I was hoping people would chime in with actual experiences. I've lived an hour North of SF all my life, but have never ridden BART. There's little reason to if you already have to drive quite a distance just to get to a station, and you only visit the city occasionally.
> Seating capacity on BART is underreporting the ridership. At least 30 more people fit into each car during peak and late hours.
30 more people from the per-car numbers, or from the "crush" load they report, which is "over 200" (and I used 200 for my calculations).
> I don't see how the city could accommodate the extra usage from the loss of BART, van/bus use notwithstanding.
I wasn't really making a case for eliminating BART, but more for where future load capacity might come from. If we already have a mass transit system the numbers show it's a very efficient, if fairly rigid solution than we should keep that and expand it as much as feasible (which likely means, maximizing current tracks, not creating new ones).
That said, a lane packed with buses is much more dense with people than even BART, so dedicated bus lanes (10+ seat vehicles) combined with a shift to ad-hoc ride sharing might do it. Getting from here to there would be hard though.
