>(and in general the low population density)

The low population density is arguably caused by the bad planning.

>make it a place ill-suited to public transportation.

I'm quite convinced that you will not be able to drive yourselves out of the issue you have in the U.S - you'll need to retrofit what you have to make it amenable to proper public transportation. EVs help a bit, but only really with the carbon dioxide-issue - everything else bad about cars is still bad with EVs.

>EVs affordable enough for the poor will definitely be required here

Here in SW Ontario there are countless people riding those electric scooters or ebikes in the summertime. I’ve even seen old barflies hop on after drinking a pitcher and head on to the next spot. I’m sure the Bay Area has more clement weather year-round than here.

I commuted to/from a train on an electric scooter. Not only are they just not viable for any trips longer than 3-4 miles, you can't go up any sort of incline either. Mine was "overclocked" to enable up to 500w of power and I'm 180lbs, but it wouldn't be able to climb even a 10 degree incline at over walking speed. And at least the consumer ones you can find on Amazon are not robust enough to withstand even 6 months of daily use before the tire wears out, battery terminals corrode, and screws start falling out.

I've used a normal bike and an e-bike and didn't have such issues.

$2k e-bikes are probably more robust than the $600 scooter I was riding and would definitely be my choice next time around. For anyone interested in e-scootering though, avoid the Segway ES series like hell and make sure you do your research.

Perhaps it puts them ahead, but they are coasting. BART and Muni ridership has for years been stagnant or declining, while the budgets explode and system speed and on-time performance fall apart.

Maybe Caltrain did marginally better? They added express services not that long ago.