
Annual Income and Cost of Living for BART Employees - sxywu
http://sxywu.github.io/80k
======
cjensen
This is a good lesson for those of us making programs who "need" to charge a
certain price in order to make a living. There is something in the human
psyche that really wants to make a connection between the price of an item and
the living conditions of the seller or the buyer.

The lesson is this: the Law of Supply and Demand is not interested in your
rationalizations or ad-hoc reasoning about "fair" pricing. In this case, the
cost of living for BART employees has _nothing_ to do with what BART should
pay the employees, unless those costs cause enough employees and potential
employees to quit and reduce the supply of labor.

For those of us in tech, the lesson again is that pricing has nothing to do
with your costs in making a good or service. If the return is insufficient,
you may either choose not to make the good in the first place, or cease making
the good. It has no effect on pricing.

~~~
3825
As Shirley says:

> For another, what does 80k really mean? Is it the average of their base
> salaries or their total costs of employment? And who are included in this
> average? Certainly, if management salaries are included, it'd unreasonably
> skew the data!

I am concerned why there are 217 people in management. I am sure we can find
some other people who will work in management for less. Fire the management!

If it were up to me, I'd stick to the BART compensation for everyone but the
utility workers and increase their base by about 1k over current BART
proposal. I'd make up for that by cutting down on management costs. I would
not necessarily decrease pay outside of those with corporate title but they
have to start letting some of the people in management go. My goal would be to
reduce the number of management employees from 217 to 150 by the end of 2014.
Nobody needs 17% of their workforce to be in management. Trim that fat.

I don't have much confidence in either the unions or the management to do
their job. I bet everyone involved is very glad that I don't run BART.

~~~
walshemj
I suspect management covers all the professional grades as well you know the
HR, marketing, securitty and professional engineers not just those with strict
line management roles.

~~~
3825
Hm... I guess I got a little carried away. I still don't understand why a
security instructor or an engineer would be considered management. I'm sure
there's a rationale. Somebody want to help me understand this concept?

~~~
walshemj
Because thats how they are recorded by HR for reporting purposes and in the US
to make them exempt grades.

99.99% of HN readers who work in tech will be considered
management/professional grades even if you dont formally "manage" anyone

~~~
3825
I don't mean to derail this conversation but I thought to HR I am just
"Contingent Labor". How can I be considered management?

~~~
walshemj
Are you considered an "exempt" grade if so HR will _have_ to put you in the
M&P (managerial and professional) group to avoid all sorts of nasty tax
problems with the IRS.

------
stevewilber
Bart workers pay $92/mo for health insurance. [1]

This post is comparing the income for one Bart employee to the expenses for a
family of four. I'm not sure why child care is included if only one adult is
working.

Subtracting those out, I get $54,912. This seems about right for a frugal life
in the burbs.

[1] [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-workers-pay-
plus-...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/BART-workers-pay-plus-
benefits-among-top-in-U-S-4723315.php)

~~~
nknighthb
> _This seems about right for a frugal life in the burbs._

More than these peasants deserve, right? I mean, why should people providing a
vital service to a city feel entitled to live amongst the betters they serve?

~~~
jamesaguilar
Yeah, unskilled, replaceable labor doesn't get paid much. That is how it
always has been, and I don't see it as a huge, immediate problem. These folks
are already making way more than people of similar levels of skill in other
parts of the country -- in fact, they are double the median income in the US.
There are plenty of other essential services, like garbage people, chefs,
janitors, cabbies, etc. that get paid less and require similar levels of
education.

I mean, when we remove scarcity, sure, give all the BART workers mansions. But
until then, I think this is a fine wage for doing work that's on the block for
being automated in ten or twenty years.

~~~
nknighthb
> _unskilled, replaceable labor_

Go get a job as a BART driver. Report back how unskilled and replaceable they
are. And report your salary. It'll be lower than you're expecting. All the
numbers you're being fed (including the ones on the linked page) are
misleading unless you actually consider them from the perspective of a BART
employee progressing through his career from the beginning.

~~~
jamesaguilar
I am not going to do what you suggested. If you want to explain why you think
Bart driving is skilled, hard to replace labor, that would be productive, but
telling me to change my career is not an argument.

It is not exactly a revelation that people just starting out in a career get
paid less than experienced folks, especially in labor markets controlled by
unions.

~~~
nknighthb
> _I am not going to do what you suggested._

Then what makes you think you can argue they're overpaid?

> _If you want to explain why you think Bart driving is skilled, hard to
> replace labor_

I know absolutely no one who has not gone through significant training who I
would trust at the controls of a huge vehicle like a bus or train. I also
don't know many people who want to drive around at night alone picking
strangers up.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Same thing that makes you think you can argue they are underpaid.

> I know absolutely no one ...

How many people do you know who only have a high school diploma? Who have no
other options that pay more than $60k/year?

