Concerning the article, 'BART on the Brink', BART needs more than a subsidy if it is to survive. It must encourage more commuters to use BART in order to avoid becoming a past memory. It should do this by providing a large discount for them. Most commuter railroads offer weekly or monthly tickets that save commuters very large amounts. This gives them incentive to justify the inconvenience of using public transit instead of driving. The meager savings that BART gives for buying 'high value tickets' clearly is insufficient to entice people to take BART. Unless BART gains a significant number of commuters, it will see itself become a seldom used system. Its fate is clear. If it fails to get more commuters it will have to cut service leading to a continuing decline in the number of commuters. Every time that it increases the time between trains, decreases the length of trains and decreases the security on the trains BART loses more and more commuters. If it loses too many commuters it will become another transit system that few take and only those who can't afford alternatives will use.

I’ve been an avid rider on BART using it to go to A’s games and San Francisco, however; I have always been critical regarding the lack of BART police presence at the stations, platforms, and in the trains. Years ago I wrote the Chief at that time questioning this observation where the BART Police spokesperson blamed it on requests elsewhere for their enforcement- in the parking lots and patrolling the jurisdiction around the stations. End of story.

Conversations with friends, family, and strangers seem to point to this lack of presence as a driving force keeping them away. Either there is nothing worth going to San Francisco for since the increased decay of the city (to include Oakland) or it’s just unsafe to ride after certain hours. The cost of a ticket never entered the conversation.

The cars always smell like weed, and the presence of the homeless making the cars their home bothers a lot of people and I do get that. We put up with it at times, but it has increased to where we have interests elsewhere. Someone needs to hold BART Police responsible for their mission, or all that will be riding the trains are the thugs, drug users, and/or the homeless.

Why do we pay tons of taxes when we are paying for everything that Govt should do, we build our own schools, our own public transport, purify our own water. Why taxes?