I took the 24 and yes i lived near a bus stop because thats what you should do when you have money (like everyone in marin) and are choosing where to live.
Marin is by far the most livable and accessible place in all the bay area. You can get to all parts (including the coast and natural areas) via regular bus service and some walking which puts it lightyears ahead of South bay.
Marin Transit contracts out to Golden Gate Transit (the bridge district), Marin Airporter, Whistlestop, and MV Transit. For many years they simply used the bridge district but that was too expensive so they've farmed many routes out to cheaper (read: non-union) companies using smaller equipment.
Bus service runs much more consistently from and to more parts of the city than anything from South bay (if i recall correctly, some routes are 24/7)
Here's a map of late night public transit service. Note that Marin is conspicuously devoid of any routes. While it will take an extraordinarily long time you can get from San Francisco to San Jose late at night on public transit. Public transit in Marin shuts down between 9pm and midnight.
https://511.org/sites/default/files/pdfs/RTC/allnighter-v10....
I took the 24 and yes i lived near a bus stop because thats what you should do when you have money (like everyone in marin) and are choosing where to live.
Most people don't and can't do this. Transit oriented development is regularly protested to a degree that SF NIMBYs would be green with envy if they saw how things worked in Marin.
Marin is by far the most livable and accessible place in all the bay area.
Based on?
You can get to all parts (including the coast and natural areas) via regular bus service and some walking which puts it lightyears ahead of South bay.
Yeah, that's definitely not true.
You are completely wrong about transit shutting down between 9 and midnight. The 101 route definitely has north bound buses runnjng every hour at that time (my wife and i took them regularly). This is really low effort critique on your part: http://goldengatetransit.org/schedules/updates/route_101.php
The livability claim is based on how east I found it to live in marin compared to mountain view, Palo Alto, and sunnyvale. It is a personal claim. Marin is way less stressful and overall better connected with san Francisco.
And yes, you can go from east marin to west marin via bus and you can go to mt tam via bus and you can go all the way to inverness via bus, passing through a good portion of marins natural areas.
I was referencing the entire system, the 101 is a minuscule fraction of the overall service. But if you'd like to look at the timetables, the last southbound 101 leaves Santa Rosa at 9:55 PM, arriving in SF at 12:17 AM. The last northbound 101 leaves SF at 12:08 AM and arrives in Santa Rosa at 2:30 AM. So, sure, some parts of the route get service past midnight. But if you're counting on taking the 101 home from SF past midnight, good luck.
Meanwhile SamTrans, for instance, runs hourly service to San Francisco between 1–5 AM.
The livability claim is based on how east I found it to live in marin compared to mountain view, Palo Alto, and sunnyvale. It is a personal claim.
Personal claim, perhaps, but it's objectively false. During the day you've got a few different rail options to get from SF to SJ as well as regular bus service.
Meanwhile Marin sees a few routes to SF maybe twice an hour during peak hours, and a handful of ferry trips. During the weekend you're typically down to hourly service and maybe three ferry trips a day.
And yes, you can go from east marin to west marin via bus and you can go to mt tam via bus and you can go all the way to inverness via bus, passing through a good portion of marins natural areas.
Sure, if you time it right. The timetable for the 68 may as well be swiss cheese though.
Point being that there's nothing stopping Marin County from doing a good job with transit. Nothing, that is, except for a populace that would rather sit in traffic.
Grievances:
The 101 is a great idea, a limited stop bus from SF to Santa Rosa that can basically camp out in the carpool lane. Except that in their infinite wisdom, Marin Transit doesn't actually time transfers in San Rafael. Unless you live within walking distance of a 101 stop you're often just wasting your time.
Real-time predictions sound great, except that Marin Transit is pairing with the Transit app. For a while was providing completely fabricated predictions. Sorry, you're only going to leave me stranded in the middle of the night once before I dump your app. NextBus has its share of problems too, but the difference is that Muni runs such frequent service you're more concerned with predictions and headways than with schedules. Marin Transit runs such sparse service that you absolutely need to adhere to a schedule.
A zone based fare system sounds reasonable to most people. Unfortunately Marin Transit is not set up to refund overcharges when you can't tag off as you exit the vehicle (e.g. when their own equipment doesn't work). Zone based fares also complicate cash payments wildly slowing down the boarding process. Unfortunately Marin Transit refuses to let people alight from or board with RFID payment via the rear doors slowing down the whole process even more.
The Golden Gate Bridge District (one of the folks Marin Transit contracts out to) leased another ferry knowing that the engine wasn't compliant with California emissions requirements. In their due diligence they never realized that it is physically impossible to retrofit a compliant engine into that heap. It's still not in revenue service.
Historically there have been very few feeder routes because people tend to like to keep the poors out (Tiburon is notoriously bad). So to get from Marin to San Francisco you're often walking all the way out to the highway, sometimes along roads with no sidewalks (I'm looking at you Sleepy Hollow). SMART also suffers because of this. Getting to a SMART station can easily be a 30 minute walk along a route with no bus service.
That said, things don't actually have to be this way. But Marin likes its privilege[1].
1: https://www.reddit.com/r/Marin/comments/coz8ro/smart_train_s...