~~~
nknighthb
Hmm... did I say they were underpaid?

> _How many people do you know who only have a high school diploma?_

My parents, all my grandparents, most of my aunts and uncles, most of my
cousins. I would say "me", but that would be a lie, because I don't even have
a high school diploma. Not sure about friends and acquaintances. Most of them
are tech workers, so formal education rarely comes up.

> _Who have no other options that pay more than $60k /year?_

Lots of the people I mention, including myself, make or have in the past made
more than $60k/year (at least inflation-adjusted).

Pieces of paper from a broken educational system are not determinant of how
much someone can or should make.

~~~
jamesaguilar
You implied that they should be paid enough to live in downtown SF, which I
think is equivalent to claiming they should be paid more. If not, let's just
assume I can come up with some convoluted reason why I'm not talking about
their pay either, and we can just stop talking about it.

> Pieces of paper from a broken educational system are not determinant of how
> much someone can or should make.

Certainly agree with that. The demand for the work you can do and your ability
to do the work with quality should be the main determinants. So I guess we'll
see how much the city is willing to pay, and how far the BART workers are
willing to push them before they just get replaced. Our discussion on the
matter is kind of a non-factor.

~~~
nknighthb
What I implied is that arguing they shouldn't is detached elitism.

You're free to stop talking about anything you want at any time.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Interesting. Let me get this straight. You claim folks who think bart workers
shouldn't get paid more are detached elitists. But, you also aren't actually
arguing they should get paid more. That seems like an untenable position to
me.

~~~
nknighthb
"Nonsense" is what the capitalists are spewing: "It's a good life" vs
perceived market value. Stick to one or the other. Either it's sufficient that
the market work it out, or quality of life matters. Argue one or the other,
not both.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Personally, I think that both should be weighed into the decision, but BART
workers are way above average in terms of how their QoL is covered, and as a
result should not have that optimized further considering their already over-
market pay and the considerable cost to the taxpayer.

~~~
nknighthb
[http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-03-08/news/ct-met-
ge...](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-03-08/news/ct-met-getting-
around-0308-20100307_1_bus-drivers-cta-transit-systems)

"Way above average"? "over-market"? Are you adjusting for cost of living in
your guess or not?

~~~
jamesaguilar
Above a average for workers with similar background and job difficulty. Not
transit workers. Yes, I am just guessing.

------
FrankenPC
This is a red herring argument. The REAL issue to anyone in the Bay Area who
commutes is the extraordinary price of BART tickets. Right now, assuming I
DON'T pay the monthly parking permit cost and just wing it (which is getting
increasingly difficult...) I pay ~$10 a day for BART. Or about 200$ a month.
If you hunt around, you can get monthly parking permits in SF for LESS than
that. Yes, gas costs money. But then again, not having to be stuck in "the
can" with a bunch of sick people during the winter months is worth the price
of gas. BART is pricing themselves out of the commute game. So, my question
is: what would it take to lower BART costs WHILE still paying people a decent
wage? If it's not possible, then maybe BART just isn't feasible long term.

------
lnanek2
Looks above the cost of living everywhere except SF. And there you just have
to knock it down to one kid and you are fine. I don't think the equivalent of
a bus driver should be able to live in a super over priced city like SF and
still be able to have a bunch of kids. It's not a big deal to commute in from
Oakland and other areas.

Should they be able to afford their own Manhattan apartments for a bunch of
kids too next? Or should they get cheap shared accommodations and limit their
number of kids if they want to live in the super rich city area instead of the
burbs like everyone else does who starts a big family? I think it's fine if
you have to make sacrifices to live in the city.

Personally, I think BART just needs to automate the trains and fire them all.

~~~
bayareaguy
Says the game developer who sells virtual goods...

I've lived in the bay area longer than BART has been in operation, and I'd
rather see my fares raised to pay the BART employees even more so that they
can focus on the safety and security of the system instead of having to be
worred about being evicted to make room for some virtual good merchant.

BART workers directly help millions of people in the bay area every day and
provide far more value to the bay area community and economy relative to what
they are paid then do the participants in this forum.

