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...