Why is a new paradigm needed for BART?

This is a response to a comment from an Mission Local article covering the BART candidate forum. 

Hi Dimitri,

If we’re serious about providing mass transit for most people in the Bay Area, rail is not an option. The systemic problems with rail make it too expensive and inflexible to serve the majority of the Bay population.

You can see the symptoms everywhere in BART.

1. BART is proposing a $10+ billion dollar project over 20 years that will result in nearly the exact same service. It will have the same crowding levels and nearly the same schedule and energy efficiency.
   
2. Expanding the system today costs more than it did during original construction. ~$700 million per new station. After 44 years BART stations still are only within walking distance of ~3% of the population and 50% of BART riders drive to their station. This helps explain why the Bay Area has more cars per capita than Los Angeles.
   
3. There's only one vender of brakes for the old and new BART trains. This means the vendor can ask almost any price, and BART has to pay them.
   
4. New BART trains cost $2.2 million each and have 43 seats. For the same price you could buy 90 minivans for a total of 630 seats.
   
5. Trains STILL require an operator despite the fact that the system is essentially a horizontal elevator.
   
6. Replacing tracks cost 10x more than replacing roads.
   
7. BART rider fares don’t cover even the cost of operation, let alone maintenance and expansion.
   

These problems with rail are not unique to the BART system. They stem from the systemic properties of rail. The big ones are.

1. Centralized control. Trains don’t have steering wheels so they must be controlled central computer system that moves the tracks. This computer system is usually provided by a single vendor. The control system must be updated for every new extension or operational change.
   
2. Small volume parts. There are orders of magnitudes fewer trains produced than cars each year. This means that trains are many times more expensive to build than cars.
   
3. Incompatible infrastructure. Trains only work on their own tracks so to expand, they must build their own custom infrastructure.
   

To draw a parallel to the computer industry, rails are essentially hard wired. Before software, the logic of computers had to physically wired. To change even the smallest part of the logic, nearly the whole computer had to be redesigned. This was expensive and slow. Then software was invented so that changing the computer logic only required typing. Today, massively complex math can be done with only a few lines of code.

To change a rail system, you must physically rewire it by laying down new tracks.

I agree that some things (like calculus) invented before dial up internet don’t need to be improved. However, I’d argue that even spoons, forks and plates are improved by burritos and other increasingly popular utensil-less foods.

Knowing that any significant change to BART will take 10+ years, we need to plan for the technological advances over that time. We don’t want to have a ribbon cutting ceremony with trains that are already decades out of date. I don’t know if self driving electric BUSES will be the best fit for mass transit, but it certainly seems headed in that direction.

Thanks to limited public and private funding, there have been major advances in self driving capabilities and electric car performance. Now, private companies, including most major car companies, are investing billions of dollars every year to develop both self driving electric car technology. We can only expect the innovation in these fields to increase.

A self driving electric bus system also solves many of the systemic problems that plague rail.

1. Decentralized: Adding new busses, stations or roads don’t require integrating with a central system.
   
2. Interoperability: Buses can drive on any road so it would be easy to expand, and integrate other systems
   
3. Mass produced. The buses would be affordable because they are small (think minivan on a tesla chassis), produced by major car companies, and used across the globe.
   
4. High frequency. Small vehicles would enable lower wait times for customers by coming more often.
   

So if we’re serious about providing mass transit for MOST of the bay area, we need to start thinking in a new paradigm. It’s obvious from the “Better BART” plan its associated bond that BART leadership is still thinking under the old paradigm.

Personally, I think BART has the opportunity to create the world's best transit system in 20 years. This system would be one that where the majority of people the Bay Area to not need a car to access. World leaders would come ride it to get ideas for their own countries. This is not impossible, but would require vision and political will.  

Regardless, BART riders and taxpayers, should hold BART to a higher expectations.

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