Comment by scoofy

>Government budgeting isn't zero based. A hypothetical Bart with 2x the government funding in 2019 would have faced cutbacks, but likely has more money today than what we have now!

A hypothetical BART with 2x the government funding wouldn't have existed... because it didn't exist.

>Agreed if it was stagnant, but ridership is up more than 10% y/y and that was also true last year. It's on track to be revenue neutral again in a few years. Gutting services today would be exactly opposite of what you'd do for something like a startup showing clear path toward profitability.

You're mistaking what I'm saying. I want BART to flourish, but I want it to be sustainable. The choice isn't "keep it open" or "close it." How it is operated matters significantly. I'm very obviously going to vote to increase funding, my point is that it shouldn't have to come to a vote. If service is reduced to a more sustainable rate, the system could recover organically. The revenue jump that has happened at stations immediately after the gates were installed, for example, shouldn't surprise anyone. I'm a transit advocate, BART is mostly irrelevant to this discussion anyway, because we're talking about situations where Waymo is a viable alternative, which really doesn't apply to BART.