Early Arrival At BART Station
A woman pregnant with triplets went into labor in the Berkeley BART station earlier this week, and a Berkeley High teacher helped with the delivery until the woman could be transported to a hospital. In her honor, The Top Ten Reasons To Give Birth At A BART Station:
10. Line to deliver baby in old station wagon was too long
9. For an act like this, people might give you spare change
8. Flower kiosk a major benefit for unprepared visitors
7. Free BART fare if you can hold them in long enough
6. AC Transit has a strict “no food, beverage, or umbilical cord” policy
5. Change machine now accepts $20s, $50s, and newborn babies
4. BART police double as midwives
3. Might as well deliver the baby where it was conceived
2. Station is cleaner than any Berkeley hospital
1. Wanted to prove something could arrive early at the station
“Free BART fare if you can hold them in long enough”
A few years ago a woman gave birth on a BART train and the baby (not the mother) got free BART rides for life. It doesn’t seem like this baby got that. I guess you have to be born in the train, and not just the station.
Comment by holohan — October 7, 2005 @ 7:53 am
bart = overpwiced
da twain service is a joke cuz it fukin sux so much. almost 8 dollars round twip from here to SF… the fukin bridge is much cheaper. bart should be privatized cuz its a waste of state resources to support an unprofitable shitty service.
“smashT bart”
Comment by smashT — October 7, 2005 @ 1:23 pm
bart = overpwiced
da twain service is a joke cuz it fukin sux so much. almost 8 dollars round twip from here to SF… the fukin bridge is much cheaper. bart should be privatized cuz its a waste of state resources to support an unprofitable shitty service.
“smashT bart”
Comment by smashT — October 7, 2005 @ 1:24 pm
Privatizing BART would… lower our fares, add retail to the stations, increase the system’s span, lower taxes and there would be a push to consolidate or have the other transportation systems work more closely together. (And it would end wimpy union sniveling.)
and a sidenote for smashty- they’ve translated the Bible into ur speak:
http://www.biblesociety.com.au/smsbible/
“4 God so luvd da world”
Comment by Brand America — October 7, 2005 @ 1:46 pm
Are you kidding Brand America? If you even knew anyone who had taken a city planning class you’d know that public transport like BART never operate at a gain. In fact BART is considered successful becuase it recoups more than half it’s investment. The government keeps it running the same way they keep the public roads paved, with taxes. Putting a corporation in charge wouldn’t fix anything. Sorry, the world doesn’t work the way Rush Limbaugh says it does.
As an aside you may want to look up the privatley run public transportation systems of old: The LA red car (as seen on Roger Rabbit) the San Francisco trolleys. These weren’t run by the government and yet they were still run at a loss. Real estate developers paid for them and so they could sell the land at a hire price.
Comment by Tommaso Sciortino — October 7, 2005 @ 2:52 pm
I want to point out that just becuase Public transport operates at a loss dollar-wise doesn’t mean they’re a bad idea. Private transportation is also subsidized, and it has a nasty habit of externalizing costs. Obviously it pollutes other peoples property (and public property like streams and forrests) but more subtley it takes up a lot more public space on the roads. A city as dense as San Francisco would be impossible without publicly run public transportation and yet it’s increadibe economic output would be impossible without that denseness.
Unlike cars, public transportation increases the value of adjacent land many times over. The only way to reimburse the entity that runs public transportation is for that entity to be the government and for it to levy taxes (for services rendered).
Comment by Tommaso Sciortino — October 7, 2005 @ 3:02 pm
youre ts, nothing public ever operates at a gain. that’s why they want to privatize it.
Comment by thomas — October 7, 2005 @ 5:52 pm
My point is that privatizing it won’t make it profitable since we already tried that. Did you not read my first post?
Really, it’s the economics of the situation: The benefits are large but dispersed (amongst nearby property owners) and the costs small but acute (on the operators of the transport). It’s a classic first-mover problem. And the solution to the classic first mover problem is government. The only alternative is to not have public transportation at all, and when you consider that the vast majority of our country’s GDP gets produced in cities that couldn’t exist without public transportation its clear that not having public transportation is not an option.
