BART sets ridership record during the Labor Day weekend

[Gormy Cuss]

Why? Because the major car route from the East Bay to San Francisco was closed and residents know how awful it is to be stuck in back ups on the other routes which are for the most part also bridges.

Just more evidence that people will use mass transit when it's a more attractive option than driving.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/09/05/BA8ORV1MN.DTL&hw=BART+record&sn=002&sc=842

BART set ridership records each day of the holiday weekend as thousands of Bay Area residents and tourists rode its trains during the 70-hour closure of the Bay Bridge, transit district officials said this afternoon. The system carried 389,400 passengers on Friday, when the bridge was closed to traffic at 8 p.m., breaking the previous weekday mark of 381,200 set on June 13, the day of a concert by the Police at the Oakland Coliseum and a Giants' home game.

On Saturday, the transit system logged a record 278,600 passengers, including thousands of fans going to Berkeley for Cal's football game against Tennessee. The previous Saturday mark was 229,600 riders on March 3, the day of the Chinese New Year's parade.

BART also cracked its Sunday ridership record, with 208,700 riders on a day that included an afternoon free concert at Golden Gate Park to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Summer of Love in San Francisco, officials said today. The Sunday record had been 195,700 on June 24, when many riders took BART to the gay pride parade in San Francisco.

In addition, 21,100 people rode BART overnight during the weekend - 6,900 between 1 a.m. and 6 a.m. Saturday, 9,900 between 1 a.m. and 8 a.m. Sunday and 4,300 between 1 a.m. to 6 a.m. Monday.

The last stats, overnight ridership, are significant because normally BART is shut down during those hours and there is endless debate about whether that should change. I hope that this experiment helps the operators move forward towards a 24 hour system.

[ThomCat]

1. Of course people will use public transit.

New York City is proof that you can get massive numbers of people to habitually use public transit when it's available.

Of course, that doesn't mean thatthe public transit will be well managed, or maintained, or kept affordable. :(

[AndyTiedye]

2. Interesting that the Records they Broke Were Also Set This Year

which suggests that a lot more people are using transit even when the Bay Bridge isn't closed.

[Vogon_Glory]

3. But, But, But...

The usual Fibber-tarian take on mass transit is that it would supposedly be cheaper to buy everyone a new car than to build an expensive rail transit system.

I often wonder just how much traffic congestion the Bay area would have if BART had never been built and the former San Franciso--San Jose rail commuter line had been allowed to whither away and what sort of carnage would have been wrought had unsafe and unfit drivers would have been put behind the steering wheels of shiny new cars instead of being told to make use of public transit.

[nxylas]

4. Good debunking of this myth here

http://www.apta.com/research/info/online/documents/weyrich3.pdf

See pages 41-42 (labeled as pages 37-38 of the printed document). This analysis actually comes from a conservative think-tank, but don't let that put you off. They are pro-transit and actually engage with the free-marketeers on their own terms.

[Vogon_Glory]

5. Our Strange Bedfellow Paul Weyrich

Interestingly enough, I understand that Far Right political activist Paul Weyrich is one of the few Righties with sane ideas about public transit. We DU'ers may disagree with Weyrich across the board on almost every other issue, but Weyrich is NOT one of those knee-jerk transit-bashers so common among so-called "conservatives" and among Fibber-tarians.

[nxylas]

7. I don't really know anything about him

All I've seen of his are his pro-transit articles, which naturally, I agree with. I'm sure there will be plenty of other issues I disagree with him on, but it's good to have someone coming up with conservative arguments in favor of public transportation. The more people on our side, the better.

[Gormy Cuss]

6. BART is only a small part of the mass transit picture in the Bay Area, but its significance is that

it does replace single-occupant car trips more than local urban transit like MUNI (San Francisco) and AC Transit (Oakland.) In those cities mass transit competes with walking and to a lesser degree bicycling. BART is largely a suburb to city system as is Caltrain. Without question the absence of BART and Caltrain would have an immediate and significant impact on traffic congestion, and it would disproportionately affect roads that are already congested severely (Highways 24, 80,580,and other 80 spurs in the East Bay and Highway 101 in San Francisco/San Mateo counties.)