BART wants to reward riders now with an unexpected 5 million dollar surplus -- see link

Yes Yes Yes! Better Sunday and late night service would be outstanding. Waiting around during the last hour or two of service for up to 30 minutes is no fun and moreover a strong disincentive to transit use.

I also hope they get rid of that fare cut proposal gimmick. It's pure election-year politics. Even in the best case scenario, a daily commuter with an $8.00-10.00 round trip fare (from the East Bay to San Francisco) would only see a discount of about $2-$2.50 per week, a fraction of the cost of a gallon of gas, let alone the average rider's hourly wage.

In my experience, the BART board and PR reps seem pretty responsive, at least via email, to comments, so I think anyone who's interested should share his/her opinions.

Online comment submission form

To contact your county respresentatives directly, try
List of Public Contacts or Board of Directors.

With public agencies susceptable to creative accounting, I propose the following:

Scratch the fare rebate. By the time new schedules are printed, maps updated, software reprogrammed for the relatively short period - $5m will be gone and the impact would be negligible.

Instead, clean up the cars and tune up the weekend and evening service with more trains. Patrons would appreciate cleaner seats and overall better interior environment.

#1) clean the stations!!!! most of them are grimy and disgusting.

#2) improve the signs in the stations!!!! half the time it is impossible to tell what station you are in when you are sitting in the bart train. how are deaf people who cannot hear the station anouncements supposed to know where they are?

#3) crack down on fare evasion!!!!

that is all.

This is a no brainer. Use the money to run weeknight/weekend trains every 15 minutes and stash the rest in the reserves to help cushion against any more hard times. That will attract more riders who will bring in much more revenue than hiking the fares could ever bring.

1. All trains heading to San Francisco from the East Bay during morning commute hours (07:00-09:00) should be at least 10 cars in length.

2. All trains heading from San Francisco to the East Bay during the evening commute hours (16:00-19:00) should be at least 10 cars in length.

Why are Dublin trains 8 cars? Because there is two line service off the A-Line to Daly City. Unless there is an event, you don't need 8 cars at Dublin or Castro Valley.

Make sure to let the Directors know that lowering fares is NOT the way to go with this money. Restoring 15-minute minimum headways is the best use of the money. Reducing the number of printed schedules would be important for reducing the costs whenever schedules are changed. The majority of rider get schedule information from the internet, mobile apps, and posted schedules in the stations.

My biggest beef since BART switched from 20-minute to 15-minute headways, besides more crowded trains at night, is the HORRIBLE transfer at Macarthur for riders coming from the Pittsburg/Bay Point line and transferring to the Richmond line. If you attempt this transfer after 8pm, there is a 19 MINUTE wait for the transfer. Whereas you used to have a 4-5 minute window in which to switch platforms, you now get to watch the Richmond train leave just as the SF-bound train pulls in. This leaves several dozen (or more) transferees stuck on the platform for nearly 20 minutes, during which time I see people smoking, urinating, drinking, and whatever else you can imagine bored people doing at night while stuck in a freeway median. A minor schedule adjustment would fix this, and you would think BART would rather have people on trains going somewhere, as opposed to loitering on a platform for 20 minutes, but as we know, BART has a strange way of thinking...

Typical BART pattern I saw every 3-4 years while I worked there:

1. At contract negotiations, the District is pathetically broke and tottering on the edge of bankruptcy.

2. A few months after the negotiations, the Board quietly votes itself a "cost of living" raise (or more), and usually gives managers a raise as well.

3. A few months after that, there's plenty of money.

So, expect BART to have "surpluses" for the next 3 years, then they'll be broke again. *SO* glad I got out of that hell hole.