Comment by Tommaso Sciortino — October 7, 2005 @ 6:09 pm
I actually like BART and I think it’s a very good system. It comes when it says it comes and it leaves when it says it leaves. AC transit, on the other hand…
Comment by Anonymity — October 7, 2005 @ 8:26 pm
It runs on schedule. It also runs on a deep deficit at taxpayer expense.
Comment by anon — October 7, 2005 @ 9:28 pm
Yes, anon. But it provides an increadible benifit that we couldn’t get another way. It “runs a deficit” in the same way that the army and police “run a deficit”.
Comment by Tommaso Sciortino — October 7, 2005 @ 9:36 pm
The reason why we’re in such a deficit is because we’re still in Iraq and Bush has these bright ideas like spending tons of money on social programs that we don’t have the money for. Such fiscal conservatism!
bush needs a reality check. His approval rating is below 50% (47% if I’m correct) yet he’s not appealing to all the groups he’d like to appeal to. He doesn’t really stand for anything specific, mainly whatever groups will vote for me, I’ll spend money on their programs.
Comment by DTI — October 7, 2005 @ 10:17 pm
BART sucks. Their trains are dirty and run too slow. They’re on tracks but if you ever drive past a BART train, then you know that highway traffic runs much faster than BART. Americans just can’t run public transportation. Take the Hong Kong Mass Transit Railway for example. It is almost as old, runs about 3x faster than BART, has automated announcements (instead of having the driver shout out the announcements), has digitized maps on the train, computerized fare machines that calaculate the fare for you, and most importantly, clean trains. You Americans just haven’t taken real transportation. Just go to Tokyo or any other major Asian city and you’ll see the difference.
Comment by StinkyAsian — October 7, 2005 @ 10:20 pm
I think you’re right. If California was a European country we’d have a bullet train that would take you from San Francisco to San Diego in two hours. Still though, America’s layout is mostly to blame. We don’t have dense European style cities because most of ours were set up (or did most of their growing) after the car was invented.
Plus of course, certain parts of America’s political landscape are ideologically opposed to investment in public infrastructure. But let’s not get into that.
And DTI: please. The word “fiscally conservative” now means absolutely nothing. It’s clear that given the chance, conservatives are willing to support even higher deficits than liberals ever did. It’s called fiscal responsibility now, and it shouldn’t be a left or right issue.
Comment by Tommaso Sciortino — October 8, 2005 @ 8:15 am
John Kerry was making some inferences to being a fiscal conservative. I think he would probably be more “fiscally responsible” if that’s what you want to call it.
It was Robert Reich that was accusing Howard Dean of being too “fiscally conservative” for wanting to balance the budget every year, because Reich believed that budget deficits were not necessarily a bad thing, and called himself a fiscal liberal. If I’m for balancing the budget every year, I suppose according to Robert Reich I would be a fiscal conservative. If you study Keynesian Economics, embraced by the non-socialist left, in years where there is economic downturn, cutting taxes and raising spending is a tool utilized to spur the economy. Bush did this, basically: he cut taxes and raised spending. And look how it turned out.
There’s always the potent argument that Republicans are no longer conservative. This, I agree with.
Comment by DTI — October 8, 2005 @ 10:59 am
difference between HK and SF…
Hong Kong is a twuly fwee market city wiT low taxes and daTs why it has bettar public transportation. smashT
also… privatise bart cuz right now it fukin sux shiT. 8 dollah round twip for dirty shitty service is fukin bs.
“smashT bart”
Comment by smashT — October 8, 2005 @ 11:22 am
The purpose of BART is to serve the people (which it does), not make money. And BART trains DO operate at decent speeds. You simply cannot safely drive a 40-year-old subway train around a sharp curve at 70 mph. And trains going in both directions sometimes have to share one track (hence, switching delays/slowdowns). These things could be improved, but only if the people are will to pump more tax money into BART.
