abeboparebop's comments

In addition to micampe's point, he actually does commit, very specifically. A quote:

"To be clear, I’m saying we should ignore the workers’ welfare beyond what is necessary to (a) provide the best ridership experience and (b) to guarantee BART workers the safety and living standard we regulate, at minimum, for all workers. No more and no less."

That is, the Bay Area public should support BART's side in this dispute, because money spent on labor (benefiting the few) is money that can't be spent on system investment (benefiting the many).

If we want to ensure that BART workers can afford to live in the area, that's an important but separate question, and it's better to address the cost of living broadly* than to treat BART employment as a highly targeted Social Security scheme for train operators and mechanics.

* E.g., substantial increases in the minimum wage, lessening restrictions on new housing, non-profit-oriented health care, and (shocker) effective public transit.

Another way of analyzing the data might be to see which station pairs have ridership between them above-and-beyond what their total station ridership would suggest.

For instance, adjacent stations might be expected to have less ridership between them, because in many cases you could walk or bike between them.

Data is available here: http://www.bart.gov/about/reports/ridership.aspx. It ought to be cited more prominently!