
Bay Area Flops in 14,000 Respondent Survey on Public Transit Satisfaction - ckelly
http://survata.com/blog/bay-area-flops-in-14000-respondent-survey-on-public-transit-satisfaction/
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unoti
It's worth noting a key difference between Seattle and San Francisco has to do
with gentrification and differences between these areas in terms of where you
can work and live. It's much more practical to both live and work in downtown
Seattle than it is to both live and work in downtown San Francisco. Because of
how San Francisco has avoided building as much new housing downtown as Seattle
has, SF has forced lower income workers (that is, most people) outside of the
city to live. In short, the residents of Seattle are a lot less dependent on
their mass transit to survive, or dependent on it in a much different way than
we are here in the SF Bay area.

~~~
calbear81
Seattle's public transportation is definitely in better shape especially since
the expansion of the light rail and the constant flow of buses between
downtown and the east side (Bellevue). Another big reason is just how
convenient it is to ride to the airport from downtown. For $2.75 you can go
from any station in downtown right to the airport. Compare that to the
ridiculousness of getting to the airport from SF first to Milbrae then pay for
a transfer to the airport on another line.

~~~
dencold
BART goes directly into the SFO airport. If you are taking a flight from the
international terminal, it is a direct walk to the check-in counters.
Otherwise you connect to the airtrain which is an escalator ride up from the
BART platform.

I've found it extremely convenient getting to/from flights from San Francisco,
although I'm lucky to be within walking distance to a BART station from my
apartment.

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auctiontheory
One huge problem with this survey is that if you have always lived in the US
(outside of NYC and maybe one or two other metros), your expectations are
extremely low - so "satisfied" doesn't mean much. You first have to have
experienced a city with great public transport to understand what's possible,
and what you're not getting.

~~~
dave5104
I think this describes me. I'm originally from South Jersey, outside of any
big metropolitan area. I'm now living in Palo Alto, and I think Caltrain and
VTA are great, but I think that the only reason for that is that I went from
_no_ public transit to being able to survive without a car thanks to the
train.

Sure, it'd be nice if Caltrain didn't stop running at fricking 10:30 on
weekends, but it gets me to work in a reasonable amount of time.

~~~
auctiontheory
_Sure, it 'd be nice if Caltrain didn't stop running at fricking 10:30 on
weekends_

And if it didn't keep running into people or breaking down for hours at a
time. Visit NYC or London to experience the awesomeness of a good public
transit system.

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mmanfrin
Pardon my french, but: no shit. The survey was conducted during the BART
strikes. I really doubt people would be terribly enthusiastic about how the
system functions in the midst of a cessation of service.

~~~
ckelly
Survata co-founder here. You're right, and we mentioned that in the article:

"One obvious caveat is our survey coincided with the BART strike in the Bay
Area, and might have reached Bay Area public transportation riders at their
most frustrated."

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j_baker
I don't think it's fair to say that SF "flops" on public transit. Look at the
map. LA, Houston, Dallas, and Philadelphia are public transit flops. San
Francisco is merely mediocre.

And (as pointed out), this is during the BART strike. I fully expect SF's
transit system will be considered "good" once everything's settled.

~~~
rpedela
The entire west side of SF has no train service! It is pretty bad, and the
cities you mentioned are even worse.

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bane
I currently live near D.C. and absolutely hate the public transit here. I
could list a laundry list of the problems, but honestly, compared to SF it's
like a euphoric utopic vision of perfect public transport gifted by a
benevolent god.

D.C. has many similar problems like S.F. (NIMBYism, weird property issues,
right of way, long commutes) with the added fun of having to work with three
different State level territories (VA, MD and DC) to get anything done.

Honestly the gold standard in the U.S. for public transit is NYC, and I love
when I'm living/working there (which are far too short and far between), but
let's be honest, NYC's public transit isn't really all that nice. What it _is_
is comprehensive and not ridiculously expensive. At least as comprehensive as
any major European city and less than half the price of the D.C. system on
most days w/r to fares.

But really you can visit any major European city and find a transit system at
least as good as D.C.s...which is the second busiest in the U.S. and 3rd by
length. Visit Asia and have all sense of what a good system is blown right out
of your mind.

The level of quality in the U.S. mass transit system is really inexcusable. A
nearby system, Baltimore's, is so bad that, despite living just a couple hours
away for most of my life and having visited the city numerous times, I wasn't
even aware the city had a subway system until a couple years ago - it's
virtually invisible.

If you consider that D.C. is bottom of the barrel then by European and Asian
standards, S.F.'s is just a bad joke.

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samstave
Its not just bart - the whole system sucks. As a daily commuter from alameda
to mountain view - it SUCKS:

Bike 2 miles to bart, take either to SF or Millbrea

* If SF; then have to bike to 4th and king to caltrin

* If Millbrea - have to swap trains at balboa park

Take caltrain to mtn view; many times Caltrain says they are "too full" for
bikes and wont let me on that morning train.

Get to mountain view, bike 2 miles to office.

Total time: 2.5 hours each way. Total cost: between $20 and $25 per day.

\---

The services don't connect, the trains schedules don't match up well. Bart is
filthy. Bart does a piss poor job of supporting bikes, people don't like bikes
on bart.

I work from home as much as possible given how bad this is.

~~~
Greenisus
I've gone from Hayward to Mountain View quite a few times and know all about
it, so hats off to you for actually taking public transit for that trip! I'm
too lazy, so I'd drive, and it's still about an hour each way in traffic.

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nerfhammer
The difference between NYC and SF was smaller than I expected

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mikeryan
Well I know the Bay Area's public transit kind of sucks, but I'm not sure why
they're called out here over LA.

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lnanek2
Have definitely been considering moving my East Bay rental down to SV. BART
has just not been reliable these past few months, and I've used Caltrain
before, and even stayed a few months in East Palo Alto which is cheaper than
my current Walnut Creek.

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itsameta4
Holy cow, how can you live in NYC and _never_ take public transportation?

~~~
spectre256
If the survey was composed of people from all over the entire city, it seems a
bit more reasonable. NYC is big.

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spectre256
I'm disappointed to not see Portland in this survey. I visited recently and
thought the public transportation was pretty good. It would have been nice to
know what the survey revealed.

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ebiester
While not thrilled with the BART strike, it is generally the most reliable of
the options in the area. MUNI buses, on the other hand, are frustratingly bad
at times.

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mh-
I guess that depends on how you define reliability.

If we were tracking it like uptime, what does BART look like after the 2
strikes?

~~~
idunno246
Would you rather a fail fast on bart or a service never reliable and will
probably be late holding onto your time.

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bbrain
why include all respondents who said that they "never" used public
transportation?

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slapshot
Those would seem to be the most important people to understand why they think
transit isn't fitting their needs. It could be that (1) they are wrong and
just don't understand the system, or (2) the local transit system actually
fails them (doesn't serve close enough, often enough, safe enough, direct
enough, late enough, etc.) in a way that can be improved.

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aspensmonster
I want to know how 53 percent of Austinites felt satisfied with the city's
public transportation. Outside of the immediate downtown area, it's lackluster
at absolute best, and more typically not a viable option for getting where you
need to go.

