SF: BART is dying. But will the Bay Area pay higher taxes to save it?

Like many Bay Area workers, Sabrina Hardy is back in the office part time — and noticing a stark change in her commute. These days she can reliably find a seat on BART.

"There are definitely fewer riders," Hardy said, exiting the El Cerrito del Norte Station as dusk fell on a recent weekday. Although rush hour had set in, only a few people trickled through the turnstiles. Hardy and others marveled at how open and airy the trains have become — particularly on Mondays and Fridays, when people no longer have to jostle one another in the aisles or circle the station lots to find parking.

This new normal would have seemed unimaginable before the pandemic, when commuters logged 400,000 BART trips on an average weekday. Passengers routinely stood shoulder to shoulder in train cars thick with body heat; parking got so competitive that riders began selling permits on a gray market.

As major employers including Apple, Google and JPMorgan settle on three days a week in the office, according to a recent report from Business Insider, BART has come to mirror the pattern. Trains fill up on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, with crowds thinning out on Fridays and Mondays, when workers tend to stay home. If those sparsely filled Monday and Friday trains are more comfortable, they're also eerie — as though to signal the beginning of a long, slow crash. .................(more)

https://www.masstransitmag.com/rail/news/55236094/ca-bart-is-dying-but-will-the-bay-area-pay-higher-taxes-to-save-it