------
antr
Last time I read on HN about the Bay Area developer salary, it seemed to me
that consensus was that a $100-120k salary in the Bay Area is considered bang-
on middle-income. BART technical jobs are well below that, and one can argue
these are low-income. If $100-120k/year salary is middle income what's the
exact issue with BART salaries?

~~~
enjalot
Tech is a booming industry, and there aren't enough people with the skills to
do the work that needs to be done so high salaries are common.

It is unclear what the supply and demand curve is for public transit
employees, but it will be skewed by labor contracts. The issue is that a lot
of people don't make as much as BART employees (or have nearly as good
benefits). If their salaries of BART employees are higher than they could be
to keep the BART running, and they can upset the lives of hundreds of
thousands by striking to get even more it makes people concerned.

~~~
russell_h
BART "receives 2,500 to 3,000 applicants every time it advertises for new
train operators and station agents", and "gets 20,473 job applications
annually for an average of 177 job openings".

[1] [http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Few-options-for-
BART-r...](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Few-options-for-BART-riders-
who-aren-t-S-F-bound-4891337.php)

------
throwaway287391
Why is it that when you go from 2 parents + 1 child -> 2 parents + 2 children,
the cost goes up 6K, but when you go from 2 children -> 3 children, the cost
goes up 18K? If anything it seems like per-child costs should diminish as you
have more children?

Also I think all these analyses that assume a BART employee is going to be a
single income-earner for a family are a bit strange - surely there are some
BART employees who fall under this but I'd imagine not many? It seems like a
luxury in this day and age to have a parent staying at home full time. And
honestly I find myself having trouble sympathizing with people who have a lot
of kids without secure high-income employment - I don't think it's the
employer's responsibility to raise wages for employees that make a very
expensive lifestyle choice. I do feel bad for their kids, but I think the
responsibility for making sure they're taken care of should be the
government's.

~~~
sxywu
I took the cost of living from Economic Policy Institute's Family Budget
Calculator, and their documentation [1] is particularly interesting to sift
through.

In particular, the child care costs are apparently broken down like this: One
parent, one child = cost of 4-year-old care One parent, two children = cost of
4-year-old care + cost of one school-age child One parent, three children =
cost of 4-year-old care + cost of two school-age children Two parents, one
child = cost of 4-year-old care Two parents, two children = cost of 4-year-old
care + cost of one school-age child Two parents, three children = cost of
4-year-old care + cost of two school-age children

And they assume the school-age children to require both before-school and
after-school care.

As for comparing a cost of living for a two-parent household with the income
of a single worker, I could only make that assumption because...how would I be
able to extrapolate the household income of a two-parent family from BART
salaries? As imperfect a solution as it is, I still hope that it will give
insight, since my hope was not to shove any particular opinions on anyone, but
rather just a tool for exploration.

[1] [http://www.epi.org/publication/wp297-2013-family-budget-
calc...](http://www.epi.org/publication/wp297-2013-family-budget-calculator-
technical-documentation/)

~~~
ceras
For two adults, >0 children, I think childcare should really be excluded from
costs. It's not accurate for most any family in that position.

Though I understand figuring out the second parent's income is difficult, I
think it's more dangerous to entirely exclude it. To me it comes off as
misinformation (especially when combined with the childcare costs).

You can consider a hideable layer that allows the user to put the second
parent's income, and default it to the average Bay Area income. I'm guessing
that even if you defaulted it to 20-percentile for income, cost of living
would no longer exceed household income, which is extremely important
information in this discussion.

~~~
sxywu
I love it. I was just wondering how I could possibly include a second income
in the graph, and your suggestion is just perfect - thank you!

As for the costs, they're actually customizable - you can choose it from the
dropdown. I will also work to make that more explicit.

~~~
ceras
Glad I could help -- I look forward to the change!

------
anovikov
This somehow misses out the fact that in a married couple having 'childcare'
expenses, there are supposed to be 2 earners. With a gender gap of about 30%
for married women that leaves about 60k a year of wife's income or about $3500
after taxes per month which should leave no problem making ends meet. Leaving
wife out of work is reserved for the upper class nowadays, even not all of
them. Definitely not for the bus drivers.

Also if the wife does not work, why do they have childcare expenses from? What
is the wife doing then?

And, bus drivers don't need to save for retirement, unlike us coders, so they
don't really need to save at all, union cares for them.

And they are not supposed to have transportation costs since they ride for
free.

I am starting to think we will get self-driven buses long before we get self-
driven cars...

~~~
anigbrowl
Childcare != daycare. Even if one parent stays at home, you still have buy
special clothing, children need more medical attention, school supplies etc.
etc.

 _Leaving wife out of work is reserved for the upper class nowadays, even not
all of them. Definitely not for the bus drivers._

It used to be that quite normal across all classes for one parent to go out to
work and one to look after the family. One wonders what the point is in
increasing economic growth if it's to make us less well off than we used to
be.