“almost 8 dollars round twip from here to SF… the fukin bridge is much cheaper.” -smashT
You are fucking idiot. When you take your car to SF you pay bridge fare ($3), parking ($5-40), and gas ($1-2)–now tell me which is cheaper. Plus, during commute hours, it is much faster to take BART anyway.
Comment by the man — October 8, 2005 @ 11:27 am
BART would be more efficient if they stopped paying 100,000K salaries to their employees who stand and do nothing at the security booth and spent it more on maintenance and reduced the fares. It’s regressive to raise fees on poor people. Taxing more will just go into the workers’ salaries.
We pay 40% of our income in taxes to pay for public services and they charge money period? What the hell is up with that.
Comment by DTI — October 8, 2005 @ 1:21 pm
the man has probably not been on some non-American public transportation and is talking out of his hole. The first BART train took off in 1972, so most trains are not 30 years old. Given the way the system expanded, the trains are probably around 20 years old. As stated above, the Hong Kong metro system is just as old, and much faster. How can subways in other countries do it where BART can’t? I’m driving on Highway 24 and the road is fairly straight by the BART trains are going so slow. Americans just can’t operate the machinery.
Take, for example, the acceleration of the train from the platform. When all are aboard, why can’t you just accelerate the damned thing? Afraid of getting sued? Once on the platform, the trains stop for too long. Back in Asia, if you’re not already waiting next to the platform when the train comes, you miss the train. It’s very simple and keeps the system running. If you’ve been in other countries, then you will also notice that American escalators (such as the ones into the BART platform) are slow too, probably because they also dont want to get sued.
Comment by StinkyAsian — October 8, 2005 @ 1:44 pm
Yeah, but our penises are bigger.
Comment by Beetle — October 8, 2005 @ 1:47 pm
Well, when the government fails to regulate things properly, people end up using the courts to settle matters they shouldn’t.
And I strongly doubt that the people who sit in the BART booths make 100,000 a year, DTI. I don’t doubt that some high level inspectors and escalator repairmen make that much but then, you get what you pay for.
Comment by Tommaso Sciortino — October 8, 2005 @ 2:16 pm
I have been on non-American public transportation (in France). I agree, bullet trains and state-of-the-art subway systems are a whole lot better than BART, but that shouldn’t come as a suprise. France is a semi-socialist country, and the people there are more than willing to pour a good portion of their earnings (taxes) into public transportation. It is valued much more in Europe. In the USA most people would rather drive their own SUVS to work. The BART trains may not be 40 years old, but the trains, cars, and lines are contstucted on a 40-year-old standard/guage (no matter how recently they were built). And as for your other points, how can you blame BART for not trying to get sued? By the way, BART does travel at 70mph alongside Highway 24.
Comment by the man — October 8, 2005 @ 2:30 pm
Tommaso, starting pay is around $90,000 a year for working with BART.
Comment by DTI — October 8, 2005 @ 2:57 pm
http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/svbart/message/59
Comment by DTI — October 8, 2005 @ 2:58 pm
Well yes DTI if you include overtime pay some are making a lot (although the article doesn’t make clear if all the union members make that much or if they were just talking about the ones that did). Their salaries should be judged by what they would get without overtime. Overtime is just an indication that they should hire more people but aren’t doing so.
Comment by Tommaso Sciortino — October 8, 2005 @ 4:17 pm
And if we’re paying 40% for public services, how much of that includes road building and maintenence? That’s the original transportation subsidy.
Comment by Tommaso Sciortino — October 8, 2005 @ 4:18 pm
wtf do the “station agents” even do? they sit in their little office/cube all day, they can’t answer any questions, they don’t have change, they won’t unlock the bathrooms, and the evidently don’t fix broken ticket machines (judging by how many are always broken). I don’t care if they’re making 100,000 or 50,000, either way that is way too much money for people that sit on their asses playing tetris all day. Why do they deserve those kind of salaries? Oh, I forgot, their unionized
Comment by captain anonymous — October 9, 2005 @ 12:45 pm