Bart is beyond a minor downside, it’s absolutely atrocious public transportation.

This mindset is mind-boggling to me. BART’s operational reliability is excellent. The new cars are really nice. Trains in the core come often. What exactly makes it “absolutely atrocious public transportation”? Of course it doesn’t serve all destinations, but that’s inevitable because the Bay is mostly suburban sprawl.

Dirty, noisy, unpleasant rider experience. The terminals are sketchy. Try public transportation in other places (europe) for example. Hands down a better experience all around.

This is a result of America’s and California’s larger ills, especially extreme housing unaffordability (California) and lack of an adequate social safety net (America). Of course these symptoms are lessened or absent in countries that have addressed the core issues—the same is true in other areas besides public transportation. It’s not a BART thing, it’s a society thing.

I think of course if you compare it against the best transportation systems in the world you're going to come up pretty short with BART(Tokyo for example was AMAZING). I come from Atlanta where MARTA is a pretty big farcry from effective public transportation, so maybe that is why I don't mind BART as much...

Personally I find it super sketchy so I always avoid it and just uber.

This is valid, especially when there isn't a lot of other riders around and when you start going to some of the worse areas of the Bay(or insert almost any American city).

BART is overcrowded, but thanks to grade separation, it’s the most reliable system I’ve used.