Don't trust a Houstonian to interpret SF transit!

MUNI light rail, subways, and buses handle most shorter trips within SF -- so Metrorail is more comparable to a mix of MUNI plus BART. (It's possible for visitors to the bay area, or even residents of outlying suburbs, to almost completely overlook MUNI trains. I know when I lived in Berkeley, and took BART into SF, I had no appreciation of all the places MUNI went, even though the downtown MUNI stations are stacked above the BART tubes so you see them while riding the escalator up.)

BART was always a longer-trip system, by design.

Alright, so if I'm evaluating the benefits of adding an additional 20 miles of track length to the system, should I added at the low-density edges or the high-density core? How would you evaluate the benefits of the two options? He's said that the core option would get several times more ridership.

And I'm sorry you bring up his city of residence. As a Texas-born New Yorker, I'm particularly sensitive to this fallacious ad hominem. Or should I discounting your arguments because you're presumably Californian and your government isn't particularly high-functioning?

Y'all need to take a chill pill. As I'm a New York-born, Houston-raised, SF resident, no ad hominem was intended, except to emphasize that outsiders can miss things obvious to a resident. That's why I also mentioned that even when I lived in Berkeley, and took BART to SF regularly, I didn't understand MUNI.

The link you provided overlooked the key fact that SF has another system that's far more like SF's version of DC's Metrorail: MUNI -- even though the MUNI cars and payment-mechanism doesn't look as much like Metrorail as BART does.

The idea of extending BART to provide more central-city service isn't even considered, because the BART system was created primarily to serve regional, long-haul, city-to-city needs. BART is the LIRR or PATH trains, not the MTA subways, of the bay area.

The internal SF system at the dense core is being extended -- a controversial new 'Central Subway' from Chinatown to CalTrain/SOMA -- and it will be part of MUNI, not BART.

And you pointing out that the California state government isn't high-functioning? Well, that's just mean. Fortunately, as an authentic Tex-Yorker, I have a tough skin and am not particularly sensitive to such slights.

San Francisco faces a lot of problems which DC doesn't when designing a subway system. Apart from the fact that there's a honking great bay in the middle of the metropolitan area, I'm not sure it's possible for BART to serve much more of San Francisco proper than it already does.

Why? Well, if you go north of the BART line you're rapidly into the hills, so either you have to take the trains up the grade (bad idea) or you have to build your stations thirty storeys underground (also a bad idea). If you go past the hills and up to the Marina, you're into reclaimed land so I don't think it's possible to build a tunnel (civil engineers out there to comment?)

You could probably extend it out into the Richmond and Sunset districts, but that part of town is served reasonably by buses anyway.

While I hate to defend BART almost as much as I hate to ride on BART, its main purpose is really all about linking the cities of the East Bay with San Francisco, and San Francisco with the airport. Comparing it to a proper metro system in a city not subject to the weird geographical limitations imposed by the hills and the Bay isn't really fair.

I'm not an engineer, but I live in the Netherlands, so I am qualified to tell you that it is possible to build tunnels under reclaimed land. Just like with tunnels under a waterway, you just have to take some precautions to prevent the tunnel from flooding or floating.

Embarcadero station is built in landfill, but it does make things more difficult. None of the San Francisco subway plans of the past ever attempted to serve Russian Hill very well. A line on Geary (or Post or O'Farrell) was the inevitable closest proposal every time.

Two bits of BART history:

- My understanding is that BART was originally intended to go around the entire bay, but budget squabbles among the counties led Santa Clara (San Jose), San Mateo (the Peninsula), and Marina to drop out (c.f. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Bay_Area_Rapid_T...).

- The D.C. Metro is actually based on BART and uses the same trains, ticketing system, and fare structure originally designed for BART.

It was always optimistic to think that BART would ring the bay. Santa Clara County was never part of the District to begin with. San Mateo County dropped out because they already had the SP commuter service (today's Caltrain) and didn't think BART was worth the money. Marin County was asked to leave after San Mateo County did because of doubt over whether the Golden Gate Bridge was structurally capable of carrying trains and because the county's low population density couldn't support their share of the cost. The Geary line within San Francisco remained in the plan at that time but was dropped to cut the cost of the initial system far enough that it could be funded.

That said, the original express intent of BART was to relieve freeway congestion from car commuters, not to provide an urban transit system. The San Francisco city government pushed the district to make BART as useful within the city as a one-line system could be, but they had to fight for it (to get three stations beyond what the BART planners wanted to build), and the district has never shaken off its suburban bias.

He said he's lived in both SF and DC, if you had bothered to read past the first sentence you'd know this..

I certainly did read the whole thing, hoping to find some acknowledgement of MUNI. (He finally gets to it in the separate comments page.)

He doesn't detail his living experience for SF, but for DC, it's one summer. As I noted, you can be a bay area resident for years and easily overlook SF MUNI, if you're not in the city proper and mostly ride BART.

Re: Muni - Confirmed. I've lived in the Bay area (Oakland, Sunnyvale, San Mateo, Redwood Cit) for 14 years, do not drive, and take public transit 100% of the time. I used to work in Mountain View, and live in Oakland, and so took buses, shuttles, and Bart twice a Day.

In 14 years I've heard of "Muni" but never actually rode on of their train/buses - though, as you mentioned, I _see_ that "Muni" platform every single day when taking Bart.

From what I understand, BART is not meant to be a local subway type system. It's heavy rail for moving between different cities in the greater Bay Area. It just happens to have several stops in SF. (Thus the acronym Bay Area Rapid Transit).

MUNI is the equivalent of subway/bus in SF (though how well it handles that job is up for debate).

i love it when a metro system goes the distance. what with bikes, buses and feet, getting around a city isn't a big deal. however, getting a 1 or 2 hr drive away from the city is a huge deal. having a cheap and convenient way to get to those beaches, state parks, non-neighboring towns, etc, is so amazingly awesome---worth it.

Let's put it another way: when is that love not worth it? Is it worth $50 a trip? $100? $500? At what point do low ridership numbers to far-away places cease justifying the construction of dedicated fixed-rail infrastructure? (the highest of the high-density modes of transit)

I may love taking a train straight to Paris, but that doesn't mean it should be a part of my city's metro system.

On the face of it, it seems like there should be an inverse relationship between the people paying the most taxes and the areas of Seattle most in need of public transit. People with money are more likely to drive a car and therefore less likely to need transit.

Did I misunderstand your comment?