Urban rail is one of the few things where "if you build it, they will come" is actually true, so Marin's population would almost certainly be much larger today if it was connected by BART.

Whether that's a good thing is, of course, a separate question.

Urban rail usage in my city was down 20% from 2000 pre-covid and has lost another 60% or so from Covid. That's despite a ~25% increase in population.

Similar story around the US. Outside of NYC public transit usage is declining.

You don’t say where you’re from, but pre-Covid, BART’s usage had gotten so high that planners were trying to figure out how to squeeze more trains into limited headways so that the downtown track platforms didn’t become unsafe from overcrowding at rush hours. Literally it was as many trains as they could fit on the tracks.

So, add SF to your list — it’s not just NYC.

At least, it wasn’t. BART ridership is still down 60+% from peak pre-Covid.

There were 8% fewer transit (bus and rail) trips in the Bay Area in 2018 than in 1982, despite the population increasing by over 30% and the transit systems were expanded during that time period. BART had a 17% decrease in ridership from 2015 to 2018 despite them increasing train service by 15%, which is probably what you're referring to. As of December 2021, BART ridership is only 25% of what it was pre-covid and they have reduced service to 75% of what it used to be.

From the BART Wikipedia article:

"After six straight years of expansion, ridership growth began to slow in late 2016, dropping by 1.7% in October 2016 from the prior year. Although the fiscal year ending June 30, 2017, showed an average weekday ridership of 423,395, the second-highest in BART's history, this was a 2.3% drop from FY 2016. Ridership continued to decline by approximately 3% per year between 2016 and 2019, mirroring a nationwide decline in mass transit ridership in the second half of the decade."

Interesting, though I think this misses the whole story. (In particular, BART at peak hours was dangerously congested, though I won't argue with data showing that other uses declined enough that the average was below zero.)

But perhaps this speaks to your broader point about car ownership and public transit use. Even SF itself has more registered vehicles than inhabitants.

> There were 8% fewer transit (bus and rail) trips in the Bay Area in 2018 than in 1982

Btw, I'd be curious to read the source for this!

Seattle's Link light rail, a relatively new thing, has been extremely successful. Ridership for the first few years well exceeded expectations. I'm not sure of the COVID impact.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Link_light_rail

It's the other way around, isn't it? Having public transit would have allowed more people to move out of the city while commuting there for work. Analogous to what happened with the subway in New York, which made outlying boroughs accessible.

That’s a bit of a catch-22 because part of the reason the county is isolated and small is because there are few good commuting options to the rest of the bay where most of the work is there.

If they added BART there, the potential for adding density would make more sense. Obviously other factors like terrain and NIMBY-ism play roles as well, but you don’t need to reject all rail options within reach of a major metro just because people don’t live there yet.

> there are few good commuting options to the rest of the bay where most of the work is there

Ferry service from Marin is pretty reasonable during commute times. It's a 30 min ride from Sausalito to SF. Bart from Marin to FiDi probably would be similar, just with more frequent trains.

Calling a city with 2-300k residents basically "too small for public transit to work" is definitly the most US thing I heared in a while.

Its a entire county. Wikipedia lists 11 cities and towns in the county, the largest of which has a population of 57k.