of what?

If the police have videos of X person robbing Y person, with no police around, then I don't mind if they keep those videos private.

It's not about whether you mind or not.

It's about whether Y person will get justice.

Let me put it differently:

Police actions need to be transparent. There are strong reasons to release recordings with police actions in them.

But if the recordings are unrelated to any police officers or police actions, then all of that goes away. It's completely fine for police to not release footage of two random people interacting. And that scenario is what is analogous to BART surveillance videos.

  two random people interacting

That's an odd way to paraphrase the pairing of a felony perpetrator and a felony victim.

It's in the context of the previous comments, "X person robbing Y person". I didn't want to be redundant. No matter what crimes are happening, there are no police involved, so there is no police transparency motive to release the video.

The motive is to provide the public with information. Some of this information may be useful to identify the (gang of) attackers.

That's a perfectly fine motive, but it's not enough to force anyone that has such a video to release it completely publicly. And BART in this case is basically an "anyone". They have no particular involvement.

Without AMP: https://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2017/07/09/bart-withholdin...

It would be nice if a community fixed its problems, whether systemic or otherwise, rather than hiding facts in the name of equality. Citizens should demand as much.

What third-world country do you live in that has such unsafe public transport?

San Francisco