You left out this, which I happened to catch on twitter the other day:

> One door on the #BART train gets stuck, the entire train is out of service. Hundreds of people out onto the platform! #incredible

https://twitter.com/#!/mjijackson/status/100612825134800898

I had that same sort of thing happen to me in Phoenix, but people don't take public transportation as seriously there.

I question whether one second-hand tweet is a useful data point.

I have ridden BART most workdays for the past 7 years. I have encountered trains with stuck doors a several times, and on none of those occasions was the train put out of service. In fact, they even have pre-printed stickers that say something to the effect of "This door is not working; please use other door." I have seen these perhaps half a dozen times since I began riding BART regularly.

Note that these doors were stuck _closed_. It would be an obvious safety hazard if the door was stuck open - in that case I can well imagine that the operator would not move the train from the station.

Door stuck closed are also a safety hazard as they can hinder evacuation in case of fire or other emergency and make it more difficult for rescue teams to enter the train. Imagine a packed railroad car full of smoke, very bad visibility and panicking people inside. A stuck door can make the difference between life and death.

That actually seems reasonable to me. There's no easy way to swap a car out of the train in-station, and it would be next to impossible to keep everyone out of one of the cars in the train. Would probably be better if they had some way of quickly locking the door closed, but the trains don't seem to have that feature.

Meanwhile on Muni: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZyQAy8PzgZ8

This has happened a few times this year. Although the video is dated April 1, I can vouch for the authenticity; this is my neighborhood line and I have gotten used to the recurring problems of particular rail carriages. If it were up to me I'd scrap the light rail on the west side of the city and put in buses instead.

It took me most of the way through that video to realize that one of the doors was open. It's frightening that the door malfunctioned and that the sensors apparently aren't working (or don't exist).

I've ridden Muni only a handful of times. On one of them, a homeless man threatened to cut my throat with a knife. Admittedly, it was because I stepped up when he began screaming at a non-white person (Middle-Eastern, perhaps, with some variant of head scarf) and her toddler.

Oh the sensors work - they make an earsplitting beeping when the door fails to close. But sometimes the drivers just take off anyway. This is a proble, with some of the older drivers who are only thinking of their pension in my view; there are a lot of hardworking and safety-minded drivers and station crew, but it only takes one irresponsible person to ruin the good work of many others.

I've been on trains where both doors in a car broke and the train kept going. The mechanic was fixing the door as the train went along, even.

In my experience, BART trains run very regularly, usually on the exact posted schedule. They have unimpeded tracks, so except for mechanical problems and sabotage, they are very reliable. SF MUNI busses and light rail, on the other hand, can be very slow and random, at the mercy of street traffic for most of the routes.

Do you ride in the East Bay beyond MacArthur very often?

Very occasionally, to either Berkeley or Airport/Coliseum. Much less than when I lived in Berkeley.

Assuming for the moment that a violent protest is a bad thing, if someone knows a bad thing is going to happen but does nothing to stop it, do they share responsibility? What if they only suspect a bad thing will happen?

I just can't stand this mentality. Avoiding doing something just because there might be a mere possibility of being sued for it is a total copout.

If you have pretty a good reason to believe something bad will happen, one ought to do their best to protect anyone that might be potentially harmed.

But as far as I've heard, all BART has been going off of are anonymous blog posts about gathering for peaceful protests.

If there is some kind smoking gun of violent intentions, I have yet to see it.

It seems to me that both sides have been escalating and blowing a non-situation (shutting power to leased, shared-carrier facilities) out of proportion. It's one thing to reduce coverage, and an entirely different thing to intentionally jam.

There is, of course, the contextual undercurrent of Oscar Grant being murdered by Johannes Mehserle.

I don't actually think just covering their ass and not getting sued is the BART admins' motivation. I think they honestly believe it's the right thing to do.

Nobody knows if a protest is going to turn violent before the protest happens. Even if it did, you still have the right to peacefully assemble until violence begins.

Worst-case thinking and CYA-syndrome are poor strategies. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/05/worst-case_thi...