~~~
seehafer
You can easily live nowadays on a one-parent income... just not in the Bay
Area. I lived in the Dallas area and that was the norm -- and not just for
middle-income tech people either. A modest house (that doesn't cost much) and
only one car (as it was in the 50's) and you can get by on a 60-70K salary,
even taking into account childcare.

~~~
anovikov
You can, but the standards of consumption changed to reflect working spouses,
so with wife not working, most people will look like losers. That's life and
it's not the problem of bus drivers only. If one doesn't like that he can turn
sexist and beat wife locking her up at home, see how far he goes... Like it or
not but living standards - in both material and behaviourial sense - imply
working spouses for everyone except upper class folks (and even them usually
have spouses working to avoid looking sexist and old-fashioned).

------
jonknee
$607 a month for transportation seems odd since BART workers and their
families ride for free (even after retirement!):

[http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-
news/ci_23778144/barts-f...](http://www.mercurynews.com/breaking-
news/ci_23778144/barts-free-ride-program-among-bay-areas-most)

~~~
anigbrowl
True, though outside of SF and Berkeley Oakland, far fewer people are within
walking distance of a BART station, so a lot of people have to drive there.
It's easy to forget this if you're carless (as I am) until you go somewhere
else and need to figure out how to continue your journey beyond BART. Look at
a geographical map and see how far apart the stations are at the extremities.

------
martinshen
Any ideas as to what the true market rate for these types of jobs is?

Theoretically, if BART did not have a union, would we expect it to be filled
with minimum wage or $40K type salaries.

Any other thoughts into how much labor costs as a proportion of their total
expenditure. Is this where BART needs to decrease spending the most?

------
fdschoeneman
BART PR person says that the average cost per year of a union, non management
employee, is closer to $134k per year, including benefits. I'm not sure which
side to believe. In any case I appreciate your work but would love to see a
closer examination of the $134k figure.

~~~
walshemj
yes so what all employees cost about 2.5 3.0 times the headline salary rate.

And what a lot of HN news readers probably dont realise (unless your in
production engineering) is that for lower level blue collar jobs Bonus and OT
are major parts of those workers pay packets.

~~~
ultrasaurus
I understand why maintenance staff might have surprise OT, but isn't a station
agent or a conductor the very model of a job with predictable hours? It seems
like BART should have no trouble correctly lining up workers and work without
needing to resort to overtime.

Clarification: I'm surprised that overtime would be a "major" part of the
average station agent's salary. Obviously there's going to be some mismatch,
but (assuming there isn't crazy turnover or long training required) it should
be fairly easy to predict the number of hours required and hire hours/2000
employees. The schedule is decided months in advance.

~~~
ultrasaurus
I hadn't realized how easy the data was to get[1]. The 300 Station agents make
an average of 57.6k/year in salary, 10.5k/year in overtime and 7.4k in bonuses
(includes vacation, unused sick days etc).

So for a station agent, they do make very close to 80k, and (assuming that
overtime is 2x their normal rate) the 18% on top of their salary means they
likely put in ~10% overtime. If my manager underestimated how long a station
was open by 4 hours every week, I'd be annoyed, but 10% doesn't seem shocking.

[1] [https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-
comp-a...](https://github.com/enjalot/bart/blob/master/data/bart-comp-all.csv)

~~~
VLM
Especially when I was younger I worked a lot of hourly student-type jobs and
since I've had a "real job" I've never been too far away from 24x7x365 ops.

The primary source of OT is stuff like "my kid's sick so I'm not coming in"
and suddenly two guys work an extra half shift, one is staying in late the
next coming in early, or at least as many hours as they can to help out. The
next one is medical and training appointments and any non-nose to the
grindstone official activity. So if mandatory 2-hour diversity class is today,
"someone" is covering for 2 hours via OT, and/or the class attender is coming
in on her day off for 2 paid overtime hours.

A big problem I can imagine with BART is the busy customer times are two big
humps in morning and evening rush hour.

Most people can't/won't work split shifts, which adds to the excitement.

Depending how your departmental SLAs are financially structured, you may come
out far ahead by spending an extra $100K/yr on overtime than by toughing it
out and letting things fall apart.

Not to mention the effect on personnel. I suppose it varies by location, but
usually a group of workers will always have some subgroup unable or unwilling
to work overtime, but Usually the subgroup willing to soak up any hours will
adsorb the slack before people start burning out.

