Transportation: A Fantastic, Fossil-Fuel-Free Future

Because they know what's best for us, Bay Area central planners have been discouraging driving by means of high gas taxes, underfunded road repairs and road building, high parking fees, unique (i.e. high-priced) gasoline formulations, and shrunken driving lanes. If they want us to take mass transit, at least they're making trains more attractive, right?

Wrong: ‘I was scared for my safety’: Harassment, threats, violence follow women onto public transit

I often disembarked at Montgomery St. Station, 1988-2008

In August, Alliance for Girls released a report titled “Together, We Rise: The Lived Experiences of Girls of Color in Oakland, San Francisco and San Jose.” According to the report, girls in each city said they’d been harassed and stalked on public transportation.

“Girls know that this is an issue, and we ignore it until it’s too late,” said Emma Mayerson, the executive director of Alliance for Girls. “Public transportation is one of the greatest barriers to access services, to basic mobility, to economic empowerment.”

A 2019 report jointly released by four organizations, including the UC San Diego Center on Gender Equity and Health, found that 77% of women surveyed had been sexually harassed in a public space. Twenty-nine percent said it happened on public transportation.

BART logged 535 reports of sexual assault and lewd behavior on its BART Watch app this year through October. During the same period in 2018, there were 501 reports.

In Bay Area transportation there are fewer choices, higher prices, and low reliability. And with BART there's a bonus: sexual assault and lewd behavior with most of the victims being lower-income women of color.

It's too bad that some people are getting hurt on the way to a fantastic, fossil-fuel-free future.