From: lip@s1.gov (Loren I. Petrich)
Newsgroups: ba.transportation
Subject: BART and other Bay Area transit agencies... (was Re: BART "State of the System" handout)
Date: 18 Nov 92 23:23:43 GMT
Distribution: ba
Organization: LLNL

In article <1992Nov18.175327.23026@netcom.com> kudzu@netcom.com (Michael Sierchio) writes:

>And people carp about BART, but it does what no other Rapid Transit in
>the world does, and does it well -- the biggest failures of BART are
>AC Transit, MUNI, and all the other connecting transit agencies.

	I can certainly agree that BART is a very efficient system,
but can you please explain your assessment of AC Transit, Muni, and so
forth in more detail?

	I once rode an AC Transit bus from Hayward to Oakland out of
curiosity to see what a BART-less East Bay might be like. The bus took
over twice as long and was _very_ unpleasant. Too many buses have a
_very_ unpleasant ride, or is that more a question of road quality? If
it _is_ road quality, then that would explain the superior comfort of
most passenger railcars; most well-kept rails are very smooth. I think
that this is a serious failure of bus designers, not to pay attention
to such thing. I think that designers of any kind of vehicles should
be made to ride in them for awhile, to see if they would be willing to
endure their brainchildren.

	Also, on the only times I've crossed the Bay Bridge by bus
(late weekends), there would usually be a traffic jam approaching San
Francisco. What a bummer.

	I read somewhere that AC Transit has not made any big changes
to its south-of-Oakland lines since the late 1950's (!); it might be
time to reconfigure all of AC Transit into a local and BART-feeder
system. That will probably mean that most of the Bay-crossing routes
will have to go. Those that I had ridden were nearly empty; BART had a
_lot_ more passengers. The one exception would be a bus serving
Treasure Island, since there is no BART station there.

	BART does get a lot of flak about costs, but it would be
difficult to get BART-like performance without its kind of costs. A
street-running LRV system, say, would be a _lot_ cheaper, but a _lot_
slower. Grade separations are _critical_ for good performance, since
_one_ accident can tie up a rail line for an _awfully_ long time.
Unless one has tow trucks stationed nearby, of course. Flat-road
vehicles can easily make detours, but rail ones can't. And as evident
from some rec.railroad threads, there are too many people who are
willing to race the trains at grade crossings.

	As part of my visits to the MTC Library, I saw a study of a
light-rail alternative to BART for the Dublin-Pleasanton extension.
The common type of street-running LRV's would be a lot slower than
BART trains, especially when climbing the 3% grades on parts of the
route.  High-performance LRV's could compete with BART, however.
Construction costs would be essentially the same for most of the
route, since it is in the median of I-238/I-580. There would be _more_
construction for a standard-gauge light-rail line, since separate
tracks would have to be built to the Bay Fair station. BART-gauge
LRV's were considered, and these have the advantages of being
upgradable to BART and being able to use Bay Fair station BART
trackage. The study quotes some LRV makers as stating that building
LRV's to BART gauge (5'6") instead of to standard gauge (4'8.5") could
be done at essentially no extra cost, but with some constraint on
allowable route curvature. The conclusion of the study: BART is the
most straightforward way to go, given the similar route cost and the
compatibility with the rest of the system.

	In a railfan magazine, I found one interesting curiosity:
comparison of efficiencies of various North American transit systems.
Comparing rail system with equivalent bus costs per passenger-mile,
BART came out at a ratio of 2.16. Of those listed, the champion was
Calgary's light-rail system at 3.03. San Diego's light-rail system
came out at 2.61, while Sacramento's came out at 1.27. The worst one
listed was Baltimore's Metro at 0.76, making it more expensive than a
bus.

	BART also did fairly well in other measures, such as operating
cost per passenger-mile: 20.9 cents. The champion was Vancouver's
SkyTrain at 9.8 cents, while the worst was the Buffalo light-rail
system, was at 58.4 cents. San Diego was at 11.6 cents, and Sacramento
at 37.3 cents.

	Vehicle productivity? In passenger-miles per vehicle hour,
BART's figure was 635. The champ was Vancouver's SkyTrain at 1176,
while the worst was Pittsburg's light-rail system at 284. San Diego
and Sacramento were 626 and 427, respectively.

	So, it's safe to say that BART _does_ run efficiently.
Xref: sparky ba.transportation:2701 rec.railroad:9036