BART official responds to Netflix original that takes aim at US’s failing transit systems

BART was briefly mentioned on the newest episode Hasan Minhaj's "Patriot Act" on the state of public transit in the United States, but how much of what he talks about it in the episode applies to the state of public transit in the Bay Area? less BART was briefly mentioned on the newest episode Hasan Minhaj's "Patriot Act" on the state of public transit in the United States, but how much of what he talks about it in the episode applies to the state of ... more Photo: Charley Gallay/Getty Images For Netflix Photo: Charley Gallay/Getty Images For Netflix Image 1 of / 18 Caption Close BART official responds to Netflix original that takes aim at US’s failing transit systems 1 / 18 Back to Gallery

In a recent episode of Netflix's "Patriot Act," comedian Hasan Minhaj bemoaned the state of public transit in the United States, blaming the billionaire Koch brothers for stifling attempts by several major metropolitan areas to upgrade their public transit systems.

"I want to talk about public transportation. Look, it's not just destroying my life," Minhaj said. "Everyone hates public transportation."

After his declaration, he showed a montage of TV news segments of people complaining about public transportation from around the country. And, of course, there was a clip of someone complaining about the Bay Area's BART system not working properly.

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"Since BART opened up at 6 [a.m.], it's not been working, and it's about to be 9 [a.m.]," Tammara Dozier said in a KPIX clip shown on Minhaj's show. The outage was an hours-long closure of BART in March 2019.

BART spokesperson Alicia Trost said that the closure was due to a piece of equipment that failed “due to its age,” and that it’s accurate to say that it was an infrastructure problem. She added, though, that the agency was already planning an overhaul of that system a month later to prevent the outage from happening again.

Trost watched the public-transit episode of Minhaj’s show and said that “while the episode starts by poking fun at transit – his train being late to even get to the show and [the bus] never showing up – that, to me, is the attention-getting device.”

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“But then, the episode is really a rallying call to rally transit advocates and to tell a story of why transit is so woefully underfunded by the government in the United States when you compare it to these world-class systems elsewhere, and they’re getting funded with great amounts of money because they prioritize it in other countries,” Trost said.

During the episode, Minhaj points to transit systems in other countries, like Japan and Denmark, and major cities like Paris. “Just one of Paris’ rail systems move more people per year than all of America’s commuter railways combined,” he said. CityLab reported as much in 2018.

Minhaj made several other claims about the state of public transit in the United States on his show, but do they apply to the state of public transit in the Bay Area? Let’s take a look.

Report Card

Early in the show, Minhaj cited the fact that the American Society of Civil Engineers gave public transit in the U.S. a D- in its ASCE Infrastructure Report Card in 2017. "The lowest grade of any U.S. infrastructure," Minhaj stressed before returning to a joke.

"Here's my thing, D-, just give it the F. Like, whose dignity are you saving at this point?" Minhaj said. "A D- means that you failed, but that the teacher is afraid of your parents."

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In the same report, though, California received a C-. In terms of the Bay Area, a 2014 story from FiveThirtyEight showed that the Bay Area at least has the second highest number of trips taken on public transit per capita.

Trost said that transit agencies “closely monitor” these grades and rankings. “You have to establish goals and baselines of what’s acceptable and how you’re doing compared to similar systems and how we can learn from each other,” she said.

Decreasing Ridership

The second big claim that Minhaj made on the episode was that last year, ridership fell in nearly every major U.S. city because of "terrible service and lack of funding."

While it would be difficult to figure out the reasons for an increase or decrease in ridership of public transportation in the Bay Area, we can look to see whether ridership has been going up or down.

And, according to data from Transit Center, ridership in the Bay Area has dropped three out of the past four years. Prior to that, ridership was on an upswing, with increases every year from 2011 to 2014. The Bay Area was one of 28 major transit markets around the country that saw a decrease in ridership in 2018.

Trost pointed out that many other cities are seeing “much bigger” decreases in ridership than BART has the past few years.

She said ridership is decreasing mostly on nights and weekends due to people using ride hailing services, concerns about the quality of life and safety of the system, and fewer trains being available due to track maintenance and other infrastructure upgrades. She said that the plan is for BART to upgrade and expand its infrastructure to “try to win those commuters back.”

Transit Death Spiral

After talking about decreasing public transit ridership across the country, he began to describe what he called a "transit death spiral," a term used in the transit industry to describe a confluence of declining ridership, fare hikes and the degradation of service.

"When fewer people use public transit, it makes less money, which means it either has to cut service or raise fares or both," Minhaj said when talking about transit death spirals. "So even fewer people use it, which means it makes even less money, which means even worse service and higher fares."

Minhaj called it a "vicious cycle," but is it one that Bay Area transit agencies are caught in? For BART, that could be the case, according to a May 2019 article from The Chronicle. "A third year of declining ridership is putting a strain on BART's budget plans and raising the specter of more fare hikes," according to The Chronicle's Rachel Swan.

And Muni ridership has fallen the past three years, too, according to the agency's data. In July, the agency raised fares for cash and limited use tickets and monthly passes.

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Despite the increasing fares and declining ridership for BART and Muni, Trost said she doesn’t think that the Bay Area is in a transit death spiral like some other major metro areas. She said that BART’s scheduled fare increases, which she said are marginal compared to other major metro areas, are not a major reason why ridership is declining.

She also pointed to the 70 percent yes vote on Measure RR in the 2016 election cycle that gave BART $3.5 billion for infrastructure upgrades as proof that residents of the area care about funding public transit.

“We’re very lucky that in 2016, 70 percent of voters here in the Bay Area recognized the importance of BART and wanting to fund BART. So, we got in front of what New York [and D.C. are] going through right now with the crumbling infrastructure,” Trost said. “We were able to start replacing those assets before terrible accidents occurred on our system.”

A Great Service

Trost said Minhaj, who has probably ridden BART seeing as he’s from Davis and his sister works in the Bay Area, is “doing a great service for transit” by bringing awareness to the state of public transit in the U.S. with his show.

“He’s telling a story that for some reason, just gets ignored,” Trost said. “Even mainstream media it’s very easy to beat up on transit. We use public dollars, so our books are open. Reporters take transit, so they’ve got story ideas going into work. [We need everyone] coming together and supporting public transit as the backbone of our urban areas.”

Drew Costley is an SFGATE editorial assistant. Email: drew.costley@sfgate.com | Twitter: @drewcostley