This is also complicated by things like holiday policies. Some places I've
worked paid overtime for 40+ in addition to double time for holidays providing
a net pay rate of 2.5 your current rate and informally your holiday bonus is
either getting the day off, or coming into the 24x365 operations dept for 2.5x
pay. Many years (decades) ago, I was in operations and one of my last days of
work before starting a promoted job was earning something like $60/hr on the
4th of July (back when gas was under a buck, to provide some inflation scale)

There are quite a few holidays... Just working every other one I could see
someone accumulating quite a bit of OT, before unscheduled overtime like
coverage for sick people begins.

------
ultrasaurus
If you want to play with the raw data[1] I've uploaded it to Google[2].
Treating Base+OverTime+Other as someone's take home pay: * the mean across all
employees is $88.8k * the median is a "Contract Specialist II" taking home
84.8k * the most common job, a train operator takes home 80.8k

[1]
[https://github.com/enjalot/bart/tree/master/data](https://github.com/enjalot/bart/tree/master/data)

[2]
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av3e0siMRvildEl...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Av3e0siMRvildElIT3hXU3BueUgzVkVzQzFNZW9VVkE&usp=sharing)

------
darklajid
For me the breakdown was great.

I can understand numbers like housing and expected them to be a bit higher
(frankly? $1795 in EUR is roundabout 1300. My current budget for a new home -
I'm actively looking - is 1200 EUR for my family of 3.5). Food obviously
varies. I never thought about child care before I became a dad, but I
understand that number quite well now.

What totally blew me away was healthcare. Wow. How is that worth another rent,
a second apartment?

(I won't talk about absolutes too much - they obviously are local. In absolute
terms nearly every salary on that page is _big_ in DE and IT might pay less
than a BART mechanic gets. But again - local, really different situations
etc.)

~~~
sxywu
Thanks darklajid! The health care costs is total insurance premiums and total
out-of-pocket costs[1]. For a BART worker, it may only be upwards of $92, as
they have a fixed health care contribution. For that reason, I have made the
costs customizable, so you can edit and input any number you feel reasonable
(I didn't want to make any personal assumptions with the numbers).

[1][http://www.epi.org/publication/wp297-2013-family-budget-
calc...](http://www.epi.org/publication/wp297-2013-family-budget-calculator-
technical-documentation/)

------
fishtoaster
> This causes a slight discrepancy in the bar graph, as the cost of living
> figures assume all parents to be working, but the income assumes only one
> working parent.

That seems like a pretty big discrepancy, and makes the cost-of-living vs pay
comparison meaningless. If you assume each parent contributes equally to their
cost of living, you would pretty much halve the 'cost-of-living' line on the
chart.

Even if the other parent only makes 50% of what the bart employee parent
makes, it would pretty easily close the gap between pay and COL for most of
these positions.

~~~
sxywu
I am going to implement a simple toggle option to include a second income
(which I will research into what the median/average/reasonable salary in the
Bay Area to be) on the bar graph - hopefully that solves the discrepancy!

------
sxywu
I have added a toggle for including a second income earner into the
equation/bar graph. The figure is an average of the median per capita income
of four Bay Area counties - hopefully this will give better context.

Also, more explicit "Customize" buttons to encourage people to play around
with and edit the data :D

------
panaa
These comments...they are completely awful.

------
zobzu
the bonuses look lower than the last time i looked at the sheet. the salary
diff between management and regular workers is pretty high too.

pretty sure many senior IT engineers (who probably work 2x longer) would like
to do 124K a year _in the SF area_.. then the proposal is to give them 150K by
2015.

in a simple world i'd use that money to give 25% more to all other workers

~~~
3825
They are spending $26,982,431 in base salary to management. Almost $27M for
2013 and that is base salary alone. I can't find it acceptable either. They
need to start letting people go in the management.

------
rhizome
The fade-oriented segmentation is ridiculously useless and reader-hostile.

~~~
sxywu
Ah, but the fade is on purpose, because I wanted to show that while they do
have a high "cost of employment", what they truly pocket annually isn't as
much. For that, the most important figure is the base salary, which is a solid
block. The other things like pension and medical are either money they don't
see until the future, or money they don't use unless they have a medical
emergency.

~~~
rhizome
I don't have to pay for medical insurance until I have an emergency?

~~~
VLM
Probably thinking of 20-somethings who have no copays or medical deductibles
or chronic medical conditions or require medicines. That was my experience in
my 20s. I worked at a place for 3 years, people asked me what the insurance
was like, told them I never used it, so had no idea. Its a bit different of
course, once you have a spouse and a couple kids on the policy, and start
getting old, etc.

A properly implemented stealth agism policy (we only employ recent college
grads because we're "hi tech", you know how it all goes) could save quite a
bit. If you fire everyone once they have kids...

